Why Tocqueville?

Tocqueville?   No, it's not a fictional town where everybody's tokin' all the time!

It's a "think tank" named for Alexis de Tocqueville, the most perceptive observer of the American experiment in democracy.   Tocqueville, a Frenchman, visited the United States in 1831 at the age of twenty-five, just a few years older than the average University of Minnesota undergrad.   He subsequently wrote the classic Democracy in America , a two-volume study of the American people and their political institutions.

Tocqueville was a true friend of liberty, but he was pretty pessimistic about its chances of survival.   He didn't expect American democracy to end in a blaze of violence. Instead, he figured it would collapse because the spirit necessary to sustain our democratic freedoms would fade.  

True democracy is hard work; it demands a lot of all its citizens.   Tocqueville worried that Americans would grow lazy, and look to government to minister to all their needs, even if that meant giving up their liberty, a little bit at a time.   Democracy in America warns of government becoming an immense protective power that would relieve citizens of the trouble of thinking so long as it remained the sole agent and arbiter of their happiness.  

He didn't use the words "Nanny State" or "Sense of Entitlement," but that's what he was worrying about.

Amazingly prescient for a guy writing 175 years ago!