“America demonstrates invincibly one thing that I had doubted up to now: that the middle classes can govern a state…despite their small passions, their incomplete education, their vulgar habits, they can obviously provide a practical sort of intelligence and that turns out to be enough.”
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, via this new site.
That's a perfect description of us Maggie's Farmers. This French aristocrat understood America better than most of our own elites and pundits do today. de Toqueville came to love the idea of America - and Americans (despite - or because of - our not being French aristocrats).
Tracked: Nov 09, 11:39