Tocqueville and Political Culture

  

• College Reps and Dems
• Wednesday: Tocqueville 340-363, 525-530; Lincoln Second Inaugural Address; Obama speech.
• Questions on assignment?  Purpose of this assignment and writing assignments in general.  "Paramedic Method"
• If you have any problems submitting your paper via Canvas, simply email it to me as an attached Word file. (not a Google doc or pdf).
• Citing articles.  Do not say that the author of an op-ed or journal article is the publication in which it appears.  Sometimes stories come from wire services.

Anticipating the Constitution: “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury." (Allen, p. 246).

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

Allen closes with a discussion of equality.

Tocqueville

An op-ed -- Bill Clinton using in 2020!

Origins of the fake quotation  

The very first line of Tocqueville's introduction: “No novelty in the United States struck me more vividly during my stay there than equality of conditions" (p. 9)

• What did that phrase mean to Tocqueville? 
• He was not blind to slavery -- discussion on Wed.

Maintaining a democratic republic

• Circumstances – physical isolation (remember this aspect when we discuss presidency)
• Laws – starting next week
• Mores (moeurs)–what are mores? (p. 287)

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.) 

• Wealth, religion, and the US as an outlier:  2018 graph and more recent graph
• Belief in the Bible and support for influence
• Creationism 
• By state

• An international comparison  (remember when we discuss Edwards v. Aguillard)

 Civil Religion

• Winthrop's "City on a Hill" (Matt 5:14) 
• 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)
• 1777 Thanksgiving Proclamation

Lady Gaga sings the National Anthem two weeks after the January 6 insurrection.  Note that she turns and points to the Capitol flag as she sings "...our flag was still there."

Grievances

Any questions on the assignment?

Posting weekly reflection on Canvas instead of email: If we had had 15 more minutes in today's class, what could you have added to the discussion?  That is, identify a relevant observation you could have made (or a question you could have posed) about today's material that did not come up during class time.  (Same specs: 250 words maximum.)

Dr. Harkonen will visit to talk about the DC Program.  I have an internship listserv.  When you are on the market, let me know and I will add your name.

FOR NEXT MONDAY:

• Finish Allen
• Tocqueville, 9-20, 231-261, 277-315
• Nicholas Steinman will talk about College Dems.

The Bill of Particulars and the Bill of Rights (ignore the commentary at the top and bottom of the page)

Allen, ch. 18: The Bill of Particulars and the Bible (with a Seder cameo at 3:50)  (And a 2019 news story...)

Calhoun articulates an argument against the Declaration 

Text of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. 

Lincoln's comments at Galesburg

I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation. And I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience that while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject he used the strong language that “he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just;” and I will offer the highest premium in my power to Judge Douglas if he will show that he, in all his life, ever uttered a sentiment at all akin to that of Jefferson.

Lincoln-Douglas Galesburg debate video at 1:08-- What crucial word did the re-enactor screw up?  

From the Cornerstone Speech by Alexander Stephens (Allen, p. 241):

The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Secession documents

Melia Wong's amazing senior thesis on Union and Confederate songs.

What was Frederick Douglass's take?

• Biblical reference  -- "the rivers of Babylon"
• You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation — a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. [Douglass was way ahead of his time in accepting Chinese immigration.]
• Douglass was also one of the few men at Seneca Falls.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Tiananmen Declaration

The Declaration, Continued

 

From the 1972 movie 1776. South Carolina'sEdward Rutledge (John Cullum) challenges Northern delegates, esp. John Adams, who wanted to condemn slavery in the Declaration of Independence.  The lyrics trace the Triangular Trade: New England ships carried Bibles and rum to Africa, traded them for enslaved people, transported them to the West Indies and the South, and brought back molasses to make more rum.

Dr. Harkonen will visit toward the end of class on Wednesday.

Questions on assignment?  

READ FOR WEDNESDAY:

• Allen, ch. 44-45
• Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" July 5, 1852. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/ .
• Alexander Stephens, "The Cornerstone Speech," March 21, 1861, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/

Review from last time

Spinoza -- TJ himself was a Deist. Locke: "The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges everyone, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life,health, liberty or possessions."

•  Allen's Dad weighs in on King’s concept of natural law
•  Compare and contrast to Jefferson? – Editors added more God -- why?

...................

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

Self-evident? Allen 161.

Hamilton on self-evident truths (Federalist 31):

DISQUISITIONS of every kind, there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend. These contain an internal evidence which, antecedent to all reflection or combination, commands the assent of the mind. Where it produces not this effect, it must proceed either from some defect or disorder in the organs of perception, or from the influence of some strong interest, or passion, or prejudice. Of this nature are the maxims in geometry, that "the whole is greater than its part; things equal to the same are equal to one another; two straight lines cannot enclose a space; and all right angles are equal to each other.'' Of the same nature are these other maxims in ethics and politics, that there cannot be an effect without a cause; that the means ought to be proportioned to the end; that every power ought to be commensurate with its object; that there ought to be no limitation of a power destined to effect a purpose which is itself incapable of limitation...

