Enter Tocqueville

Who was Tocqueville?

• Short biography
• Reasons for coming to America
• Itinerary
• Map of his travels, along with journal entries
• The fake quotation

Civic Culture

• Individualism
• US v. other industrial countries
• Seeing government as a threat
• Patriotism
• "Nothing is more annoying in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the American" (p. 237).
•  From a 2015 survey: "More than six in ten (62%) Americans believe that God has granted America a special role in human history, while roughly one-third (33%) disagree. Views have not shifted significantly in recent years. In 2012, an identical number of Americans (62%) agreed that the U.S. was granted a special role in human history."Americans view their industriousness  -- a Cadillac ad
• Putin on American exceptionalism

• Religion
• "The religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States." (p. 295 of Lawrence-Mayer ed.) 
• Recent data.
• Belief in the Bible
• Creationism and an international comparison
• Wealth, religion, and morality in comparative perspective
• In June 2006, Barack Obama gave an important speech on religion in politics. See prepared text here and video clip here.
• Service
• Tocqueville on American democracy: "Under its sway it is not especially the things accomplished by the public administration that are great, but rather those things done without its help and beyond its sphere" (p. 244)
• Where people volunteer
• Where people give 

Civil Religion

• Winthrop's "City on a Hill"
• The Liberty Bell: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof" (Leviticus 25:10)
• The national motto, "In God We Trust"
• The Dollar Bill:  pyramid and eagle
• The Pledge of Allegiance (see old method of salute)
• Early Thanksgiving Proclamations