Roll over, Alexis de Tocqueville. The oft mentioned (but less frequently read) 19th century French scribe is being invoked by every dime-store scholar and public figure these days to bemoan the passing of what the Frenchman described as one of America's distinctive virtues: civic participation. "Americans of all ages, all conditions and all dispositions," he famously wrote, "constantly form associations." In France, Tocqueville observed, a social movement is instigated by the government, in England by the nobility, but in America by an association. Tocqueville and small d democrats from Ben Franklin (who started a volunteer fire brigade) to John F. Kennedy...
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