 Lincoln trained his mind by studying Euclid.  In  this letter, he applied what he had learned to the Declaration:

One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.

The Lincoln movie paraphrased it.

 Did Jefferson mean “men” as gender?

Deleted Paragraph (see, esp. p. 154 of Allen)

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidels powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold...

The Five Facets of Equality (108-109; 268-269):

• The first facet, as we are about to see, describes the kind of equality that exists when neither of two parties can dominate the other. 
• The second facet concerns the importance to humankind of having equal access to the tool of government, the most important instrument each of us has for securing the future. 
• The third facet concerns the value of egalitarian approaches to the development of collective intelligence ("potlucks")
• The fourth facet concerns egalitarian practices of reciprocity. How well do citizens do at thinking of themselves as receiving benefactions from their fellow citizens and owing them benefits in return? 
• And the fifth facet has to do with the equality entailed in sharing ownership of public life and in co-creating our common world.  

That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ...

In this news with CMC connections:  a post by Jonah Goldberg (P `25) with comment by Sen. Ted Cruz (husband of Heidi Nelson Cruz `94)

What is a right?

• Natural or human rights
• Civil rights
• Political rights

What is problematic about "Nature's God" and "Creator"?

 Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness COMMA!!!

• Why that order?  (Why the comma?)
• What is liberty? Tyranny of majority?
• Why not property?
• What is happiness?

From The Ethics:

Since happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue, we must consider the nature of virtue; for perhaps we shall thus see better the nature of happiness. The true student of politics, too, is thought to have studied virtue above all things; for he wishes to make his fellow citizens good and obedient to the laws.

Why not the word democracy?

Securing rights

• That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,
• But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

 [NATIONAL TREASURE]

•  “evinces a design” (196-197) -- a plan-- CONSPIRACY THEORY!

First Essay 2026

Pick one:

1 Find someone outside this class (no names, please). Without priming, ask that person to finish this sentence aloud: "All men are created equal, but..." or "...and..." Record the exact words. Ask that person to explain.  Next, find a primary or contemporary source (e.g., newspaper article, a court opinion, a speech) in which someone argued, after 1852, that equality is unconditional ("and") or that it comes with a condition ("but").  Now compare and contrast your interview subject's instinct, your source's argument, and Douglass's and Coolidge's treatment of the same clause (The Coolidge epigraph on the syllabus links to his speech on the Declaration). 

2  The Declaration presents itself as the act of a collective “we,” even though many people in America had no part in drafting it. Drawing on Allen’s discussion of democratic writing, analyze the relationship among equality, participation, and political authorship. Begin with a particular decision made by a group to which you belong: a team, club, workplace, congregation, student organization, or other community. Explain exactly who could speak, who made the final decision, and whose views carried the most weight. Then answer: Can a decision genuinely express the will of an equal community when not everyone participates equally in making it? Use specific language from the Declaration and Allen to evaluate the decision. Consider the strongest defense of the decision-making process as well as the strongest objection to it. Conclude by explaining what this case reveals (or does not reveal) about the Declaration’s implicit claim to speak for “one people.”

3. The Declaration builds its case for independence through grievances against King George III. Choose three grievances that share a common principle of legitimate government. Include at least one from the second half of the list. Explain why the authors chose each grievance and how its wording strengthens the case for independence. Then, analyze a grievance you or a group you know raised against a government, school, employer, or other institution. Draw on your own observations, or interview someone who took part. Name the act that prompted the complaint, the remedy the group sought, the institution's response, and one disagreement within the group. Attach a one-sentence appendix naming when and how you gathered this information — a conversation, a meeting, a document. I shall not grade the appendix; I shall only confirm it exists. Compare the modern case with the Declaration. Name one similarity that makes the comparison useful and one difference that could mislead. Answer this passage from Allen, Our Declaration, p. ___: "[insert quotation]." Explain how the modern institution might answer the complaint, and state that answer fairly.

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A strong essay will make a contestable argument, analyze the precise language of the relevant texts, incorporate material from our class discussions, and acknowledge alternative views and the limits of its evidence. I strongly encourage relevant outside research, particularly when it provides historical context, evidence about an example, or support for a claim about how typical an experience is. Cite all outside sources.  For privacy reasons, do not provide the full name or identifying information of any individual to whom you speak for this assignment.

Instructions:

• Essays should be double-spaced and no more than three pages long. I will not read past the third page.
• Essays should be in the form of Word documents. Do not submit pdfs or Google docs.
• Cite outside sources with endnotes (not footnotes) in Chicago/Turabian style. Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.
• Misrepresenting AI-generated content as your own work is plagiarism. It could result in a referral to the Academic Standards Committee. You do not want to start your college career this way.
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you.  Read Strunk & White and watch my writing lecture before writing this paper.
• Turn in essays to Canvas by 11:59 PM, Friday, September 25. (If you have trouble with Canvas, simply email it to me as an attached Word file.) I reserve the right to dock essays a grade point for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

Analyzing the Declaration

  "Yet if the Declaration resembles a wedding, it bears an even closer kinship to divorce" (p. 94 of hardcover)

This week's focus question: Identify one word, phrase, or passage in the Declaration that you understood differently after reading Chapters 1–18 of Our Declaration. What did you previously think it meant, what does Allen argue it means, and which interpretation do you find more convincing? Why?

