What Would Tocqueville Say About Asssociations Today?

Many posts have discussed volunteering and civic virtue.

Daniel Stid at AEI:

Tocqueville’s concern about the government’s domestication of nonprofits would no doubt increase after learning how many of them rely on public funding from different levels of government (over and above the subsidy they get via the tax code). A recent Urban Institute survey found that “in 2022, 68 percent of nonprofits received government grants or contracts and 29 percent of nonprofits’ revenue came from government agencies.” In cities like New York, many nonprofits supporting individuals and families needing intensive social services have come to rely on government grants and contracts for most of their budgets. Tocqueville would be hard-pressed to regard these entities as associations forming democratic citizens. Rather, he would see them as vendors and appendages of the government that inexorably find themselves beholden to their paymasters.

Tocqueville’s doubts about nonprofits’ autonomy and ability to help shape citizens would spike further given the limited role that these organizations play in most Americans’ day-to-day lives. Today, full-time professionals and paid staff, not volunteers and concerned citizens, form the rank and file of most major nonprofits. What was once fittingly called the voluntary sector is now, for most of those who participate regularly in its activities, better described as their place of employment. Indeed, recent appeals by nonprofit sector advocates to government policymakers have come to place the primary emphasis not on the aggregate impact of nonprofits’ missions but rather on the size and economic importance of the nonprofit workforce — now nearly 10% of all private sector jobs in the country.

As Americans’ involvement with associations has diminished markedly, so, in turn, has the power of these associations to help form citizens capable of sustaining democracy in America. In “Bowling Alone,” Robert Putnam famously traced Americans’ declining demand for civic engagement in the second half of the 20th century — and the collapse of community it produced. The first quarter of this century has seen these patterns of civic disengagement continue to accelerate. The recent landmark report of the Generosity Commission, for example, highlighted how rates of everyday charitable giving have trended downward. Nearly two-thirds of American households donated to charity in 2008. By 2018, fewer than half did.

In “Diminished Democracy,” Theda Skocpol illuminated less familiar but equally important shifts and shortcomings in the supply of civil associations. She documented the steady demise, starting in the 1960s, of the national, federated, cross-class and volunteer-driven associations that had long structured Americans’ civic lives. A different set of associations arose in their stead — issue-driven advocacy and activist groups led by professional staff in Washington, D.C. In these entities, paid staff managed the work while the participation of ostensible “members,” i.e., those on mailing lists for fundraising solicitations, remained largely passive. These new advocacy groups did achieve some victories, but Skocpol concluded that “vital links in the nations’ associational life have frayed, and we need to find creative ways to repair those links if America is to avoid becoming a country of managers and manipulated spectators rather than a national community of fellow democratic citizens.”

Fake Quotations, Feb 2025

Wonderful sentiment, and I couldn't agree with it more -- and I value Congressman Bacon, very much -- but ... a piece from the first weeks of the Standard: https://t.co/bMV0yliY9a cc: @jpitney @BillKristol pic.twitter.com/NIRvnjX7Lt

— Jay Nordlinger (@jaynordlinger) February 16, 2025

Scott Powell at Townhall:

After his reelection for a second term, shortly before his assassination, Lincoln observed that “…corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

While he could not have foreseen the transformations in the U.S. economy, Lincoln was remarkably prescient. It is now obvious that the aggregation and concentration of wealth in the information technology, the military/defense, and the pharmaceutical industries today are major factors in undermining our Constitutional First Amendment rights. Free speech, which roots out falsehood and helps reveal the truth, is an absolute cornerstone of the republic.

Populists concocted this one in the late 19th century, and Lincoln's private aide called it a "bald, unblushing forgery." Not only did Lincoln never say these words, they were at odds with his thinking, as Andrew Ferguson explained years ago: "A corporate lawyer whose long and cunning labor on behalf of the railroads earned him a comfortable income, Lincoln was a vigorous champion of market capitalism, even when it drifted (as it tends to do) toward large concentrations of wealth."

