On April 2, 1831, two French magistrates set sail from the port of Le Havre on an American packet ship of the same name. 37 days later the Havre sailed into the harbor in Newport, Rhode Island and on May 9, 1831, they stepped onto American soil for the first time.
Officially, they were on a mission for the French government to study the American penitentiary system.
Unofficially, they set out to pursue a secret, broader goal to observe the young democracy’s social, political and economic landscape up close and personal.
At 25 and 29 years of age, they were at the bottom of the career ladder for magistrates at the time. Add the uncertainty of the newly formed July Monarchy government, the need for a fresh start was imperative. With both being of noble lineage, family social status secured the needed government commission and leaves of absence, while family wealth covered their expenses.
The duo spent the next 9 ½ months traveling the United States on what today could be considered America’s first road trip.
While they did visit several prisons for their official mission, Easten State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Auburn State and Sing Sing in New York and others throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic for their official mission, it is their unofficial travels that they are most known for today.
From the Northwest Territory of Michigan and Wisconsin, to steamboat travel on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers all the way to New Orleans, to travel across the South via horseback and stage-coach and then back North along the Atlantic coast, they would travel over 7,000 miles and cross 17 states before stepping back onto the deck of the Havre and departing New York harbor on February 20, 1832 for their return to France.
A brief meeting with President Andrew Jackson and a tour of the Capitol while in Washington, D.C. was nice, but it was two meetings with former President John Quincy Adams that would provide the details and insight most desired by the two intellectual explorers.
In 1833 their report “On The Penitentiary System in The United States and It’s Application in France” was published, but it was what was still to come that solidified their legacies.
The two young magistrates were Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont and that “what was to come” is Tocqueville’s synthesizing the duos’ notes and observations into the two volume masterpiece “Democracy in America”. Volume one focusing on government structure and its role in protecting freedom, volume two on democracy’s effect on individual citizens and society norms.
I understand how many today, especially our younger generations, can think that a thick, two volume set of observations by two, twenty-something 19th-century Frenchmen has absolutely no worth in today’s America.
And while, at least for now, they are still free to think such, they couldn’t be more wrong.
For over 150 years Tocqueville’s takes on civic engagement, equality, liberty, and his warnings on soft despotism and the tyranny of the majority armed generation after generation of Americans with the intellectual knowledge to fight back against the societal envy and political ideologies that destroy a democracy from within.
Then came the federal intrusion into K-12 education and with it 45 years of systematic dismantling of teaching history, civics and government across the nation. What were once individual schools teaching political science and informed debate became homogenized wastelands of political correctness.
Millions of Americans are now graduates from that system. Americans taught all the bad of this nation and little of the good.
They protest fascism without a clue of what fascism is, they vote for socialist politicians while claiming they’re fighting for democracy, and they demand “justice” for one cause after another.
And they do it all completely ignorant of Tocqueville’s truth “Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it…democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”.
But not all is lost.
Thanks to the United States being a World Cup host country, millions of foreigners are at this moment experiencing America for the very first time. And according to the tens of thousands of videos and social media posts taking over the internet, they are overjoyed to see that the dark, dystopian America they were told to expect from their own governments and media is anything but.
They are seeing with their own eyes, experiencing in their own lives the beauty, bounty, kindness and hospitality that is the true America.
Don’t believe me? Just put “tartan army”, “Viking row”, “@FreddyLA7”, “@LUFC1992_v2”, “Buc-cees FIFA”, “Bass Pro Shops FIFA” or, believe it or not, “FIFA ranch dressing” into your preferred search engine.
But if you do, consider yourself warned. Known side effects are incessant laughter, a rise in dopamine levels, and your heart emanating an overall feeling of pride in your country.
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