Three scholars debate the lessons that Alexis de Tocqueville had for France in his era and now, sadly, for America in ours.

This is a tour du force that outlines the history of how the ever expanding state has woven itself into the very fabric of American life and how difficult it would be to disentangle it.  This is sobering.

Ask yourself if this Tocqueville quote does not sound eerily familiar?

"(The sovereign) extends its arms about society as a whole. It covers its surface with a network of petty regulations--complicated, minute, and uniform--through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way past the crowd and emerge into the light of day. It does not break wills; it softens them, bends them and directs them. Rarely does it force one to act but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting on one's own. It does not destroy, it prevents things from being born, it extinguishes, it stupefies and finally, it will reduce each nation to nothing more than a herd of timid, and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd."

Do we return to the argument of virtue I referred to in a previous blog?