>> Aslihan Bulut:
Good evening, everyone.
I'm Aslihan Bulut and I have the
privilege of serving as the law
librarian of Congress.
Thank you all for joining us
this evening as we celebrate the
opening of the library's newest
exhibit, Join In: Voluntary
Associations in America. Join
In undertakes the challenging
task of telling the story of
voluntary associations, a
phenomena that is American to
its very core.
Voluntary associations are
everywhere in American society,
from faith based organizations,
chambers of commerce,
professional associations, and
labor unions to voluntary first
responders, groups advocating
social and political change and
clubs for service, sports and
hobbies. It's hard to imagine
American life without the
familiar icons, the Rotary Club,
the Red Cross, or the Girl
Scouts of America. With Join In,
the library holds up a mirror
to this aspect of American life
with the hope that those who
visit will fill an important
part of their lives reflected
back to them.
The exhibition tells several
stories in tandem.
The first tells about the
toolkit Americans have inherited
for organizing and running
voluntary associations.
Many Americans share a common
set of tools and know how that
have evolved over time.
The exhibit attempts to capture
our shared language by showing
some of the nation's earliest
compacts and publications.
The second story centers on the
entrepreneurial nature of
Americans and how those
Americans created associations
to make their dreams a reality.
From the 18th century to today,
Americans have pooled resources,
time and effort to accomplish
big things.
We understand that associations
reflect the enduring currents of
exclusion and discrimination
that have been a part of
American society from the
beginning.
Voluntary associations, while
sometimes the source of
exclusion, have also been an
antidote.
We tell the story of those
people who worked to right the
wrongs that were committed
against them through the power
of association.
Such a powerful exhibition
would also not be possible
without the generous support of
our sponsors and friends.
First, we would like to thank
the Federalist Society and the
American Bar Association
Standing Committee on the Law
Library of Congress for making
this thoughtful storytelling
possible. Your generosity and
patriotic philanthropy benefits
us all. And for that, I thank
you.
We would also like to recognize
others here tonight who have
made the effort to associate
with the library in one way or
another. The library's James
Madison Council, Friends of the
Library of Congress and our
various other groups serve as
their own examples of modern
voluntary associations that help
the library to accomplish its
mission of connecting all
Americans. We are grateful to
you all.
And now it is my pleasure to
welcome Dr.
Olivier Zunz and 
Dr. Kevin Butterfield.
Dr. Zunz is a leading
historian of philanthropy and
voluntary association in
America.
He's also the author of a new
biography of Alexis de
Tocqueville. Olivier, welcome.
Doctor Butterfield is the
director of the library's John W.
Kluge Center and is a
specialist in the founding era.
With that, I will hand it over
to you, gentlemen.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
Thank you, Aslihan.
When we had this opportunity to
bring the latest biographer of
Alexis de Tocqueville to ask a
few questions, to learn about
Alexis de Tocqueville and his
insights into America and the
phenomenon of voluntary
association, I was delighted
that Dr. Zunz said yes 
to our request to
come up and be a part of this
opening event. So, Olivier,
welcome.
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz: Thank you.
Let me start with this basic
question.
I think many Americans know the
name Alexis de Tocqueville.
Have even read perhaps passages
out of Democracy in America.
But give us the nutshell.
Who was Alexis de Tocqueville?
And maybe say a bit about how he
might be perceived differently
in either the United States or
in France?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
Tocqueville was a young man when
he came here.
He's only 25 years old in 1831.
He was born into an
aristocratic family, the highest
ranks of French 
nobility, really.
On his father's side, the
military nobility, on his
mother's side, the highest
echelons of the royal
administration.
His great grandfather was
Malesherbes, the director of the
book trade [inaudible] 15.
And with the 16th lawyer
 during the trial,
couldn't save the king's life
or his own.
The large part of the family
was decimated during the
revolutionary terror in 1793-94.
Tocqueville was the only member
of that family who embraced
democracy. But he also remained
loyal to his family, his
childhood friends. He was a
very loyal man, but he was
determined to play a role in
the great transition from
aristocracy to democracy.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
You actually title your
biography The Man Who Understood
Democracy: A Life of 
Alexis de Tocqueville.
Could you tell us what
democracy was to him?
