This is a classic of American political literature that I’ve wanted to read for ages. I bought the English version many years ago and it still sits waiting for my attention. It was written by the Frenchmen on a year’s long trip through America in the 1830’s to see what made America and its democracy tick.
The red decal on the cover shows that the Congressional con man Newt Gingrich was trying to get Americans to read it at the same time he was shipping books on Democracy to the newly freed Soviet Union. Students there ate up books on a Democracy that they thought they would soon test and taste for themselves. I always thought that was the easy part and that Newt did little to encourage America to give Russia the aid it needed to protect their nascent democracy. Now the amoral bastard is huffing and puffing in his always self congratulating style about troubles in Ukraine for which he bears considerable responsibility – through his neglect.
After my first trip to the French battlefields that my Grandfather fought on in 2018 (one hundred years after his war) I dug deeper to learn French. I looked for a French version of de Tocqueville’s work with the idea of reading it in the original French. I won’t be able to do that this year but I may read the English text of a classic that Newt Gingrich pretty obviously doesn’t give a rip about.
