That's a Good Way to Put It

I'm reading Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, a book I asked for and recieved as a Christmas present last year. I'm only just getting into the fifth chapter of Volume I, but it's proving to be a good read. I offer a quote I enjoyed, found on pages 59-60, as Tocqueville discusses the political consequences of America's social nature:

There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion extends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. Not that those nations whose social conditions is democratic naturally despise liberty; on the contrary, they have an instinctive love of it. But liberty is not their chief and constant object of their desires; equality is their idol.

A "depraved taste of equality." That's a great phrase. Such would describe the bent of those people who are determined to equalize outcomes over the objections of individual liberty.

Posted by Drizzten at November 17, 2003 06:54 PM