American Tyranny Springs from Freedom?

Can our freedom transform into our most dreaded enemy, tyranny?

Adopting the reflections of Tocqueville, I acknowledge with a fond familiarity the benefits of the government under which we live today. Underlying most of the particulars which are contested daily is (to paraphrase Democracy in America) the most well-being for individuals and the avoidance of the most misery. Viewed in contrast to the old forms of government, this result—the American Experiment—is a phenomenon which has arisen as a shining novelty in which the former barriers of class, race, and education have been utterly destroyed. It’s incredible, really, that in a mere few centuries what was in place for thousands of years is hardly traceable in this new political system.

But with such an experiment come inherent risks, also pointed to by Tocqueville. The gravest of these seems to be that the source of the most freedom in America is paradoxically its chief danger:

If you accept that one man vested with omnipotence can abuse it against his adversaries, why not accept the same thing for a majority…What I most reproach in democratic government is not its weakness, but on the contrary, its irresistible force.

Tocqueville is claiming that when majority rules everything: public opinion, legislation, executive power, etc., it cannot be stopped. Further, the human nature behind the motivations of a single tyrant is also present in the motivations of a group which rules. He boldly states that we wholly lack a guarantee against tyranny.

Huh.

How far are we from this happening today?

Consider the current discrepancy between the two majority parties in this country. How sharp is this contrast compared to 50 years ago? Then there were more similar principles and the argument lay primarily in how to apply them. Now, ruling amidst the Conservatives are principles rooted in a conception of human nature, morality, and traditional knowledge. In contrast, more and more do we find emerging in the Liberals amorality and with it rationalism, skepticism, nihilism and the like. There has been a breaking off from which I’m not sure we shall return.

Sure, right now we have a balance, despite its portrayal by the media. But with such an abyss between the two parties, Tocqueville has prodded me to wonder how long this will go on without the freedom which allowed such different views to emerge turning into what we have been trying to prevent all along. His words are daunting:

When a society really comes to be equally divided between contrary principles, it enters into revolution or it is dissolved.