Nihilism, American-Style

By |2021-05-19T11:00:51-05:00August 14th, 2016|Categories: Democracy in America, Featured, George Stanciu, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, St. John's College|

Old-World nihilism belongs to a handful of intellectuals persuaded by philosophical arguments that human knowledge, on the whole, is worthless as a reliable guide for living. Consider Heinrich von Kleist, the nineteenth century dramatist and short-story writer, who became intellectually unglued when he read Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason. In a letter to [...]

“The Conservative Mind”: An Act of Recovery?

By |2023-05-11T10:39:15-05:00July 10th, 2016|Categories: Conservatism, Democracy in America, Edmund Burke, Featured, Russell Kirk, Ted McAllister, The Conservative Mind, Timeless Essays|

Russell Kirk’s greatest gift to American political thought is his brilliant articulation and cultivation of a rich cultural patrimony that helps define the meaning of our most cherished ideals from within a context that is both historically textured and open to the transcendental. Since the nation’s founding, a salutary tension has informed American political thought—a [...]

Is Equality Greater than Freedom?

By |2019-07-30T14:07:13-05:00July 29th, 2015|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Great Books|

Democracy in America Book 2. Influence of Democracy on the Feelings of Americans Chapter I: Why Democratic Nations Show a More Ardent and Enduring Love of Equality than of Liberty The first and most intense passion which is engendered by the equality of conditions is, I need hardly say, the love of that same equality. My [...]

A Reading of the Gettysburg Address

By |2023-05-21T11:31:46-05:00March 17th, 2015|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Alexis de Tocqueville, Civil War, Declaration of Independence, Democracy in America, E.B., Eva Brann, Senior Contributors, St. John's College|

Liberal education ought to be less a matter of becoming well read than a matter of learning to read well, of acquiring arts of awareness, the interpretative or “trivial” arts. Some works, written by men who are productive masters of these arts, are exemplary for their interpretative application. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is such a text, [...]

America’s Democratic State

By |2016-08-03T10:36:37-05:00January 12th, 2015|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Books, Christendom, Democracy in America|

I had remarked during my stay in the United States, that a democratic state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer singular facilities for the establishment of despotism; and I perceived, upon my return to Europe, how much use had already been made by most of our rulers, of the notions, the [...]

Cancel the Midterm Elections?

By |2014-11-04T08:58:55-06:00November 4th, 2014|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Conservatism, Democracy in America, Liberalism, Republicans|

Like all actual conservatives, I look on any increase in the powers of the Republican Party as an opportunity for disappointment. Its leaders would rather run a permanent minority than serve as part of a majority actually returning power to the states and the people. Better to be ruled by Democrats, “our” leaders believe, so [...]

Democracy, Greed, and the Perils of Equality

By |2014-09-20T17:06:06-05:00September 20th, 2014|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Democracy in America|

If there are two things that one is likely to hear from college faculty today, they are that 1. Students are too careerist, and 2. We need a more democratic society. They worry about the growing utilitarian cast of education in general, as well as the remnants of hierarchy, authority, paternalism, and inequality in today’s [...]

Why Liberalism Means Empire

By |2022-07-16T07:12:48-05:00August 9th, 2014|Categories: Christendom, Conservatism, Democracy in America, Liberalism, War|Tags: , |

Liberal democracy is unnatural. It is a product of power and security, not innate human sociability. It is peculiar rather than universal, accidental rather than teleologically preordained. And Americans have been shaped by its framework throughout their history. History ended on October 14, 1806. That was the day of the Battle of Jena, the turning [...]

The Good and Bad of Democracy

By |2019-08-22T11:22:39-05:00September 3rd, 2013|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Bruce Frohnen, Democracy, Democracy in America|

I have been rereading Alexis de Tocqueville’s masterful Democracy in America.  This book, written in the first half of the nineteenth century by a French aristocrat for his countrymen, remains standard reading for American college students and even some of their professors. In a way it is too bad that we tend to read it [...]

The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty: A Brilliant Critique of Tocqueville

By |2013-11-21T13:44:01-06:00June 10th, 2013|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Books, Democracy in America, Lee Cheek|Tags: , |

Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty by Lucien Jaume While this profound, and elegantly written and translated work, will not appeal to all scholars of political thought, Lucien Jaume (Centre Recherche Politiques de Sciences Po) nevertheless provides many insights into the life and work of the great French student of American social and political life.  Emphasizing [...]

What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear

By |2019-11-14T13:12:14-06:00February 1st, 2013|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, American Founding, American Republic, Books, Christendom, Democracy, Democracy in America, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William F. Byrne|

An excerpt from Democracy in America. I had remarked during my stay in the United States that a democratic state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer singular facilities for the establishment of despotism; and I perceived, upon my return to Europe, how much use had already been made, by most of [...]

The Federal Idea

By |2021-05-05T13:12:50-05:00January 5th, 2013|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Federalist Papers, Political Philosophy, Politics, St. John's College, Wilfred McClay|

The concept of federalism has been one of the principal casualties of modern American history. One has to look far and wide to find American historians and political scientists who do not believe, with the smugness and tenacity of dogma, that our federal institutions are lumbering relics of a past we outgrew over a century [...]

The State of American Liberal Education These Days

By |2014-03-19T17:37:58-05:00January 4th, 2013|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy, Democracy in America, Liberal Learning, Peter A. Lawler|Tags: |

What are the ends of education? We mean, of course, the ends for us, for us democratic Americans. So we begin with the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America—Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. America, Tocqueville noticed, is an overwhelmingly middle-class country. To be middle class, of [...]

Has Democracy Died?

By |2013-11-24T19:19:54-06:00October 12th, 2012|Categories: Books, Democracy, Democracy in America, Politics|Tags: |

Chilton Williamson, Jr. is a prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction who has worked as an editor for St. Martin’s Press, National Review, and, since 1989, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, published by the Rockford Institute. His most recent book is After Tocqueville: The Promise and Failure of Democracy(ISI, 2012), which John Willson, professor [...]

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