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25 June 2009 2:19 PM
Interview with James Poulos, Part II: Talking Tocqueville
Part I of my interview with James Poulos is here.
Q. Another aspect of your work I've noticed is a
fondness for Tocqueville, who I think you cite to good effect. This
despite a conviction -- I almost said sense -- among some magazine editors that he is overused. Most famously, Michael Kinsley is said to have prohibited any mention of America's favorite Frenchman in Slate. Do we lean too heavily on his work? Can you give a specific account of why he is relevant today?
You're right that the animus or weariness associated with yet another invocation of the brilliant sociologist of democracy is more the result of a 'sense of
diminishing returns' than a conviction about what's the matter with
Tocqueville. This is because Tocqueville really is an undiminished
resource -- an almost unparalleled resource -- for understanding the
present and future of America, and even the
world; but Tocqueville suffers from a malady related in a superficial
way to what we might call 'the Reagan problem'. Just as it's easy for
Republicans to invoke Ronald Reagan as a substitute for thinking, never mind 'fresh thinking', Tocqueville's analysis is oftentimes too penetrating and too lyrical for our own good. The timeless or enduring character of Tocqueville's insight lends itself to 'trendification': we wind up with a Tocqueville for every occasion, and feel sort of like the niece or nephew who gets a Chia Pet on birthdays and on Christmas.
As Professor Joshua Mitchell has explained
[full disclosure: he's on my dissertation committee], we've seen two
Tocquevilles in particular since the Second World War. The first is
Louis Hartz's 'Cold War Tocqueville.' Hartz published the famous and
influential book called The Liberal Tradition in America. There,
relying on Tocqueville, he argued that America's civic development
broke off so early and so decisively from Europe that the whole concept
of class made no sense in American politics. So Professor Mitchell is fond of
saying that every time the Democratic party rallies around class
warfare they lose an election. Now perhaps it's Republicans who could
benefit most from attending to the implications of that idea. (Already, there's one way Tocqueville matters.) After the end of the Cold War made Cold War Tocqueville irrelevant, Robert Putnam came along with a 'Civic Institutionalism Tocqueville' [my words]. This is the Tocqueville of Putnam's much-hosannahed- and much-fretted-over Bowling Alone. But instead of taking seriously Tocqueville's insistence on the importance of face-to-face citizenship, Putnam would up touting increasingly silly ways to get people to socialize. More birdwatching or jacuzzi parties -- these are real examples from Putnam -- will not, I'm afraid, restore American civic life, and Tocqueville should not blamed or dismissed for the belief that they are.
So what's the timeless or enduring Tocqueville behind the fads?
Well, I already suggested that some real wisdom from Hartz persists in
the wake of his time. And surely Tocqueville can be read fruitfully in terms of Putnam's sobering study of civic failure in southern Italy. But today Tocqueville is perhaps most valuable to us on issues which we've historically not turned to Tocqueville to learn about. I'm thinking especially of the persistence of
faith, honor, and memory in America -- three things which all the big
disembodied forces that we believe characterize contemporary life
('secularization', 'globalization', the triumph of capitalism, the triumph of democracy) were supposed to have swept away. I'm fortunate to have learned a lot about this from a number of very smart professors -- in addition to Mitchell, Professors James Ceaser, Ralph Hancock, and Peter Lawler -- who you'll find blogging for Postmodern Conservative at First Things -- and Professor Patrick Deneen [also on my committee], who's an internet sensation in his own right at Front Porch Republic and What I Saw in America.
Unfortunatley, I see no explicit "points" begin made, just vague, you know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge intellectual reflexes. There is an arrogant assumption that this blovo-blog is only for the appropriately initated. It would be a true point of departure to hear precisely what the up and coming PhD has to say about de Tocqueville and the place of faith in American life. Then we might be able to get down to the raw meat and not just have to look at the cellophaned package of hamburger.