I recently re-read *Democracy in America* with some political theorists, criminologists, and philosophers. I was struck by the following passage, which I haven't seen anybody make much of in the years since. It is a fascinating turning-of-the tables on the public-choice crowd (anachronistically, I mean):
I have no doubt that the democratic institutions of the United States, joined to the physical constitution of the country, are the cause (not the direct, as is so often asserted, but the indirect cause) of the prodigious commercial activity of the inhabitants. It is not engendered by the laws, but it proceeds from habits acquired through participation in making the laws.
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Somebody wrote a whole book (sort of) about that, called "Habits of the Heart," about individualism and commitment. I think a second update is coming out soon.
Greg: I think Bellah is following a different theme in Tocqueville. But what I quoted is too short to give the gist. Here is what immediately precedes the quote (from Vol.1, Part 2, Ch.6, "Advantages of Democratic Government):
"There is no denying that the people often manage public affairs very badly. But they could not take part in public affairs at all without broadening their ideas and abandoning set ways of thinking. When a man is called to government, his self-esteem increases. Because he now has power, some very enlightened minds are ready to advise him. People look to him constantly for support and, by trying to deceive him in a thousand ways, manage only to enlighten him. In politics, he takes part in enterprises he has not himself conceived but that foster in him a taste for enterprise in general. Every day people point out to him new ways of improving common property, and this fosters in him a desire to improve his own property. He may not be happier or more virtuous than his predecessors, but he is more enlightened and more active.."
Kevin
I wonder what de Tocqueville would think of today's people who are "called to government?" A far different breed I think than those he observed in his time. True enough that there were a goodly number of scoundrels even then, and that many of them sought to improve their property straight away. Now it is as likely that the scoundrels will be little interested in their personal enlightenment which might lead them to a more prosperous point of view. More likely they will be concerned only with their own entitlements and the personal prosperity that may prevail.
I don't know, that seems very in line with Bellah's argument about the ways that civic engagement broaden people's interest. But I agree that those habits aren't quite the habits of Bellah's title.
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