What did democracy mean
to Tocqueville?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
Well, Tocqueville was never very
precise with definitions, but I
think I can answer the question
in a couple of sentences,
however. His understanding of
democracy revolved around a
changing understanding of a
single word, equality. Now, for
Tocqueville's family, for
Tocqueville during his youth,
and pretty much until he
visited this country, equality
was a bad word, pure and
simple.
That is to say, equality
was levelling.
It was the end of privileges
for people of his caste.
It was the end of the nobility.
What Tocqueville discovered in
this country was that for at
least a large part of the
population, of the white
population, equality was a
means to liberty.
It was a way to achieve one's
potential.
And I think for Tocqueville,
democracy is a system that makes
this possible.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
So once Tocqueville had an
opportunity to see this in the
United States, he came to that
conclusion, or did he come to
the United States already an
advocate and champion for
democracy?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
No, no. He came to the
United States for two reasons.
First, there had been
a revolution.
Three reasons, maybe very 
quickly. There had
been a revolution in 1830 that
abolished what had been the
return of an absolute monarchy
and created a constitutional
monarchy. The family remained
loyal to the old Bourbon kings,
to the absolute monarchs,
and Tocqueville wasn't sure that
he was able to— was going to be
able to serve a constitutional
monarchy. He was still very
much in the family mold.
Second, so a consequence of
that, he wanted to visit a
country where he could see a
real democracy, to see whether
he could ever live in one.
And the moment of brilliance
there that he bypassed England.
French liberals were interested
in the English experience and
went directly to America.
The second reason is that he
didn't like his job.
He was an apprentice
prosecutor in the courthouse in
Versailles. He didn't like his
colleagues, except for Beaumont,
with whom he travel to America
and he was looking for a way
out. So he didn't know whether
he could serve the new regime.
He didn't know what to do with
his life.
He didn't like his job.
It seems like a good idea to
take some time off.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield: 
That's a nice segway
into this question then.
As he turns 26 here in the
backwoods of North America,
if we had met him or his
traveling companion, Gustave de
Beaumont, who you mentioned,
what kind of person would we
have met? What kind of person
was he?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
Well, Beaumont, his friend, was
easy to interact with.
He was easygoing.
Tocqueville was tense.
He didn't take fools gladly.
He was himself timid.
He was shy. He was diffident.
And yet he knew how to engage
in one-on-one conversations
once he found somebody who— he
found it easy to to have a
conversation about interesting,
important issues and engages
interlocutors. And
Tocqueville in this country
while he was traveling, left a
very detailed record of every
conversation he had with about
200 Americans, some of them
great, very well known members
of the early republic, John
Quincy Adams among them, Edward
Livingston, who would end up
being secretary of state
in the Jackson presidency.
Jared Sparks, the first history
professor at Harvard.
The Italian minister. Joel
Poinsett, the first
ambassador to Mexico. Sam
Houston on the Mississippi.
John Spencer, a great lawyer in
New York State, who gave him
really a crash course on the US
Constitution, but also people at
the very end of the social
spectrum. Because the official
reason for Tocqueville and
Beaumont's visit was
 to write the
report for the French
government on US penitentiaries
and penitentiary reform.
And Tocqueville visited dozens
of prisons. And at Eastern State
Penitentiary in Philadelphia,
he spent time with 40 inmates
in their individual cells.
So he visited—
So one is often said that
you only talk to society
circles. And yes, he did, but
he also visited prisoners.
And so people in dire
conditions.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
The book itself, which we have
on display in a remarkable
printing in the exhibit.
Democracy in America,
how much is this book, as you
read it, and attempt to describe
America accurately, sort of a
description or a book about
democracy, which comes
first?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
Well, it is both and more.
Tocqueville came back from this
country with several trunks
full of documents.
He had written daily letters to
family and friends and asked his
family and friends to keep
those letters.
It took him a long time to go
over all of the documents, all
of the records, compile them,
organize them.
And he published the first
volume in 1835, which is largely
a description of America, but
not uniquely.
And I'll get back to that point
in a second.
Many of his travel notes and
fragments from letters, you find
them verbatim in the volume as
you would them. Then Tocqueville
being Tocqueville, he was
dissatisfied with it on all
levels. He didn't think it was
well written he didn't
think it was
interesting. He said to
one of his friends, the best
thing that can happen to me if
is no one read my book.
That wish was not granted.
