It is hard to explain the place filled by political concerns in the
life of an American. To take a hand in the government of society and
to talk about it is his most important business and, so to say, the
only pleasure he knows. That is obvious even in the most trivial
habits of his life; even the women often go to public meetings and
forget household cares while they listen to political speeches. For
them clubs to some extent take the place of theaters. An American
does not know how to converse, but he argues; he does not talk, but
expatiates. He always speaks to you as if addressing a meeting, and
if he happens to get excited, he will say "Gentleman" when addressing
an audience of one.
The inhabitant in some countries shows a sort of repugnance in
accepting the political rights granted to him by the law; it strikes
him as a waste of time to spend it on communal interests, and he
likes
to shut himself up in a narrow egoism, of which four ditches with
hedges on top define the precise limits.
But if an American should be reduced to occupying himself with his
own
affairs, at that moment half his existence would be snatched from
him;
he would feel it as a vast void in his life and would become
incredibly unhappy.
I am convinced that if despotism ever came to be established in the
United States it would find it even more difficult to overcome the
habits that have sprung from freedom than to conquer the love of
freedom itself.
-- Alexis DeTocqueville "The Advantages of Democratic Government"
_Democracy In America_ (1833)
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