A conference that I attended recently at the Chateau of Alexis de Tocqueville in Normandy brought me to confront Tocqueville with Donald Trump.
So what do Trump and Tocqueville have in common? Both are concerned with greatness.
Trump's slogan, so often repeated, is "Make America Great Again." Tocqueville was a great thinker, a philosopher greater even than his admirers believe, and Trump is great mainly in the amazing extent of his pettiness and willingness to level insults at his rivals.
Trump and Tocqueville can serve as a pair if we stop to consider how a democratic nation can be made great.
Like Trump and Tocqueville, he, too, thinks of greatness.
Trump wants to democratize America's already democratic nation because it has succumbed to the success of its democratic government and economy and rewarded the makers of its success.
Trump's "Nationalism" is a response to the identity politics of the Left, and both are excesses of democracy leading to excesses of wrongful authority.
https://www.city-journal.org/democracy-trump-tocqueville
So what do Trump and Tocqueville have in common? Both are concerned with greatness.
Trump's slogan, so often repeated, is "Make America Great Again." Tocqueville was a great thinker, a philosopher greater even than his admirers believe, and Trump is great mainly in the amazing extent of his pettiness and willingness to level insults at his rivals.
Trump and Tocqueville can serve as a pair if we stop to consider how a democratic nation can be made great.
Like Trump and Tocqueville, he, too, thinks of greatness.
Trump wants to democratize America's already democratic nation because it has succumbed to the success of its democratic government and economy and rewarded the makers of its success.
Trump's "Nationalism" is a response to the identity politics of the Left, and both are excesses of democracy leading to excesses of wrongful authority.
https://www.city-journal.org/democracy-trump-tocqueville
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