Mr. President, meet M. de Tocqueville

Mr. President, meet M. de Tocqueville

Somewhere in one of Barack Obama's campaign speeches this election year, like a piece of barbed wire in an otherwise light and puffy soufflé of empty platitudes, was this remarkable comment:

"If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

There are certain phrases, like this one, so memorable that they come to stand for the whole of a speech. Indeed for a whole attitude, for the whole spirit of a man and maybe of an age. For instance: "Give me liberty or give me death!" "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Or, in...