I did not intend to revisit the United States, nor can I say what power has transported my spirit hither. I must speculate that my presence here implies a responsibility related to the one I assumed more than 150 years ago, when I spent nine months traveling in this country. I was 26, and the nation had enjoyed barely 50 years of independence. America impressed me as a place where the experiment in Democracy, the social revolution that so agitated my contemporaries , was being most peaceably and generally conducted. So, in Democracy in America, I attempted to explain how a multitudinous people contrived to govern themselves and live together under terms of equality--a thing the world had never before witnessed. I ventured not only to assess the effect of the American political system on the habits and enjoyments of citizens beholden to no power excepting themselves, but also, extrapolating from my evidence, to suggest what might spring from the new way of life I observed in America.
Now, a stranger again on these shores, I survey a landscape whose surface has changed almost beyond recognition. To rehearse these alterations would be tedious, so let us quickly grant what we all know: the 24 states and 13 million inhabitants of 1831 have swelled to 50 and 240 million; scientific advances have stretched beyond my power of foresight; the United States is no longer an infant among nations but the most powerful entity on earth.
Yet the more things change, as a saying in my native language has it, the more they remain the same. America still excites the world's hopes and fears; it continues to attract immigrants, disquietude and hatred. The experiment that struck me so forcefully when I and my host country were young continues with undiminished vigor and uncertainty. To see this tumultuous process anew fills me with hope, misgivings and the desire to make a few more remarks on the ways this great land may yet fulfill or betray its destiny. In what follows, I will have occasion to repeat some of my own words; for the past 1 1/2 centuries, scarcely anyone commenting on America at any length has failed to quote Tocqueville. I ask the same indulgence.
The Disappearing Tyranny of the Majority
At the time I wrote Democracy in America, one of the strongest fears was that this form of government would be tantamount to mob rule. I suggested how the American system could prevent or mitigate the tyranny of the majority. This process went further than I anticipated. Now I am hard put to find any majority in America at all. There are, to pick but one example, more women in the United States than men; yet since gaining suffrage in 1920 they have failed to win decisive power at any level of government. I attribute this to the fact that women, like men, do not see themselves as part of a mighty army but as Democrats or Republicans, married or single, old or young, heterosexual or things my 19th century upbringing forbids me to name. In fact, few individuals seeking redress or public attention claim the advantage of numbers on their behalf. On the contrary: they petition from weakness as the surest method of attaining their goals. The proliferation of vociferous minorities has doubtless resulted in the righting of many wrongs. It has also led to a noticeable decline in the civility of public discourse. The United States has become at once more equitable, and clamorous, than before.