Fake Tocqueville, Fake Jefferson 2025

Many posts have discussed the fake Tocqueville quotation, "America is great, because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great." Tocqueville never wrote any such thing. The bogus line has been circulating for many years. There has been a good deal of work on its origin, but, certainly, it did not originate with Tocqueville.

As I leave Congress, I urge all of us to look for ways to cultivate more grace, love, and forgiveness in this world and serve others. We hope for a time of healing.

Alexis de Tocqueville said it so well. He said: “America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

I have served with so many good people and had the honor of representing the good people of eastern Washington. For that, I am grateful. I say thank you, may God bless you, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

Speaker Mike Johnson started the 119th Congress by quoting a prayer that he attributed to Thomas Jefferson.  The quotation is fake.  Jefferson never wrote or uttered such a prayer. 

In speaker acceptance remarks, Johnson reads what he called a prayer by Thomas Jefferson. However, Monticello calls it "spurious" & unlikely it's from Jefferson: https://t.co/RNbBInod5P
Johnson has history of using fake quotes: https://t.co/w0iyOz9qf3 pic.twitter.com/0YfEVkPOpw

— Brian Kaylor (@BrianKaylor) January 3, 2025

In 2010, Frank Miele wrote:

On May 17, 1886, the prayer was printed in the Fitchburg (Mass.) Sentinel as a “Prayer for the Country set forth by Bishop HC Potter for use in the Diocese of New York.”

Sure enough, Potter was another Episcopalian bishop, full name Henry Codman Potter, who had a reputation as a writer and an interest in both social justice and politics. It is entirely likely that with Potter, we have found the true source of the “Jefferson Prayer,” some 81 years after its purported origin.

Here, finally, it is:

“Almighty God, who in the former times leddest our fathers forth into a wealthy place, and didst set their feet in a large room, give Thy grace, we humbly beseech Thee, to us their children, that we may always approve ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning and pure manners. Defend our liberties, preserve our unity. Save us from violence, discord and confusion, from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way. Fashion into one happy people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those whom we intrust in Thy name with the authority of governance, to the end that there be peace at home, and that we keep our place among the nations of the earth. In the time of our prosperity, temper our self-confidence with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble suffer not our trust in Thee to fail. All which we ask for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.”

Religion and Civic Life

Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.   

 Daniel A. Cox and Sam Pressler at The Survey Center on American Life:

If America was a nation of joiners when Alexis de Tocqueville toured America in the 1830s, it is certainly not today. Most Americans are not joining groups. Despite the decline in religious membership over the past three decades, Americans are still more likely to be members of religious organizations (33 percent) than of any other group.
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Religious organizations are the only group that more than 10 percent of Americans with high school degrees or less education join (27 percent). Indeed, Americans with a high school degree or less are at least three times more likely to belong to a religious group than to join any other type of group. Yet their college-educated peers are significantly more likely to be members of religious congregations (39 percent).

There are pronounced educational gaps in religious membership among and within racial groups. Black Americans join religious organizations at higher rates than all other racial groups. However, black Americans have the largest educational divide in religious membership: Nearly half (47 percent) of black Americans with college degrees belong to religious groups, compared to just 30 percent of blacks with high school degrees or less. Hispanics, in contrast, have the lowest religious membership rates of any racial or ethnic group. Just 31 percent of Hispanics with college degrees identify with religious groups, while only 24 percent of Hispanics with high school degrees or less are members.

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Americans who belong to a church or place of worship generally have more people they can count on for help and support than the religiously unaffiliated have. However, the religious membership gap in Americans’ social support networks is largest among those with less formal education. Among Americans without a college education, members of a place of worship are much more likely than nonmembers to have multiple people who can take them to a doctor’s appointment (63 percent vs. 49 percent), give them a lift (67 percent vs. 55 percent), loan them $200 (53 percent vs. 42 percent), offer them a place to stay (59 percent vs. 46 percent), or help them move (68 percent vs. 54 percent).