He rewrote the book a
second time and published the
second volume in 1840, which is
a much more theoretical book of
democracy, far much more
removed from the American
travel.
John Stuart Mill called it the
first theory of democracy, which
it really is. And already
in volume one and much more
in volume two, it's really a
book of comparative political
economy. It's all under
the label America.
But there's a lot of comparison
with France and there's a lot of
comparisons with England.
England became the tiresome
quid, if you will, of the
comparison. And just to take
one example, in Volume two,
Tocqueville made this great
prediction of the dangers of an
industrial aristocracy that
could be just as bad as the old
one. But in this country, he
never was interested in the
beginning signs of large
industrialization.
When he was in Boston, he
didn't even go to Lowell and
visit the textile mills.
When it was in Philadelphia, it
was not interested in that
either. So it bypassed
completely whatever existed,
which was significant of
American early industrialization
as this country tried to free
itself from British products.
But during subsequent trips in
England between Volume one and
Volume two, he visited
Manchester and Birmingham.
Saw industrial poverty first
hand, maybe didn't know
Manchester as well as Engels,
but pretty close.
He went through and he was
shocked and you see
in Volume two, this great
chapter on the dangers that
industrialised democracy will
pose to democracy.
But Tocqueville was not
predicting the Gilded Age,
he was using his note from
England.
And the problem in reading the
book is that he never tells you
what he compares, but he keeps
comparing places all the time.
And then with the old regime
and the French Revolution, which
he will write at the end of his
life, Germany became the third
pole of comparison, replacing
England.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
For those of you who
haven't had a chance to look at
the Tocqueville in the exhibit
itself, it's opened to a section
where Tocqueville is writing
about associations.
And famously, he observed in a
way that Americans had yet to
observe the central
significance of voluntary
associations for the nature of
American society.
Let me read a passage, one of
the most famous passages from
the book. "Wherever there is a
new undertaking at the head of
which you would
expect to see in France, the
government. And in England, some
great Lord.
In the United States, you are 
sure to find an association.
Tell us a little bit about that
particular insight, if you
could, Dr. Zunz. 
How did Tocqueville come
to see it so clearly in just
roughly nine months in America?
And what else did he have to
say about this phenomenon of
joining together?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
This is a very important
question because maybe
Tocqueville is best known in
the wider readership as the
great theorist of associations.
And rightly so, in the sense
that,
I totally really change the
conversation about joining.
James Madison in the
Federalist talked about
factions, not associations and
he filled them. The only way he
thought to counter— only when
Madison thought of countering
the negative effects of
associations was by multiplying
them so they would cancel each
other out.
Washington in his farewell
address, also expressed his
distaste for associations and
how they would impede the work
of government. So Tocqueville
changed the conversation.
He moved away from factions and
into associations and put a
positive spin on them rather
than the negative spin on them.
So in that sense, it's a real
breakthrough, conceptual
breakthrough. On the other
hand, when you read all of the
travel notes, which I have
dutifully done as Tocqueville's
biographer, you're surprised
how little time Tocqueville
spent observing American
associations.
It's really quite remarkable.
In Philadelphia, I spent
about a month in Philadelphia,
three and a half weeks.
He did take notes on the
temperance movement.
And he was struck by the fact
that associations were used to
maul ants.
And he made a note of that,
actually, in Democracy
 in America.
He also in Philadelphia,
observed a free trade
convention. Now, there was a
free trade convention being held
in Philadelphia and at the same
time a protectionist convention
held in New York City as the
big issue, of course, of the day
was the tariff.
Of course, a convention is not
an association, but it's still a
means by which like minded
people join and fight for a
cause. And that was new to him.
I was inconceivable in French
politics.
And that's the extent of it.
Now, Tocqueville got a lot of
things right in this book and a
lot of observations that are
very pertinent.
And he missed a lot of stuff,
too.
Like, for example, even though
he was the great theorist of
associations, Tocqueville
completely missed in 1831-32,
the second Great Awakening.
It's still a mystery to me that
he could travel in the summer of
1831 along the Erie Canal, and
never heard of the
Bible societies and evangelical
revival and even of the
democratizing influence of
evangelical religion.
And nobody ever told him about
Charles Finney or anybody else.
But one thing that happened
when Tocqueville was writing
Democracy in America, that is,
well, even before I say that.