For Monday: Allen, ch. 19-43. First writing assignment.

For Wednesday: Allen 44-45,  Douglass, Stevens  

(Frederick Douglass and Stephen A. Douglas were not the same guy.) 

Model UN.  The UN raises the question: to whom do people owe allegiance?

This book is not just about the Declaration, but about political writing in general.

Examples of democratic/group writing

• The Constitution
• Presidential speeches
• Supreme Court opinions
• Congressional markup

REVIEW: Functions of writing

• Performance
• Record-setting: memoranda
• Persuasion

Framing

"The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America"

• Why states instead of colonies?
• Other examples of name changes: countries, historical figures, fictional characters.

 `When in the course of human events Latin cursus, meaning "flow" --a tide e-ventus "outcome"it becomes necessary .."

• Why course?
• “The course can be altered – with strenuous effort” (Allen, p. 111)

" for one people to dissolve the political bands, which have connected them with another and to assume, among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station"

• What is a “nation”? Shared cultural life, having or wanting their own government.
• What holds us together?
• What is a “station”? (Allen, p. 119) -- Latin for “stand.”

CONJUNCTION JUNCTION!

Compare "separate and equal" with "separate but equal."

• Keep in mind for our discussion of Lincoln's Second Inaugural:  "And the war came" means something radically different from "But the war came."

What does it mean to be equal? "But `equal' and `same" are not synonyms" (107).

"to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them"

Spinoza -- TJ himself was a Deist. Locke: "The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges everyone, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life,health, liberty or possessions."

•  King’s concept of natural law (by Danielle Allen's dad!)
•  Compare and contrast to Jefferson? – Editors added more God -- why?

 a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

• Address to the whole world (France, in particular)
• Impel (Allen, pp. 115-116) – to be pushed

Slow Reading

 FOR NEXT TIME, READ ALLEN, CH. 5-18.

Cold calls and weekly writeups start next week.

Looking ahead to ch. 24: "The words `implicit' and `explicit' come from plicare, which means “to fold,” as when you fold your clothes. So think of a sound bite as a suitcase."

W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exi sts alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Implicit meaning can be a folded truth as well as a folded lie.

Textual analysis and slow reading

Think about how one sentence relates to another.  When you read the Declaration, think about the order of thoughts.

Think about the origins of terms in the document. Virginia Woolf wrote: "Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations—naturally. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries."

Think about the historical context.  A text without a context is a pretext. What did those words mean to people at the time?

Thinking about how the document relates to others (p. 33)

Thnk about what is missing. See pp. 22 on the 2012 campaign.

Think about the writers and speakers.  What had they read?  What did they think about?  What was their purpose in this message?

King's last speech

The mountaintop

"Mine eyes have seen the glory..."

RFK the next day

And Ted Kennedy eulogized RFK:

Patrimony

• Something that you inherit:  heritage.
• Back to "I Have a Dream" "When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir."
• Lincoln:  patrimony is NOT about blood and soil, but the Declaration.

Democracy

• What is democracy?
• Who decides who "the people" are?  What is citizenship?
• Why is the word not in the Declaration or Constitution?
• What are the conditions of democracy?

Gov 20H, Fall 2026 -- It Begins!

  Do not take this course if you dislike movie references. 😀

For Wednesday, read the Declaration of Independence and Allen through chapter 4.  Relax:  the reading is only 15 pages.  Today, we adjourn a little early for convocation.

Slow reading and democratic writing.

The speech and its setting serve as an introduction to American politics

A CMC connection!

Who was on the program and why?  Songs

I Have a Dream

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

• Why the reference to Lincoln?  Hint  And another hint.
• An allusion within an allusion: The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.(Psalm 90:10)

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

• Why the reference to the Declaration?
• Why the reference to the Constitution?

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. 

• Was he talking about anybody in particular?  It's complicated...

We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

• What specific cases of police violence were on the audience's mind?

We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

• How did Mississippi keep African Americans from voting?
• What did he mean about New York?

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

• What is the American dream?

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

• What is a creed?
• What is a self-evident truth?
• What does the Declaration mean?  (We shall return to this question)

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

• Who was George Wallace?  What was his connection to Gettysburg?

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Getting right with MLK:  

• In the May 1963 Gallup survey, 92% of Blacks but only 35% of Whites had a favorable opinion of MLK.
• POTUS and VPOTUS here.
• Trump here here here and here.

So what does the Declaration mean?   Consider terms such as “equal,” “self-evident.”  Think about the other readings and ask how they help us understand these terms.

The Declaration