Among Americans with a four-year college degree, those who belong to a church or place of worship do not have the same advantages over nonmembers. For instance, among Americans who are members of a church or place of worship, those with a college degree are not much more likely than those without one to have multiple people who would offer them a place to stay if needed (74 percent vs. 68 percent).

Americans who are members of a religious congregation have more extensive friendship networks. Nearly half (48 percent) of Americans who belong to a place of worship report they have at least five close friends. In contrast, 35 percent of Americans without a religious community have this many close friendships. Compared to members of religious congregations, nonmembers are twice as likely to report having no close friends (20 percent vs. 10 percent).

The educational divide in friendship is significantly diminished among Americans who belong to a place of worship. More than one in four (27 percent) Americans with a high school degree or less who do not belong to a church or place of worship have no close friends. Meanwhile, 11 percent of college graduates who are not attached to a church or place of worship say they have no close friends. The educational gap is half this large among church members: Those with a high school degree or less are only somewhat more likely than those with a college degree to report having no close friendships (15 percent vs. 7 percent).

 

Tocqueville on Juries

From  Democracy in America [eds. J. P. Mayer and Max Lerner, trans., George Lawrence, Harper & Row, 1966, pp. 249-53]

To regard the jury simply as a judicial institution would be taking a very narrow view of the matter, for great though its influence on the outcome of lawsuits is, its influence on the fate of society itself is much greater still. The jury is therefore above all a political institution, and it is from that point of view that it must always be judged. ..

The jury system as understood in America seems to me as direct and extreme a consequence of the dogma of the sovereignty of the people as universal suffrage. They are both equally powerful means of making the majority prevail.

Juries, especially civil juries, instill some of the habits of the judicial mind into every citizen, and just those habits are the very best way of preparing people to be free.

Juries teach men equity in practice. Each man, when judging his neighbor, thinks that he may be judged himself. That is especially true of juries in civil suits; hardly anyone is afraid that he will have to face a criminal trial, but anybody may have a lawsuit.

Juries teach each individual not to shirk responsibility for his own acts, and without that manly characteristic no political virtue is possible.

Juries invest each citizen with a sort of magisterial office; they make all men feel that they have duties toward society and that they take a share in its government. By making men pay attention to things other than their own affairs, they combat that individual selfishness which is like rust in society.

Juries are wonderfully effective in shaping a nation’s judgment and increasing its natural lights. That, in my view, is [the jury system’s] greatest advantage. It should be regarded as a free school which is always open and in which each juror learns his rights, comes into daily contact with the best-educated and most-enlightened members of the upper classes, and is given practical lessons in the law, lessons which the advocate’s efforts, the judge’s advice, and also the very passions of the litigants bring within his mental grasp. I think that the main reason for the practical intelligence and the political good sense of the Americans is their long experience with juries in civil cases.

I do not know whether a jury is useful to the litigants, but I am sure it is very good for those who have to decide the case. I regard it as one of the most effective means of popular education at society’s disposal.

Happy Patriotism

 Arthur Brooks at AEI:

A number of scholars have studied the link between patriotism and happiness, and have found that it is strongly positive. For example, a 2011 study in Psychological Science looked at 31 countries, and found that national pride significantly predicts well-being. Another study found that the relationship between “national satisfaction” and personal well-being was strongest in poorer countries, which the authors explained by noting that people in the most difficult personal circumstances tend to judge their life satisfaction in terms of societal success.

For millennia, the concept of patriotism was tied to a shared ethnicity, religion, or language; love of country without these elements seemed inconceivable. This changed with the American experiment. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in a letter to his friend Ernest de Chabrol after arriving in the U.S. in 1831, “Imagine if you can … a society comprising all the nations of the world: English, French, German … All people having different languages, beliefs, and opinions. In short, a society without roots, without memories, without prejudices, without routines, without common ideas, without national character.”