When Tocqueville was a young
man,
he lived in eastern France.
His father was a royal prefect
and his job as a royal prefect
was to muzzle associations,
part of his job so that there
would be any political
contestation, any manifestation
of opposition against
the royal administration and
the king.
And so his job as a prefect
was to grant authorisation for
people to meet and to
associate.
And he took that job very
seriously.
So Tocqueville experienced
during his childhood how you
repress associations.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
Repress?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
Repress. And in 1834, as he was
writing his book was published
in January 1835.
Just as he was finishing it,
there was a worker's
insurrection in Lyons.
And right after this
insurrection,
the July monarchy passed a new
law that no associations
of more than 20 people could
meet without a prior written
authorization from the
administration.
And in this section that you
just read, right after this,
he wrote and I quote, "What can
public opinion accomplish when
there are not 20 people united
by a common bond?" In direct
reference to this law, so that
the French readership could not
be— could really understand what
was going on in this book.
So I think a large part of his
[inaudible] association
was actually a
political argument about
what's going on in France.
Amazing, isn't it?
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
It really is. Excuse me.
We think a lot here at the
library about connecting our
collections, our resources with
people who are implementing
ideas, who are making the
changes, including, of course,
Congress itself.
Excuse me. Tocqueville himself
was one of these people, both a
scholar deep in the books,
creating scholarship and a
politician. Could you tell us a
little bit about that part of
Tocqueville's life when he
became an actual politician and
tried to make changes rather
than just write about them?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz: 
From the very beginning
of his adult life,
Tocqueville wanted to be a
politician, and he kept telling
his friends it was more
important to him to become a
politician than to be an
intellectual or a writer,
he ended up being both. And even
being a famous political
philosopher, one of the best,
he ended up being a—
I hate to think of it as a
mediocre politician because he
was so smart.
But as an unsuccessful
politician. Nonetheless,
he couldn't be elected to the
French chamber before age 30.
As soon as and he was not
elected until a few years after
that, until he was 34.
But he kept running as soon
as he could.
It was difficult for him.
He was a poor public speaker.
He was a great
conversationalist, but he was a
poor public speaker.
He suffered all his life from a
lung disease,
actually died of tuberculosis.
And his voice you don't carry,
and he didn't have this with
him in 1835.
So you couldn't be a politician
when your voice is [inaudible].
And yet that's what he
wanted to be.
He never became a major
statesman, but he embraced of
the major causes of the day.
Abolition of slavery in the
French Caribbean did a
lot of work on that.
The place of France in
international affairs,
especially in the Middle East,
in the Mediterranean world, this
led him into a big fight with
his friend John Stuart Mill and
some of his English friends
actually in the French English
rivalry of the day. The
rehabilitation of criminals.
There's a natural follow up of
his prison investigation in this
country. The reconciliation of
church and state in France,
which was something very
important to him, especially as
he was himself fighting with
for recovering his own
faith. And a brief stint as
foreign minister of the Second
Republic in 1849,
and the writer of the
Constitution of the Second
Republic of France.
So I would say that even
though he's not remembered as a
major statesman, he was a
very influential man simply by
the sheer power of his
intelligence and 
who he influenced.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
Momentarily, I want to come to
you for questions.
So be thinking about what you
would like to explore with Dr.
Zunz. I noticed his reading as
I was reading the book that you
spend as much time working with
and quoting from his great major
works, Democracy in America,
the Ancien Regime and the French
Revolution as you do his
letters. And in fact, he might
even spend more time with his
letters because he, as I read
this, you might say Tocqueville
was a remarkably beautiful
and adept correspondent.
Tell me about Tocqueville as a
letter writer.
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
Well, back in 1952, a French
commission began to publish
Tocqueville's complete works,
the project that began in 1952
and was completed two years ago.
Nobody was in a hurry.
There are 32 volumes,
so not only the main books
Democracy in America, the Old
Regime in the French
Revolution, and finished second
book, his recollections of the
1848 revolution,
all of his parliamentary papers
and draft speeches, his
journalistic pieces, because he
briefly ran a newspaper which he
was not fit for. But that's a
different story.
And his letters to various
correspondents, letters contain
comprise 18 volumes out of the
32.
And he was a beautiful letter
writer.
He must have written letters,
if not every day, every other
day. I wish the Internet hadn't
killed the art of letter writing
because that's
forgotten anyway.
