Writing Worth Reading
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Writing Worth Reading
It’s a masterpiece of sociological and political analysis. Tocqueville’s work still helps us understand America, 170 years after he wrote it
Your next book is by Alexis de Tocqueville. The problem with putting de Tocqueville on a book list is that everyone thinks they’ve read it, heard about it, know about it. Apart from the obvious fact that everyone should read it, why do you include it?
Certainly everyone should read it. I think the way Democracy in America is relevant to understanding conservatism is that it lays out, especially in the second volume, in a really wonderful way, how ideas are translated into political institutions, and even more so into mores and habits and practices of everyday life. De Tocqueville saw people living their lives, but behind it he could see the ideal of equality acting on American society. I think it’s very important to a Whiggish kind of conservatism, to see how ideas translate into practice. They don’t translate in a simple way. They don’t just affect the words of the constitution and the structure of institutions; they affect every part of life.
So here’s a man who sees the notion of equality in America shaping mores all the way down through society
Exactly – changing family life, changing friendship, changing relationships between business partners, between renters and owners, in ways that would not be obvious. These changes were not an intentional function of the people who laid out the American ideals.
And he’s not altogether comfortable with that?
He’s not altogether comfortable with it. De Tocqueville is very worried that the spread of equality will flatten social life and put people to sleep in ways that make sustaining democracy very difficult. And some of his worries are very relevant to conservatives today. He worries that all of this would open a space that would end up being filled by a large and centralised government. Some of his other worries would, in some ways, educate conservatives even more because they’re a little less familiar. For example, he worries about individualism, which he believes is a very corrosive force in society.
He’s not much of a populist is he?
No, he’s not.
I wonder how he’d feel about Sarah Palin and Tea Party-ers and all that.
It’s very hard to know, and always risky to guess, but I think he would find some things interesting and lovable about them, but I think he would also worry about the effect on American politics.
Is it possible to define what we mean by Whiggishness, Whiggery? It’s not a term in common use any more…
It’s very hard to define briefly. The Whigs thought of liberal institutions as an achievement, as something to be protected and preserved and treasured and they had a very cynical view of human nature and of politics. They were not utopians, but there was an idealism to them. They valued prudence more than idealism is one way to put it.
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Yuval Levin is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC, and is founder and editor of National Affairs, a new conservative journal.
Turning to the books, let's begin with Democracy in America. Tell us about it and why it continues to resonate with you.
It’s a masterpiece of sociological and political analysis. In the 1830s, Tocqueville looked at the newly democratic America and described it in terms that, for the most part, are applicable today. For example, he spoke of the clamour that he heard when he reached the shores of America. Law in America rises from the bottom up, it isn't decreed from the top down. When we have a new problem, we start with vigorous debate and discussion that can sound like clamour.
For instance, how will privacy and free expression interact in the Internet age? The village gossip would forget what was going on, but computers won’t. Norms about privacy and how privacy relates to free expression are changing. When we want change in an area like that, we start to discuss it – in schools, in associations, in newspapers, in magazine articles. Debate and discussion bubbles up. Some kind of rule is formed, perhaps through an administrative process. We may change it, there may be legislative hearings, our representatives might write a statute and if that isn’t working well, the new rule is tested through the courts to see whether it falls within the boundaries of the constitution.
The constitution is a document that sets boundaries. Being a judge on a constitutional court is like living on a frontier. Is this statute inside or outside America’s boundaries? That's what we're deciding. Now, sometimes that's difficult. Is abortion inside or outside our constitutional boundaries? Is prayer in schools? These are difficult questions. But in the vast area between the boundaries, democratically elected representatives make decisions, after all sorts of consultation with the people, after all sorts of clamour. Tocqueville encapsulates all that. His work still helps us understand America, 170 years after he wrote it.
How did Tocqueville influence your view of our constitutional system?
He talks about the importance of aggregating views, as we do in the United States, through voluntary associations. He talks about the importance of bringing the average person into the democratic process. Tocqueville, in his writing, shows us the many ways in which the average person can participate and must participate for the democratic process to work.
Tocqueville observed two persistent tendencies in American culture: abhorrence of elite institutions and reliance on our legal system to settle differences. It seems to me these two tendencies are in tension and place the Supreme Court in a rather tough spot.
I don't have a fixed view on that point. Life is complicated. America is a country of 309 million people who think a lot of different things. There's every race, there's every religion, there's every point of view. We have a common view that real differences should be decided under law. That is a miracle, all things considered. Considering the number of differences that are possible, it's not surprising that law is complex. Now, I don't think our system is perfect. I could list 10,000 reforms, but I won't bore you. I'll just say it's important not to understate the need for law and for lawyers.
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Before becoming a Justice of the Supreme Court in 1994, Stephen Breyer taught law at Harvard and served as the chief judge of the First Circuit Court of Appeals. A former Supreme Court clerk himself, Breyer also served as a special prosecutor during Watergate and chief counsel of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Born in San Francisco, Justice Breyer was educated at Stanford, Oxford, as a Marshall Scholar, and Harvard Law School. He is the author of seven books, including a widely used textbook on Administrative Law. Making Our Democracy Work, an examination of the interplay between society and the Supreme Court, was published in 2010
