Jefferson and Tocqueville on Democracy As Hemisperic Views

Didik Murwantoro – Jefferson and Tocqueville on Democracy at Hemisperic Views JEFFERSON AND TOCQUEVILLE ON DEMOCRACY AS HEMISPERIC VIEWS Didik Murwantono College of Languages, Sultan Agung Islamic, Semarang [email protected] Abstract This paper examines democracy to Jefferson’s and Tocqueville’s philosophy in shaping the American polity. A few scholars have discussed the connection between Jefferson and Tocqueville, but this writing provides a value of democracy as hemispheric mind or trans-national sources. Democracy is not only an American intellectual mind, but also a global mind. The philosophers, sociologists, and economists of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century formulated a political program that served as a guide to social policy first in the United States, then on the European continent, and finally in the other parts of the inhabited world as well. It was reflected in Tocqueville’s journey for learning democracy in America around the mid of the nineteenth century. Therefore, there are two significant points to describe both Tocqueville and Jefferson; they are democracy and tradition with all conditions. Keywords: Jefferson, Tocqueville, democracy, founding, and liberal INTRODUCTION democracy in particular. Democracy was the lens through Tocqueville saw the political Most people are familiar with the name of world. Alexis de Tocqueville, even some of them adore Alexis de Tocqueville these days. His For him, the brave and frightening new world extraordinary account of the political ushered in by the era of revolutions was an era landscape of the early United States, of democracy. As he wrote in the introduction Democracy in America, is endlessly quoted by to Democracy in America, “a great democratic pundits and politicians of every bar. Today if revolution is taking place in our midst” one reads about America, about democracy, (Tocqueville, ed. Richard D. Heffner, 1956, about liberty, about bureaucracy, about p.26). equality, about almost any aspect of politics, or for that matter about large stretches of Furthermore, Alexis de Tocqueville has human nature as it emerges in a political become a fixture in contemporary American context, one sooner or later encounters political discourse as reflected in Democracy Tocqueville. In the work of Democracy in in America. This work also contains America, Tocqueville utilizes facts, Tocqueville’s associational life in America. observations, and speculations to examine The tendency for democratic societies to both democracy in general and American centralize power was an important aspect of 1 RUBIKON Volume 1 / Number 1 February 2014 “Tocqueville’s thought on the role of forms, and to his warnings about “the tyranny associations” (Boesche, 1980, p.550-563; of the majority” (Ibid, p.9-10). Gannett, 2003, p.1-16; Koritansky, 1975, p.63- 81). Associations served as an artificial In the modern society at that time, it preferred aristocracy in democratic societies and helped to a democratic country. This sense, to counter democratic tendencies toward democracy, then, is to be understood as a centralization (Dolence, 2006, p.3-4). conveyor of accumulated experience. For Tocqueville, “democracy is the product of the Most scholars have created a certain new political system derived from the process Tocqueville, one who slips easily into the of the changing of modern society” (Stone & main dialogue of American politics between Mennel, 2005, p.xvi). It began the immigrants self-designated liberals and conservatives, called ‘the Puritans’ with their religious with each camp claiming him as its own. To orthodox in the New World. Tocqueville the one he is a “liberal conservative” who remarks that “All the Europeans who values freedom as well as property rights; the successively established themselves in the other he is a “conservative liberal” who is alert New World. All these European colonies to the dangers of “too much democracy” and contained the elements, if not the who commiserates with the burdens borne by development, of a complete democracy” political elites, not the least of which is the (Tocqueville, ed. Richard D. Heffner, 1956, periodic invasion of the political realm by the p.40-41). They forced American society to masses (Wolin, 2001, p.3). adopt the Puritan beliefs including hard work, competition, discipline, and individualism. Tocqueville represented an important early engagement between liberalism and Meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson as one of democracy. The eighteen-century revolutions leading American founding is chosen because in America and France had been widely of his uniqueness. Jefferson had showed his represented as the triumph of liberalism over great accomplishments among other American monarchy and