The point is, I don't think I
could have written this
biography without those letters
because I really got caught into
them. I even came to think
about how I would respond to
this or that argument and if I
were in this place and so on and
so forth. But the letter
did something for me that in
writing the biography, gave me
the evidence of his moral
integrity, how he kept pursuing
the same ideas in his letters,
how he refined his arguments,
how I wish he had said this in
this book, how he rephrased
it in different ways, how he
expressed his doubts.
So they were not only beautiful
literary works of literary
expression in the art of letter
writing, but they contributed
very much to my understanding
of who he was and what he stood
for, and most importantly, how
loyal he was to be a real
contributor to this trade
transformation, even though it
was riddled with doubt all his
life.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
My last question for you before
we come to the audience,
including our virtual audience.
You've also written a book about
philanthropy in America.
That's something obviously
related to joining together
as people contributing
to accomplish a goal together,
combat some evil perhaps. Did
Tocqueville have thoughts
specifically about
philanthropic giving?
How do you see Tocqueville and
philanthropy?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
I don't think Tocqueville had
talked about philanthropy giving
the way we think of it.
But he had talk about he had
thoughts about the act of giving
and what that meant.
And if you read Adam Smith
Theory of Moral Sentiments, you
must begin by saying everybody
has some good in us.
We all have some good in us
even the worst referent,
worst person, there's something
good in there if you can only
extract it. Tocqueville went
beyond this in a way that it
said, well. what's really
important in what I
understand giving to be
especially given in the market
to be is that there's an
element of self interest in it
that is you give to a common
cause, but you benefit 
from the outcome.
and therefore, there is an
interest in it.
And for Tocqueville, 
interest became
much more important than virtue,
than giving for virtue.
Because first of all, self
interest comes in much rarer
supply than virtue.
So if you count on it, you can
multiply even dramatically.
So Tocqueville developed this
concept of self interest
popularly understood, which is
it's okay to think that giving
will serve you will fetch
interest if it's an incentive
for giving. I think that's a
very important contribution to
philanthropy.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
Questions from the room.
I believe we have a microphone
somewhere.
And if you catch my eye,
the people with the microphones
will also find you.
Let's go to Nathan Dawn.
>> Nathan Dawn: Hello?
Okay, here we go. This has been
really great.
Really. Thank you very much.
The question I have is, the
exhibition makes mention of
Tocqueville's interest in
associations, but it doesn't go
further and then explore what
he explores
and that's the relationship
between associations and
democracy. And I wonder if you
can say a little bit about how
he saw associations as an
expression of something
that was basic to democratic
society.
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz: 
Well,
it's an association for him 
was natural extension of
individualism, in the sense
that Tocqueville made a great
distinction, a very important
distinction between
individualism and selfishness.
You know, individualism 
was not egotism.
It was a means to
achieve one's potential.
This gift that equality
gives you, gives to a large
number of people.
That is you level the playing
field.
There is no
privilege at birth that prevents
you from achieving.
But there's only so much that
people can do on their own.
So association was the next
logical step.
You combine your efforts and so
it's just as simple as this.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
Other questions? I see one in
the back on my right.
>> Thank you very much.
This is really wonderful.
In democracy in America
when I read it as a college
student, which was a couple of
years ago.
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
Yeah, me too.
>> I mean, there's this absolutely
chilling passage where he
contrasts the United States
with Russia and contrasts where
they come from, what their
attitudes are, what their
approaches and ends with a line
along the line that each is
destined to rule half the world
or control half the world.
It's never clear to me writing
when he did, what did he mean by
that? Because obviously he
couldn't have anticipated the
20th century.
So what was he actually
thinking about and saying that
they would control half the
world?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
Okay. This is the end of
the first volume of Democracy in
America where there is this
famous line that the
world will be divided between
those two great powers,
Russia and America, America and
Russia.
This was probably the most
often quoted Tocqueville line
during the Cold War. Now,
it is interesting to— I mean,
it is important to realize that
this was not exactly an original
idea, it was a pretty
widespread idea in the French
press in the 1830s.
The cost of the—
the power of the [inaudible],
the Russian expansion.
It was very much in the
air in the 1830.
A lot of destructions of
that in the French press.
So how Tocqueville decided to
bring up that point in the last
few lines of the first volume
of Democracy in America?
