"I had become aware that, in our time, the new social state that had produced and is still producing very great benefits was, however, giving birth to a number of quite dangerous tendencies. . . . My aim in writing (the) book was to point out these dreadful downward paths opening under the feet of our contemporaries, not to prove that they must be thrown back into an aristocratic state of society ... but to make these tendencies feared by painting them in vivid colors, and thus to secure the effort of mind and will which alone can combat them -- to teach democracy to know itself, and thereby to direct itself and contain itself."--Tocqueville, responding in an argument between liberty and equality in democracy.
One of the interesting aspects of the current presidency is the idea that this debate between liberty and equality is new, with new concepts and knowledge, when it actually is as old as the country. This debate is separate from the central government debate between the federalist and the anti-federalist, where the concern was the power needed by the state to function appropriately and what liberties would have to be surrendered.
The question of equality and liberty is more complex. The moral and ethical questions include what the individual can demand for himself and what his neighbor can withhold. So each individual in the equation has an equal claim for specialness.They are both different sides of the same coin. An additional problem concerns whether the inhibition of liberty inhibits the community production, so the net effect of the government's expropriations necessarily decreases their largess. So that in an effort to improve the lot of one, all decline--even the intended beneficiary.
So not only is there a conflict within the intent; there is a conflict between the intent and the outcome.
One of the interesting aspects of the current presidency is the idea that this debate between liberty and equality is new, with new concepts and knowledge, when it actually is as old as the country. This debate is separate from the central government debate between the federalist and the anti-federalist, where the concern was the power needed by the state to function appropriately and what liberties would have to be surrendered.
The question of equality and liberty is more complex. The moral and ethical questions include what the individual can demand for himself and what his neighbor can withhold. So each individual in the equation has an equal claim for specialness.They are both different sides of the same coin. An additional problem concerns whether the inhibition of liberty inhibits the community production, so the net effect of the government's expropriations necessarily decreases their largess. So that in an effort to improve the lot of one, all decline--even the intended beneficiary.
So not only is there a conflict within the intent; there is a conflict between the intent and the outcome.
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