i-social tendencies neutralized, and society in turn must be rendered incapable of destroying the independence that individualism fosters. Individualism must be weakened or transformed, but not made impotent. Democracy, Tocqueville tells us, loosens social ties, but tightens natural ones; it brings kindred more closely together, while it throws citizens more apart. Certain propensities of democratic man namely their drive toward materialism, mediocrity, compassion, domesticity, and isolation make us all too prone to accept or to drift into what Tocqueville labels a soft despotism. The fundamental paradox of democracy, as he understands it, is that equality of conditions is compatible with tyranny as well as with freedom. A species of equality can co-exist with the greatest inequality. Left to its own devices, democracy is actually prone and ready prey for the establishment of tyranny, whether of one over all, of the man over the few, or even of all over all. Democracy originates a new form of despotism, society tyrannizing over itself. The only limitation imposed on the central authority is that its rules and its power be uniform and applied to all without distinction. This restriction actually facilitates the establishment of despotism, for government is relieved of the responsibility for making inquiry into an infinity of details, which must be attended to if rules have to be adapted to different men. It is clear from Tocquevilles writings that he believed the sway of governmental opinion to be an evil unto itself. He realizes that so pervasive is the pendulum swing of public opinion in a democracy that it sets the tone of the whole society, to the extent that the governors can barely come to have wishes different from those of the ruled. The governors, however much they think themselves independent of the masses, are nonetheless their servants. As Tocqueville expresses it, the universal moderation moderates the soverei...