And yet, Americans were peculiarly patriotic. Tocqueville would go on to write in Democracy in America about the new nation’s fractious breed of “irritable patriotism.” Some citizens would assemble “for the sole object of announcing that they disapprove of the government’s course.” Meanwhile, another group would “unite to proclaim that the men in office are the fathers of their country.” But as at odds as they were, no American would permit a foreigner’s criticism of their country. American patriotism, Tocqueville found, was the shared civic spirit of competitive riffraff dedicated to building a nation together.

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Obviously, there are people in the U.S. and elsewhere who do use patriotism as a cloak for self-interest. But plenty of ordinary people display patriotism at its best: a real and generous love for their fellow citizens and shared ideals. This is the happy patriotism that can bring a nation back together around a commitment to one another, a celebration of values that transcend disagreements, and a belief that progress is possible, together.

COVID, Community, and Citizenship

Nicholas Romanow, who just became a citizen, writes at The Bulwark:

The political philosophers, historians, and sociologists who argue that a kind of rugged individualism is at the heart of the American character aren’t entirely wrong, but the familiar caricature of the individualistic American—someone ruthless doing whatever it takes to get ahead—does not match the reality we can see all around us. When the administration of my university sent students home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of my friends and classmates returned to frightened siblings, laid-off parents, and ailing grandparents. If there was ever a time where narrow self-interest would be socially and morally acceptable, it would have been this spring. But the isolation-induced breakdown of social bonds that some commentators anticipated did not occur. Instead, friendships deepened, and new ones formed. Social media—typically a bastion of self-aggrandizement—transformed into a hub for offering free meals, empty couches, and FaceTime calls to talk about life. As generations of Americans before them, people my age put their communities first in a time of crisis. Which is to say that, as Tocqueville pointed out long ago, American individualism is not about a simplistic autonomy but is fundamentally rooted in community.

In 2018, while still in college, I applied to teach a civics class at an underprivileged Austin high school. My idealism led me to believe I could teach kids to love democracy. In the first class, I encountered some of the most cynical teenagers I have ever met. For these kids, the only thing that felt longer than this class period was the list of problems with American society.

These students had a perspective on America very different from that of the suburban kids with whom I had taken civics lessons in high school. They did not accept America as it is. Instead, they dreamed of and believed in a brighter future. Sure, as young people, they leaned left. But even as they spoke about injustice and dysfunction, they judged their visions of a better society by how it would strive to realize America’s ideals. These high schoolers from South Austin taught me about patriotism: not wave-a-flag and grill-a-hot-dog patriotism but a true, sincere desire to forge a more perfect union.

The Common Good, Associations, and Life After the Pandemic

Matthew Continetti at AEI:

Associations are key. Under a regime in which government is limited to secure the unalienable rights men and women possess because they each were created in the image of God, society is as important as the state. “The chief and most potent instrument of achieving the common good—in such a novus ordo—is not the state but the society at large, in its full range of social institutions,” [Michael] Novak wrote. “These include families, churches, schools, workers’ associations, private enterprises, and so forth. Whereas in some earlier systems or social orders, the government was believed to be the chief agent of the common good, in the novus ordo a larger and more various set of social institutions would rightfully become the primary agents of the common good.” Novak often cited the following line from Tocqueville: “If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of condition spreads.”

So, government is not the only means by which the common good can be pursued. Equally if not more important to human flourishing are the mediating structures of family, religion, community, vocation, and voluntary association. Yes, law, economy, society, and individual character are connected. But social causation does not follow a straight line. And just as the structure of our economic institutions might be traced to political decisions, so might the strength and weaknesses of our social institutions. From Burke to Tocqueville to Robert Nisbet, conservative social thought has catalogued the ways in which the expansive state pushes through the mediating structures by assuming their functions. Then the solitary individual is left to face the Leviathan alone. The common good and the art of association are not separate phenomena. They are linked.