aristocracy. Tocqueville’s self- founding fathers such as George Washington description as a new kind of liberal reflected and John Adams. He looks monumental and his strong conviction that freedom or liberty unique. was the fundamental political value and an even stronger fear that the greatest threat to Although his speech is lower than others, he freedom was from a combination of political has great power in writing. His pen is like a democracy and social equality. Nineteenth and sharp sword that is ready to cut down any twenty-century have responded warmly to problem shortly. Jefferson’s ideas are mostly Tocqueville’s criticism of egalitarian embodied in scattered writings, particularly in democracy, in both its political and social his superb letters. Through his letters, 2 Didik Murwantoro – Jefferson and Tocqueville on Democracy at Hemisperic Views Jefferson spoke on the nation and by means of violent, and illegitimate. Jefferson also learned letters he stimulated his followers. One of the about the overreaction of the Shay’s great aspects of Jefferson thought is that it is Rebellion. Therefore, the values of classic relevant with era. It is not only the age when liberal were always embedded in the he gave his ideas but also the age which Jefferson’s thought such as limited passed through that era. However, Jefferson government, laissez-faire, and freedom. As was more relevant with the crises or great Louis Hartz (Hartz, 1995, p.3) suggests in The stories happened in America. Liberal Tradition in America that “America has inherited a liberal tradition primarily Thomas Jefferson is also a mystery. He is a through the teachings of John Locke, and that man who promoted democracy and majority these ideas were in turn transmitted by rule yet who also proudly claimed to be a Thomas Jefferson”. member of the natural aristocracy. He favored legislative rather than executive supremacy In order to assess the quality of American yet he was the first American president to democracy, it is useful to trick out democracy advance a complex political agenda. He from the tapestry of the tradition. Jefferson disfavored constitutions yet generally appreciated the importance of custom and supported the American Constitution. He did tradition, and he did not seek to radically re- not support the Constitution clearly. He was invent American society. Moreover, the framer particularly critical of the presidency, writing of the American Constitution looked at to John Adams that “their President seems a populist democracy. And though Jefferson bad edition of a Polish king” (Peterson 1984, undertook a fairly radical experiment in p.910). He was also concerned over the lack of framing a new government in the new world, a Bill of Rights, and fretted that the new he was conservative skeptics who did not government might be an overreaction to Shay believe in the perfectibility of mankind. Rebellion. Both Tocqueville and Jefferson are passionate Jefferson was careful in making the political democrats who look to free society from the changes in order not to make social and dead handoff the past, and who are guided by political upheavals. He learned from the a quasi-utopian outlook. Tocqueville said that French Revolution and the American “The second circumstance to which I have Revolution that those revolutions were alluded is, that the social condition and the absolutely different. According to Burke’s constitution of the Americans are democratic” discourses, the American Revolution referred (Tocqueville, ed. Richard D. Heffner, 1956, to freedom, democracy, non-violence, and p.144). He described himself between legitimacy, meanwhile the French Revolution aristocracy greatness and democratic justice. was as antipode – despotic, undemo-cratic, According to Tocqueville, “In aristocratic 3 RUBIKON Volume 1 / Number 1 February 2014 ages, vast ideas are commonly entertained of approach is used to analyze American the dignity, the power, and the greatness of experiences from multidisciplinary man” (Ibid, p.166). Tocqueville sees as well as perspectives, namely historical, political, Jefferson that the aristocrats’ claim that their economical, sociological and cultural nobles help them to understand between disciplines. It describes the concept of twofold world between aristocracy and American democracy from founding like modern society. Thomas Jefferson to the Industrial Revolution. Democracy is as one of the important Therefore, this paper engages with the American intellectual minds that is still held American founding from a critical until now. The growth and the development of historiography perspective. Mainly, it connects American democracy as an American mind with the ways in which the American founding cannot be parted from phenomenon living in has been studied

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