Better Call Saul

For Monday read

• The Constitution:  IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS, POST THEM ON THE BLOG OR EMAIL THEM TO ME.
• Wurman, ch. 1-3
• Federalist 1,8.9.10,

Alinsky:  dealing with the world as it is, not as you would like it to be (xix).

Equality: compare and contrast Alinsky and Tocqueville:  Haves, Have-Nots, Have-a-Little-Want-More

Individualism

• US v. Europe
• Seeing government as a threat
• COVID and the limits of individualism

Patriotism

• "Nothing is more annoying in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the American" (p. 237).
• Comparative data
• Americans view their industriousness
• Putin on American exceptionalism
• Trump on American exceptionalism

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 give: 29% goes to religion
• Where people volunteer: 32% religious

Jorlen:

The Majority: "I know no country, in which, speaking generally, there is less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion than in America (Tocqueville, 254-255).

In 1829, Madison elaborated on his earlier fears about the majority: " In Monarchies the interests and happiness of all may be sacrificed to the caprice and passion of a despot: In Aristocracies, the rights and welfare of the many may be sacrificed to the pride and cupidity of a few: In Republics, the great danger is that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the Minority."

A 2018 survey of college students concerning free speech.

A 2018 national survey

From Tocqueville, pp 291-292:

In Europe almost all the disorders of society are born around the domestic hearth and not far from the nuptial bed. It is there that men come to feel scorn for natural ties and legitimate pleasures and develop a taste for disorder, restlessness of spirit, and instability of desires. Shaken by the tumultuous passions which have often troubled his own house, the European finds it hard to submit to the authority of the state's legislators. When the American returns from the turmoil of politics to the bosom of the family, he immediately finds a perfect picture of order and peace. There all his pleasures are simple and natural and his joys innocent and quiet, and as the regularity of life brings him happiness, he easily forms the habit of regulating his opinions as well as his tastes.

Whereas the European tries to escape his sorrows at home by troubling society, the American derives from his home that love of order which he carries over affairs of state.

In the United States it is not only mores that are controlled by religion, but its sway extends even over reason.

From page 603 (not on this week's list):   "If anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women"

In 1829, slaveholder Madison on African Americans: "If they had the complexion of the Serfs in the North of Europe, or of the villeins formerly in England in other terms, if they were of our own complexion, much of the difficulty would be removed. But the mere circumstance of complexion can not deprive them of the character of men."  (See the remarkable story of Paul Jennings.)

A famous prophecy: Tocqueville concludes volume I (p. 413) by comparing the United States and Russia:  "Their point of departure is different and their paths diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world."

What Tocqueville did not foresee:  immigration from Asia and the Americas.