Buffman

GaryP

"Democracy in America", Vol. II, Part 1, Chapter 5, by Alexis de Tocqueville.

He supports religion and demeans democracy.

"Religious peoples are therefore naturally strong in precisely the spot where democratic peoples are weak; this makes makes very visible how important it is that men keep to their religions when becoming equal."

Why do I get the feeling that de Tocqueville would be a hero of the American religious right and the fundamentalist Muslim clerics? I can almost hear an echo of Osama bin Laden telling his murderers, "America is weak because it is a democracy. We are stronger because we are faithful soldiers in the army of the one true God, Allah(PBUH)."

I don't think it will come as a surprise to discover that de Tocqueville was a French, Roman Catholic, of noble birth who spent nine months in America looking at our penal system in 1832/33 and who wrote Vol. I in 1835 and Vol. II in 1840.