Some more thoughts from the Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville.
1. This first statement is brilliant and perceptive beyond description. America, 2026: “When the taste for physical gratifications among [men] has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint.”
God said to Moses that when the Israelites “have eaten and filled themselves and grown fat, then they will turn to other gods and serve them.” When the desire for physical gratification outruns our wisdom and moral education, then people will be “carried away and lose all self-restraint.” Historian Sir Alexander Tytler said that democracies go “from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage.” There is no doubt in my mind that the desire for physical pleasure in America today has far outpaced our wisdom and moral education, and the results are plainly manifest in the massive amounts of promiscuity, corruption, fraud, decadence, selfishness, and licentiousness that plague our nation.
Noah Webster once said, “Education is useless without the Bible.” What he enunciates here is the greatest truth of all about a proper education—knowledge without wisdom, “intelligence” without virtue, is not only vain — it is positively dangerous. The most important facet of education is moral education, building excellence, character, and virtue in our children. What good would it do to have a country full of PhDs and rocket scientists if they are all rotten, immoral, godless, materialistic Democrats? What value is a 180 IQ if a person has no virtue or self-control? What wisdom does Bill Gates have if he succumbs to globalism, climate change stupidity, and fake Covid-vaccine “science”? I once had great respect for that man and the incredible company he built (Microsoft). And I still use his products, literally every day of my life. But, personally, all his “brilliance” is now being thrown away on the altar of godless, totalitarian globalism. And his tale could be repeated countless times in our world today.
Too many people with high IQs think they are smarter than God, and thus have become the stupidest of all humans. They have never been educated in one of the most important truths man must learn, viz., “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The people de Tocqueville (and Tytler) describe do not have an ounce of wisdom. Pleasure and self-gratification (money, sex, power) are all they live for. And too many “average” Americans view these monstrosities of moral decadence as their leaders, examples, and teachers. Thus, so much of the country today is wallowing in a moral slime pit.
“There is no freedom without morality,” Edmund Burke wrote, and we are, slowly but surely, giving up our freedoms, sinking from “apathy, to dependence, and back into bondage” because we’ve let our desire for physical gratification trump the true education our children need. De Tocqueville wrote his statement over 100 years ago. And we see the fruits of his wisdom so clearly, and sadly, manifested in the nation today.
2. “As I see it, only God can be all-powerful without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power.”
James Madison warned us not to trust any human with much power, and Alexis de Tocqueville explained why. No totalitarian—all-powerful government—is composed of humans whose wisdom and justice equals their megalomania. Human wisdom and justice are finite, minuscule, and overwhelmingly imperfect; even the best people are greatly limited in knowledge, wisdom, and virtue. When a country—per quote one above—sacrifices moral education, loses virtue, honor, and excellence as major goals, when it gives total power—or any power at all—to those whose lifetime objective is self-gratification, there will be tyranny, oppression, decadence, and massive death. Just look at Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR, Mao’s China, and Biden’s America. If God were on earth, He could rule successfully, because His power would be matched by His wisdom and justice. But the less men listen to His wisdom and justice, and the more unrestrained power they have, the greater the tyranny, injustice, and oppression will be. If people didn’t follow Chairman Mao’s sense of “wisdom and justice,” he just killed them, by the millions, because he had the power to do so. All power plus no godly wisdom and justice equals a tyrannical, totalitarian government. And that is exactly where the Democrats are trying to take America.
3. “Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”
Everybody wants freedom. Or say they do. Many people have no clue what true freedom is. The Democrats want to put endless people on government welfare, and call that “freedom.” But, as P. J. O’Rourke said, the “right” to education, health care, food and housing, is not freedom, it’s dependence, “the rations of slavery—hay and a barn for human cattle.” But the propaganda buys votes.
Licentiousness is not freedom, either, though many Americans think it is; the “freedom” to do what one pleases, especially to have as much sex with whomever they wish. But sex addiction, just like drug addiction or alcohol addiction or any other addiction, is not true freedom, either. One loses self-control over themselves, and the loss of self-control is the antithesis of freedom and a definition of slavery. Self-control is the greatest victory a human can achieve, Plato said, and those who don’t practice it are “shameful and vile.”
What is true freedom? "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” Benjamin Franklin said, and doubtless de Tocqueville would agree. To freely choose to be virtuous, to respect the rights and freedoms of others, to practice self-control. But, as de Tocqueville, that kind of freedom is hard to learn.
And it’s why true freedom is so rare in human history. “Back into bondage…”
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