A post-corona politics of the common good that recognizes freedom must be exercised within the constraints of a moral tradition; that encourages able-bodied men and women to work and form families; that makes it easier to enter a profession, buy a home, raise children; that preserves the independence of religious institutions from state interference and resists the separation of religion from society; that protects communities from lawlessness, epidemics, and external threats; and that builds the capacity of public institutions to promote transportation, health, education, research and development, and the defense industrial base would fit comfortably in the American political tradition of “freedom and justice for all.” A politics that pursues a sectarian definition of “the common good”; that models its ideal government after a religious bureaucracy with a decidedly imperfect history; and that imperiously and rather impishly rejects longstanding indigenous norms of liberty and conscience does not.

Tocqueville and Civic Education

Cynthia Bambrick at Political Science Now:

While most of us may not live in the sort of townships that Tocqueville observed in the Early Republic, we can still glean lessons from the experiences of those who did. Specifically, we can see the importance of the moral education of citizens. Tocqueville implicitly challenges us to look beyond the reasons to vote that we may offer in favor of a holistic view of civic life. How much easier would it be to convince people that they should vote if they already saw the fruits of other efforts? When rooted in prior, concrete experiences, casting a ballot is no longer a singular and abstract exercise, but occurs against a backdrop of actual ties to community and, by extension, ties to country. People will not need to be activated to vote because they will already be spurred into action.

On this account, then, creating opportunities for people to make some visible contribution to their communities is key to fostering a sustainable civic participation. But how might we apply this lesson in the much larger, more complex country in which we find ourselves today? Taking a cue from Tocqueville, we too may begin with the very local, highlighting and even creating opportunities for students to connect with their communities. We may begin by thinking about the classroom or residence halls as spheres of civic life, for example, perhaps building up to the university community and larger city. Many educators already take such steps, building their classes around service-learning opportunities, community outreach projects, and the like. Their efforts are to be commended.

Fake Tocqueville in Alabama

Many posts have discussed the fake Tocqueville quotation, "America is great, because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great."

At The Alabama Political Reporter, Representative Bradley Byrne (R-AL) recalls a naturalization ceremony:

That morning at the U.S.S. Alabama Battleship Memorial Park, I spoke of the American belief in self-government, that ‘we the people’ can govern ourselves. To successfully execute such a radical (at the time) idea, we had to found our nation on some basic values. From our adherence and loyalty to those values, our American character was created.

I quoted the words of the nineteenth century French observer of early America, Alexis De Tocqueville, written several decades after our nation’s founding. He said “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Tocqueville never wrote any such thing. The bogus line has been circulating for many years. There has been a good deal of work on its origin, but it is certain that it did not originate with Tocqueville.

Tracing Back the Fake Tocqueville Quotation

Many posts have discussed the fake Tocqueville quotation, "America is great, because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great."

Aryssa Damron at Check Your Fact:

Robert Tracy McKenzie, a history professor at Wheaton College, told The Daily Caller that the quote is spurious. “It has been debunked numerous times over the last 67 years or so – no serious Tocqueville scholar believes that he wrote anything remotely similar, nor does it capture the essence of what he believed about the success of democracy in the United States,” he said in an email.
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The quote dates back to at least 1922, according to etymologist Barry Popik, though he found a variant appearing in print as early as the 1880s.

“I sought everywhere in vain for the secret of their success, until I entered the church,” reads this variation. “It was there, as I listened to the soul-equalizing and soul-elevating principles of the Gospel of Christ, as they fell from Sabbath to Sabbath upon the masses of the people, that I learned why America was great and free, and why France was a slave.”

McKenzie believes the last two lines originated even earlier, with a variant written by Andrew Reed and James Matheson, English ministers who wrote about their travels to the U.S. in the 1830s. “America will be great if America is good. If not, her greatness will vanish away like a morning cloud,” reads their account, published in 1835.

“Here, almost certainly, is the long-lost germ of the ‘words to live by’ that Americans have long attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville,” said McKenzie.

Politics and Religious Disaffiliation

As we explain in the text, there is a long history of religious involvement in policy issues and social movements, from abolitionism to abortion. As Tocqueville explained, however, there is a danger when religions affiliate with a specific political party. "Hence any alliance with any political power whatsoever is bound to be burdensome for religion. It does not need their support in order to live, and in serving them it may die."

