[Constituting America: Why So Many Ambitious Men Exist in the US, but so few Lofty Ambitions (Vol 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 19)]

Alexis de Tocqueville was a keen observer of America’s emerging civic culture.  His insights on how democracy shapes individual and community existence resonant with us to this day.

In his chapter on ambition, de Tocqueville outlines the attributes of equality in its classic sense.

American democracy in the early 19^th Century provided a framework for liberty and equality in the law and the marketplace.  He celebrated how the framework gave everyone an equal mix of opportunity and challenge.  Such a mix ignited the passion in Americans to seek better lives. 

“The first thing that strikes one in the United States is the innumerable multitude of those who seek to get out of their original condition.”

Individual ambition in a free society was the engine for economic vitality.  Government provides a stable and honest environment for individuals to test themselves against their environment.

De Tocqueville contrasted American equality with the remnants of aristocracy and lust for power.

“So when once the ambitious have power in hand, they believe they can dare all: and when it escapes them, they immediately think of overturning the state to get it back.”

He knew firsthand the extremes that arise from a revolution that topples aristocracy.  His own family endured imprisonment and the guillotine in the wake of the French Revolution.  France’s cycle of chaos, violence, tyranny, and return to aristocracy served as cautionary lessons. 

“As the former barriers that separated the crowd from renown and power are suddenly lowered, an impetuous and universal movement of ascent is made toward this long-envied greatness.”

France never achieved the promise of its revolution.  The French suffered through monarchy, anarchy, revolutions in 1848 and 1870, an Emperor, military humiliation in 1870, and malaise leading to World War. De Tocqueville notes: “The passions that the revolution had prompted do not disappear with it…on all sides one sees disproportionate and unfortunate ambitions ignited that burn secretly and fruitlessly in the hearts that contain them.”

The French revolutionaries strived to change everything.  They even renamed the calendar months, established new weights and measures, and toppled every institution that was tainted by the old regime. Thousands were slaughtered.  Europe was ravaged.

Frenchmen’s lofty ambition to change the world led to their ruin.

Americans’ personal ambition was not to change the world, but to change their personal world. 

America’s cultural strength was unleashing individual creativity to strive for this end. 

De Tocqueville rejoiced in how America’s focus on personal ambition avoided France’s post-revolutionary vortex.

De Tocqueville toured America during an era of unbridled technical achievement.  The Erie Canal went into operation in 1825.  The first segment of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal opened in 1831.  America’s first railroad, the Baltimore Ohio Line, moved freight and passengers starting in 1827.

These were realistic and pragmatic ambitions.  They were human scale for the benefit of humans. 

De Tocqueville understood that what set Americans apart from all other nationalities was their focus on “a multitude of small, very sensible ambitions…they finish many undertakings rapidly rather than raise a few long-lasting monuments; they love success much more than glory.”

He concludes his review of ambition with a warning against complacency. The benefits of democracy and a free society can lead to stagnation and the waning of ambition. 

“I avow that for democratic societies I dread the audacity much less than the mediocrity of desires; what seems to me most to be feared is that in the midst of the small incessant occupations of private life, ambition will lose its spark and its greatness…so that each day the aspect of the social body becomes more tranquil and less lofty.”

For De Tocqueville, leaders “should want one to strive to give them a vaster idea of themselves.”

This is his challenge for America and the ages.

 

 

TRUE COLORS

Published in http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/true-colors/article/2556003

It is time to reclaim America from liberal elites.  The first step is to right a recent wrong.

During the 2000 Presidential election recount battle, long time Democrat turned pundit Tim Russert took the unilateral act of swapping out the long standing political colors for Republicans and Democrats.  His liberal media colleagues jumped at the chance to rebrand Democrats away from their 20^th Century left wing affiliations. 

Unfortunately, Fox News and conservatives also embraced this swap.  As a result, a two hundred year global tradition of blue meaning conservative and red meaning liberal ended in America. Along with swapping colors, media pundits and political scientists began using “red state; blue state” to simplify and “dumb down” their analysis of America’s richly nuanced civic culture.

Republicans and conservatives should be deeply offended at the liberal media’s unilateral and unofficial propaganda act.  Realizing the history of these colors should cause an outpouring of conservatives to demand at least their media friends at Fox and Talk Radio take a stand and return to the GOP’s noble blue color.

Colors have meaning. Uniforms and banners on the battlefield have identified friend and foe since the beginning of human history.  Most of history linked colors to nations and dynasties.  The most famous was England’s 15^th Century dynastic war symbolized between the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster. 

In the late 18^th Century, blue became the first modern political color.  It was worn as boutonnières by British parliamentary candidates supporting Pitt the Younger (the leader who helped William Wilberforce end slavery).

Blue evolved into the permanent color of the Conservative Party of England and of center-right movements around the world, including the Republican Party in America.  

Radicals and pre-communist activists did not have their own color until the French Revolution.

On August 9, 1792, antimonarchist provocateur, Jean-Paul Marat, called upon the people of Paris to rise up and overthrow King Louis XVI.  This was a reaction to recent French reversals on the battlefield and a rising concern by Robespierre over some Legislative Assembly delegates seeking national unity through reconciliation with the powerless King. 

The next morning, mobs swarmed the Tuileries, where the royal family was under house arrest.  The King allowed the mob into the complex and ordered his Swiss Guard not to fire.  Previous incursions had ended peacefully as moderate voices prevailed. Not this time. The mob slaughtered the surrendering Swiss Guards and then sought out servants and kitchen staff to tear apart – limb from limb.  One observer called it a “mad festival of blood”.  The King and his family were imprisoned in a fortified monastery with the guillotine looming ahead of them.

The mob stripped the blood soaked red uniforms from the Swiss Guards and paraded the shards on long pikes as revolutionary banners.  Thus red became the color of the most radical factions of the French Revolution and of left wing movements to this day. 

Remember that the next time a conservative uses “Red State” to describe Republicans and conservatives.

Scot Faulkner served as Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives and as Director of Personnel to Ronald Reagan.