Essay 63: Why Democratic Nations Display A More Passionate And Lasting Love For Equality Than For Freedom (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 1)

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

The essays in our study reference the following edition of Democracy In America: University of Chicago Press – 1st edition translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Today’s essay references pages 479 – 482 (stop at Chapter 2 heading) of this edition of Democracy in America.

“Why Democratic Peoples Show a More Ardent and more Lasting Love for Equality than for Freedom” is a short, vital chapter with a long title. It exposes the basic thought behind many of De Tocqueville’s various fears for the future of democracy. Democratic citizens have a great passion for both freedom and equality, De Tocqueville argues. But their love for equality threatens always to become exclusive and excessive, eclipsing and destroying freedom.

In making this argument, De Tocqueville implies that over the long-run democratic order is threatened far less by its failures to live up to democratic ideals, than by an excessive or one-sided attachment to one of those ideals. This was surely an unwelcome lesson for the French and American democrats of De Tocqueville’s day, and it’s scarcely likely to be more easily accepted today. Human beings generally have an understandable predisposition to resist the notion that their ideals could be a source of danger. If one fails in realizing one’s ideal, one can simply do better next time. But if one’s ideal is to blame, one must take on the more difficult and daunting work of changing direction.

Perfect equality together with perfect freedom “is the ideal toward which democratic peoples tend.” Perfect freedom and perfect equality, however, is logically possible only under the very unlikely circumstance that “all citizens concur in the government and each has an equal right to concur in it.” De Tocqueville means that the democratic ideal of perfect freedom and equality is contradicted by democratic experience; in reality, dispute characterizes democracy, a voting majority decides, and the rest must follow whether they like it or not. The only way of achieving true equality and perfect freedom would be the fundamental sameness of everyone. If, for instance, everyone voted the same way, then everyone would be politically equal and everyone would likewise be free to live just as they like.

Since in reality the combination of perfect freedom and perfect equality fails through the fact of political differences, these two ideals remain distinct and undermine each other. An increase of freedom endangers equality, while imposed equality cancels freedom. A dual love of both freedom and equality might well be the secret formula to democratic success. But De Tocqueville feared that this balancing act is precarious and that democracy itself rigs the contest. Equality is democracy’s “principle passion” and “mother idea.” “Do not ask what unique charm men in democratic ages find in living as equals,” De Tocqueville muses, “equality forms the distinctive characteristic of the period they live in.” The problem is that when forced to choose, democratic peoples are strongly tempted to choose equality over freedom and become, unintentionally, the authors of their own unfreedom and servitude.

De Tocqueville gives additional reasons rooted in human nature why love of equality has the advantage over love of freedom. Equality is easier to grasp and maintain than freedom. Too much freedom leads to obvious problems, such as disorder and license. Whereas the problems produced by too much equality, such as poor leadership or lack of innovation, are more obscure and distant. At the same time, freedom requires time and exertion before it leads to good things, whereas equality appears to provide good things immediately and without effort.

In the best case, a healthy democracy institutes measures to hold in check the democratic preference for equality over freedom. But the very opposite– an unrestrained and excessive love of equality – can occur in times of change and unrest when “the old social hierarchy… is finally destroyed after a last internecine struggle.” In other words, the most extreme and dangerous form of the love of equality is not aroused by the sight of inequality, but rather by vast social change and uncertainty in general.

Then men rush at equality as at a conquest… The passion for equality penetrates all parts of the human heart; there it spreads and fills it entirely. Do not say to men that in giving themselves over so blindly to an exclusive passion, they compromise their dearest interests; they are deaf. Do not show them that freedom escapes from their hands while they are looking elsewhere; they are blind, or rather they perceive only one good in the whole universe worth longing for.

Democratic citizens love freedom, but for equality “they have an ardent, insatiable, eternal, invincible passion; they want equality in freedom, and, if they cannot get it, they still want it in slavery.”

To survive and thrive, a democracy must find means of teaching people to love equality in freedom while detesting equality in slavery. To observe and know which is which, there can be no better guide than De Tocqueville himself.

Jonathan Yudelman is Assistant Professor of Political Theory in Intellectual Foundations at UATX. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston College and from 2020-2024 held postdoctoral positions at Princeton, Harvard, Baylor, and Arizona State University. His current research focuses on early modern political theory, the idea of progress, sources of political authority, and the intersection of politics and religion.

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