Book I, Chapter 13: GOVERNMENT OF THE DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
Jefferson himself, the greatest democrat whom the democracy of America has as yet produced, pointed out the same dangers.

“The instability of our laws,” said he, “is really a very serious inconvenience. I think that we ought to have obviated it by deciding that a whole year should always be allowed to elapse between the bringing in of a bill and the final passing of it. It should afterwards be discussed and put to the vote without the possibility of making any alteration in it; and if the circumstances of the case required a more speedy decision, the question should not be decided by a simple majority, but by a majority of at least two thirds of each house.” 2

2 Letter to Madison, December 20, 1787, translation of M. Conseil.

Take that, demo-rats, with your “We have to pass this right now! Today!”

I guess now I have to finally break down and actually read de Tocqueville.

Isn’t it quaint to read de Tocqueville’s line, so little do the authorities forget their popular origin and the power from which they emanate. in the face of Statists like Claire McClaskill? Did anyone catch her town hall yesterday, where she preened and condescended to the “angry mob” with words such as this: “Do you all think that you’re persuading people when you shout out like that?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfRACEEJjYk

Does anyone besides me see her as a “Third-grade teacher”? She honestly thinks that in this age of information explosion, where we’ve seen the Great O’s video clip where he extols the virtues of a single-payer system ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-_SGGcJu_c ), that we haven’t been hardened by hysterical full-court presses to pass crippling stimulous bills in the past year, …that she can just talk to us as if we’re children, needing to learn a lesson.

de Tocqueville felt that America was so in love with the notion of equalitarianism that we had, in our Jacksonian era zeal, lost the ability to be a free thinker as individuals. We are, in my estimation, seeing the last gasps of an attempt to remain wedded to the notion of Liberty. True liberty is not a magical playground where everyone turns out equal. Liberty is not for the weak of heart. It is for the strong and the courageous.