Tom Jacobs at Pacific Standard:

Religion in America has been rocked in recent decades by two societal shifts: the rise of Christian evangelicals as a right-wing political force, and the increasing number of people who decline to affiliate with any faith tradition.

New research presents evidence that these trends, usually discussed separately, are in fact related. It reports the rate at which people disassociate themselves from religion is higher in states where the Christian right exerts its political muscle.

"Religious attachments fade in the face of visible Christian right policy victories," writes a research team led by Denison University political scientist Paul Djupe. "There is clear evidence that people—probably those without strong relationships with houses of worship—use the Christian right as a proxy for religion as a whole, and discontinue their religious identities as a result."

Religion Loses When It Allies Itself With a Political Party

 Tocqueville wrote (p. 297 of the Lawrence-Mayer ed.): 

As long as religion relies only upon the sentiments which are the consolation of every affliction, it can draw the heart of mankind to itself. When it is mingled with the bitter passions of this world, it is sometimes constrained to defend allies who are such from interest rather than from love; and it has to repulse as adversaries men who still love religion, although they are fighting against religion's allies. Hence religion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them.

 Pete Wehner at NYT:

Just the other day I received a note from a friend of mine, a pastor, who told me he no longer uses the label “evangelical” to describe himself, even though he meets every element of its historical definition, “because the term is now so stained as to ruin my ability to be what evangelicalism was supposed to be.”

Another pastor who is a lifelong friend told me, “Evangelical is no longer a word we can use.” The reason, he explained, is that it’s become not a religious identification so much as a political one. A third person, who heads a Christian organization, told me the term evangelical “is now a tribal rather than a creedal description.” In October, the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship, a campus ministry for more than 80 years, changed its name to the Princeton Christian Fellowship. “We’re interested in being people who are defined by our faith and by our faith commitments and not by any sort of political agenda,” according to Bill Boyce, who has led the campus group for decades.

Catholic Conspiracy Theorists and the Fake Tocqueville

The New American, the publication of the John Birch Society, reports on a group of Catholic conspiracy theorists who want Trump to investigate a plot by President Obama and others to overthrow Pope Benedict and replace him with Pope Francis.

The Catholic quintet began their missive to President Trump with the famous quote attributed to French historian Alexis de Tocqueville: “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” 

“While we share your stated goal for America,” they write, “we believe that the path to ‘greatness’ is for America to be ‘good’ again, to paraphrase de Tocqueville. We understand that good character cannot be forced on people, but the opportunity to live our lives as good Catholics has been made increasingly difficult by what appears to be a collusion between a hostile United States government and a pope who seems to hold as much ill will towards followers of perennial Catholic teachings as he seems to hold toward yourself.”

Not only is the theory farfetched (to put it mildly) but the Tocqueville quotation is fake.  As this blog has pointed out over and over, Tocqueville never wrote any such thing.

"America Is Great Because America Is Good"

Many posts have discussed fake quotations, including the king of fake Tocqueville lines.

Warren Throckmorton writes at Patheos:

During the debate between Clinton and Trump last night [10/19], Eric Metaxas tweeted the following:

Hillary misquoting Tocqueville is like Reagan misquoting Marx.

— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) October 20, 2016

Hillary said in passing that “America is great because America is good.” Although the quote is commonly associated with Tocqueville, it can’t be found in his works.

During the debate, Clinton did not attribute the quote to Tocqueville. However, Metaxas himself attributed that quote to Tocqueville in an advance copy of his new book If You Can Keep It. The attribution of the quote was corrected before publication.

Fake Tocqueville on the Charles

The Harvard Republican Club denounced Trump, using fake Tocqueville:

A longtime student of American democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville once said, “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

De Tocqueville believed in the United States. Americans are a decent people. We work hard, protect our own, and look out for one another in times of need, regardless of the color of our skin, the God we worship, or our party registration. Donald Trump may not believe in that America, but we do. And that America will never cease to be great.

