general and permanent condition of mankind. In this address can be seen Tocquevilles attempt to illustrate the complexities of democracy. With humans being the only social constant, and the consistency of humans being that of little to none, democracy is a dangerous wheel that could topple at any time without the support of its people. In summation, the problem of democracy has never been better stated than by Faguet:In truth, the only remedies for the dangers of Democracy are that Democracy should moderate itself of its own accord, should put the brakes on itself, so to speak; and such brakes can only be bodies having more or less an aristocratic character; but Democracy will never permit such bodies within itself; so, as Montaigne said, here we are arguing in a circle. Tocqueville was very much aware of the continuous, and sometimes-vicious web spun by democracy. He never thought of democratic manoeuvres as anything more than temporary band-aid solutions, and he was well aware that no permanent solution was possible without a fundamental change in the nature of men. The core of Tocquevilles writing is hardly hopeful, and is quite grim at times. He was a believer that nature dissociates men, at least in their civil capacities, and that it encourages them to think only of themselves. As varied as the colours of the earth, the interpretations of de Tocqueville, and his political ideas have ranged an immeasurable spectrum. Clearly, he was very concerned with the possibility of a new, soft despotism arising from unlimited democracy. He had the foresight to envision the bonds by which free men can be held, even under their own will. While his visions of identical men with identical thoughts, evoke images similar to the characters of George Orwells novel, 1984, these predictions of a despotic democracy seem to have been at least partially avoided. Many would argue that even today, in 2001, we are on our way to becoming the ...
