Democracy in America has had the singular honor of being even to this day the work that political commentators of every stripe refer to when they seek to draw large conclusions about the society of the USA. Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, came to the young nation to investigate the functioning of American democracy & the social, political & economic life of its citizens, publishing his observations in 1835 & 1840.
Brilliantly written, vividly illustrated with vignettes & portraits, Democracy in America is far more than a trenchant analysis of one society at a particular point in time.
What will most intrigue modern readers is how many of the observations still hold true: on the mixed advantages of a free press, the strained relations among the races & the threats posed to democracies by consumerism & corruption. So uncanny is Tocqueville’s insight & so accurate are his predictions, that it seems as tho he were not merely describing the American identity but actually helping to create it. (The English translation has several variations, including "Every country has the government it deserves" and "In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve." The quote is popularly mis-attributed to better-known commentators such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Abraham Lincoln.)
BUT!
In St Augustine’s City of God, a seminal work that still exerts influence on theology and philosophy today, the great saint discusses how God allows certain leaders to take power at certain times as a form of reward or punishment. Leaders don’t emerge in a vacuum, and if a society is wicked and cruel its leaders will be too.
He says tyrants such as Nero Caesar are allowed to reign by ‘by the providence of the supreme God, when He judges that condition of human affairs is deserving of such lords’, before adding more generally that ‘it is most clearly said of God that He “maketh the man who is an hypocrite to reign by reason of the people’s wickedness”.’
The way see it anyway!
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