I’m a Canadian born and raised. I visited Washington DC with my parents when I was about 12 years old and when I finally stood before the seated statue of Abraham Lincoln whom I had already begun to study and admire I recognized my hero and I have worshipped him ever since. The only other time I set foot on American ground was in 1990 when I travelled with my little theatre troop a few miles south of the border into a small town in Montana; I was a bit startled to see that these warm and welcoming people whom I had assumed would be just like us Canadians were really so different in so many subtle ways, their manner of talking, their manner of dress. Canadians think we are no different from Americans because that’s what the TV tells us. But the TV is a liar, the taste of real America today is a revelation to an old Canadian like me. It’s strong enough today but in 1831 the flavour of America was young and fresh and as heady as hundred proof Yukon whisky.
Nothing is more embarrassing in the ordinary course of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A stranger may be well inclined to praise many of the institutions of America, but he begs permission to blame some things in it, a permission that is steadfastly refused.
America is therefore a free country in which, lest anyone’s feelings might be hurt by your remarks, you are not allowed to speak freely of private individuals or of the state, of the citizens or of the authorities, of public or of private undertakings, or, in short, of anything at all except, perhaps, the climate and the soil; and even then Americans will be found ready to defend both as if they had co-operated in producing them...
No sooner do you set foot upon American ground than you are stunned by a kind of tumult; a confused clamor is heard on every side, and a thousand simultaneous voices demand the satisfaction of their social wants. Everything is in motion around you; here the people of one quarter of a town meet to decide upon the building of a church; there the election of a representative is going on; a little farther, the delegates of a district are hastening to the town in order to consult upon some local improvements; in another place, the laborers of a village quit their plows to deliberate upon the project of a road or a public school. Meetings are called for the sole purpose of declaring their disapproval of the government; while in other assemblies citizens salute the authorities of the day as the fathers of their country...
It is difficult to describe how important political concerns are in the life of an American. Taking a hand in the regulation of society and discussing it is his biggest concern and, so to speak, the only pleasure an American knows. This feeling pervades the most trifling habits of life... Debating clubs are, to a certain extent, a substitute for theatrical entertainments: an American does not converse, he argues, and his talk tends to become a speech. He harangues you as if he were addressing a meeting; and if he becomes excited, he will say "Gentlemen" to the single person which is his audience.
In some countries the inhabitants seem unwilling to use even the few political privileges which the law gives them; it would seem that they set too high a value upon their time to spend it on the interests of the community. They shut themselves up in a narrow selfishness, marked out by four fences and a quickset hedge.
But if an American were condemned to mind only his own business, he would be robbed of half of his existence; he would feel an immense void in the life which he is accustomed to lead, and his misery would be unbearable. I am persuaded that if ever a tyranny should be established in America, it will be more difficult to overcome the habits that freedom has formed than to conquer the love of freedom itself…
This was America as Alexis de Tocqueville experienced it in 1831. Re-reading his great book, Democracy in America, I thought that so much of this particular section, “The Advantage of Democratic Government”, was a historical curio because that bumptious, bustling, free America died so long ago.
But this passage jumped out at me. It describes not the democratic system of government, which now might seem to a foreigner like me to be so completely overturned, but the nature of the people which the American democratic revolution had created by 1831. Because of this digital medium I have become more acquainted with some of those Americans who still aggressively pursue happiness for their community, not just for themselves, and I seem to see something like what Alexis saw still burning bright. Americans are not totally changed.
Am I moving in my mind from an unfree country, Canada where everything is as calm as a pasture full of sheep, to a country where contentment seems like a betrayal of sacred liberty? Maybe the American government has been captured by would-be dictators but the American people still are American. They are do-gooding busybodies who want to regulate even the climate for the Greater Good. But they are also hungry for freedom, not only for themselves but for the whole community and maybe the whole planet. They love and attend and defend freedom as if it were their precious child.
I remember when Donald Trump was campaigning to become nominated as the Republican presidential candidate in 2016. He was figured as a joke by the Republican establishment that sat so securely in Washington, not to mention the Democrats who were confident that Hillary Clinton would roll into the White House on a tsunami of Obama worship.
But then Trump tossed off a fatal remark: he said “we should never have invaded Iraq”. The response he got from the people was electric; he immediately started to attract huge adoring audiences of discontented, war weary Americans. The Republicans panicked! Suddenly Trump was a threat! Let us all, my new American friends and my Canadian former friends, not forget that Donald Trump was feared by the Republicans even more than he was by the Democrats.
The expectations Trump aroused are more important than the failure of Trump to live up to those expectations. Trump’s class of people, the wealthy top drawer of the business class, are incapable of truly being the Americans they think they are. Trump awoke a sleeping giant, the common American people. The establishment in Washington was suddenly faced with the fact that they have been left far behind by the movement of American society.
American society has moved far ahead of them. Most Americans, for instance, know perfectly well that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were justified by lies. And they know their lives have been stolen and crushed by the consequences of wars that were never necessary and never really authorized by them and a Pentagon budget that is out of control. This is the reason why Tulsi Gabbard was getting so much traction that the Democrats publicly scorned their own voting base to destroy her campaign. She and Trump both said what the people wanted to hear, that the wars must stop. That was enough to cause the apparent unity of America to be revealed to have been a sham.
The establishment in Washington early this year felt so afraid of the American people that they surrounded themselves with razor wire-topped fences and National Guard troops who publicly insulted the new so-called president. The American people the Washington establishment thought they were familiar with to the point of contempt are a completely different country that these fatheaded, rich, bum suckers never really knew at all. Half of America knows that the 2020 election was stolen by fraud and they are full of hate for the robbers of their rights. Those arrogant thieves say they “fly over” America.