"America Is Great Because America Is Good"

My piece at The Christian Science Monitor:

"America is great because America is good,” said Hillary Clinton during her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Immediately, her critics went on social media to accuse her of plagiarizing Alexis deTocqueville, French author of the 19th-century classic, "Democracy in America." But Tocqueville never wrote any such thing.

Various forms of the spurious quotation (often including such purple prose as “pulpits aflame with righteousness”) have been circulating for decades. It is unclear where it all started, except that we do know that these words appear nowhere in Tocqueville’s works. Nevertheless, politicians of all stripes have long been fond of using the lines, usually with the false attribution. Indeed, one repeat offender was none other than President Bill Clinton. He credited Tocqueville with saying “America is great” on many occasions – including the video that preceded his own acceptance speech at the 1996 Democratic convention.

It’s purely a guess, but it seems plausible that Mrs. Clinton or her speechwriter heard the phrase in that video and decided to recycle it 20 years later. One cannot charge her with plagiarizing Tocqueville since the latter didn’t write it in the first place. But was she plagiarizing her husband? Maybe it doesn’t count if it’s all in the family, or perhaps the phrase is so short and familiar that it comes under the heading of “common knowledge.” I will leave such judgments to the experts in literary ethics.

Refugees and Fake Tocqueville

At the Huffington Post, Massachusetts state representative Paul Heroux uses a fake Tocqueville quotation to make a point about refugees.

Recognizing all of the legitimate concerns about an ISIS terrorist trying to come into the US or Europe under the guise of a Syrian refugee, I believe that the US extends a helping hand to people in dire need. We have a history of this. It makes no sense to recognize that ISIS is a violent organization that seeks to kill anyone else who does not share their Salafi jihadi ideology but then to turn our backs on those fleeing from them. We have not turned away refugees in the seventy years since WWII. It is one of the things that makes us great. The French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville said:

America is great because she is good. When she ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.
These words are truer than ever.

The sentiment may be good, but the quotation is bogus.  As I have written many, many times, Tocqueville never wrote any such thing.

Ben Carson and Alexis deTocqueville

In The Washington Times, Dr. Ben Carson writes:

Tocqueville was impressed by the fiery sermons that emphasized the word of God and not the social mores of the day. He concluded his American analysis by saying, “America is great, because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” America was different because we openly acknowledged the role of God in our lives.

As I have written on many, many, many occasions, Tocqueville wrote no such thing. It is a fake quotation.  For decades, writers have passed it along like a virus.

West's Familiar Misquotations

Many posts have discussed spurious quotations. The Palm Beach Post reports:

Former Rep. Allen West outlines his political philosophy, warrior code and experiences as a black conservative in a new book that’s peppered with quotations attributed to Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and other famous figures.

Several of the quotes in West’s “Guardian of the Republic” — including one that’s also been used by President Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain — have a familiar ring from frequent repetition, but have been flagged by historians as erroneous.

“Thomas Jefferson said it first: ‘A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it away,’” West writes.

The quotation doesn’t appear in Jefferson’s writings, according to researchers at the Charlottesville, Va.-based Thomas Jefferson Foundation. But variations of it have appeared on coffee mugs and T-shirts with Jefferson’s name and have ricocheted around the Internet enough that the foundation included it in a “Spurious Quotations” list of popular sayings misattributed to the Declaration of Independence drafter and third president.

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Obama (as a senator in 2005) and McCain (as a 2008 presidential candidate) are among those who have quoted George Washington as saying that “the willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by our nation.”

West includes that quote in his book. But the words aren’t Washington’s, according to Mary V. Thompson, a research historian with the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington.

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West’s book quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th century French observer of America, as saying democracy “can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result being that a democracy collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”

Tocqueville did see danger in big government, but the quote in West’s book “certainly” is spurious, said Harvard historian Harvey Mansfield, who translated a 2000 edition of Tocqueville’s seminal “Democracy In America.”

During the 1996 campaign, H. Ross Perot attributed the line to Scottish historian Alexander Tytler.  But as I wrote at the time, Tytler didn't say it, either.