Toward Tocqueville

 

• Wednesday: Tocqueville 340-363, 525-530; Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address.
• Questions on assignment? If you have any problems submitting your paper via Sakai, simply email it to me as an attached Word file. (not a Google doc or pdf).

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).

Lech Walesa 1989

"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

• Short biography
• Reasons for coming to America
• Itinerary
• Map of his travels
• More on the fake quotation  -- an op-ed -- Bill Clinton using it last year!

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 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.) 

• Recent data. 
• Wealth, religion, and the US as an outlier: graph
• Belief in the Bible
• Creationism and an international comparison  (remember when we discuss Edwards v. Aguillard)

 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

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."