THE SHEPHERD GOVERNMENT (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America).

THE SHEPHERD GOVERNMENT

The following is excerpted from Democracy in America by Alex de

Tocqueville, 1835. It is an amazing prophecy of the U.S. government and

every other western “democratic” government in the early 21st century:

“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which

takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over

their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and

mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that

authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on

the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content

that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but

rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but

it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness;

it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities,

facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs

their industry, regulates the descent of p r o p e r t y, a n d s u b d

i v i d e s t h e i r inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all

the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day

renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less

frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and

gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of

equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to

endure them and often to look on them as benefits. After having thus

successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp

and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over

the whole community. IT COVERS THE SURFACE OF SOCIETY WITH A NETWORK OF

SMALL COMPLICATED RULES, MINUTE AND UNIFORM, THROUGH WHICH THE MOST

ORIGINAL MINDS AND THE MOST ENERGETIC CHARACTERS CANNOT PENETRATE, TO

RISE ABOVE THE CROWD. THE WILL OF MAN IS NOT SHATTERED, BUT SOFTENED,

BENT, AND GUIDED; MEN ARE SELDOM FORCED BY IT TO ACT, BUT THEY ARE

CONSTANTLY RESTRAINED FROM ACTING. Such a power does not destroy, but it

prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates,

extinguishes, and stupefies a people, TILL EACH NATION IS REDUCED TO

NOTHING BETTER THAN A FLOCK OF TIMID AND INDUSTRIOUS ANIMALS, OF WHICH

THE GOVERNMENT IS THE SHEPHERD” (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in

America).