I don't really know, but
here it is.
Here we have it. And of course,
it was recorded during the
Cold War again and again
and it has taken on a new
turn with the war in Ukraine and
the Russian threat everlasting 
Tocqueville, so to speak.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
Other questions.
>> Aslihan Bulut:
I believe we have a question
from the virtual audience.
>> A question from Barry. Were all
of Tocqueville's notes written
in French? Did he also write
two volumes in French?
He must have known English
enough to talk to 
prisoners and others.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
[Inaudible] writing in French?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
Tocqueville arrived in America
in 1831 with a minimal
knowledge of English.
He spent a lot of time during
the sea voyage on the boat, on
the packet boat, learning
English.
There were quite a
few British travellers and
Americans returning to America,
of course, on the boat.
One young woman among them
spent a lot of time teaching
Beaumont and Tocqueville,
English, and then they saw her
in New York, too.
Well, I would say Tocqueville
was learning quickly.
Now, his English was quite
limited, but he learned fast
and he obviously managed.
He obviously managed.
Towards the end of the stay, he
could write a pretty simple
letter to Jared Sparks.
He could understand it.
He could understand it.
And I think the interviews with
the prisoners, with the
inmates at Eastern State in
Pennsylvania, the
questions were pretty simple.
He basically recorded the
answers.
You know, how do you use your
time?
Do you see the chaplain?
Is it tough? I mean, you know,
it was not an elaborate
question. Some of the more
elaborate discourses, like with
John Quincy Adams, with
Jefferson's treasury
secretary, Gallatin,
Swiss born, were in French. A
number of American
elites he met also spoke
French, not all of them.
So he managed. He learned on the
board.
He learned he learned here.
He learned enough to record
the conversations.
But, yes, he would only in
French.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
We have time for another couple
of questions?
I have one right here in the
middle.
>> Can you talk a bit about
Tocqueville's reception in the 
20th century?
I know that the work was not
always as popular as it is now,
and you mentioned its kind of
resurgence during the Cold War,
but what was the afterlife 
of his books?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
Well, from day one until now,
Tocqueville has had a following
from the left and 
from the right.
More significant, I think, from
conservatives than from liberals
in the sense more conservatives
have claimed him than liberals.
But the two have been there
from the very beginning.
Now, both in France and here,
Tocqueville was pretty much
forgotten during the late 19th
and early 20th century.
There was no real room for him
in the Gilded Age, I would say.
Henry Adams was the last great
villain of the late 19th
century. Tocqueville had
American revival and doing
the new deal and from the
opposition. That is to say
voluntary associations were seen
as an argument against
the state,
so against the new deal.
So Josh Pearson at Yale was
very much in that mode as a
Tocquevillian who revived
Tocqueville pretty much in an
anti-new deal mode.
In the American sociologists,
political scientists of the
1950s, the consensus schools,
[inaudible] and the first new
nation. These people really
also claim Tocqueville for the
American consensus,
the American character, and
Tocqueville got a lot of it from
Montesquieu, obviously,
did believe in the idea of
the national character,
was very much a disciple of
Montesquieu in that sense.
But even though in the
50s there was already a
following from the left, from
David Richmond, the lonely crowd
for I would say, the idea 
that Tocqueville coud
predict the enemy of the
modern state.
So those two strands have
co-existed very much through
this day. My own view
having read all the text 
and is that
Tocqueville described himself
quite accurately by saying that
he was an aristocrat by
instinct and the Democrat by
reason. He diagnosed his state
of mind perfectly well.
And he saw he was always
conflicted in that sense.
And yet genuinely and I try to
make this argument throughout
the book, committed to the
democratic ideal as the ideal of
self-realization, either
through individualism or through
association.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
Time for one more question, and
I think we've got it here
in the back on my left.
Yes.
>> Hi. Can you all hear me?
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield:
Yes.
>> My question would be,
do we still have something to
learn from Tocqueville in a way 
that we perhaps have
not yet? And if so, what would
that be?
>> Dr. Olivier Zunz:
Well, let me put it this way.
Tocqueville was a great
mind.
So to the extent that we
benefit from conversations
across the ages with great
minds all the way back to the
Greeks, the answer is,
absolutely.
We know.
I mean, first of all,
it's good for the soul
to read important text.
The second thing is that, yeah,
the spoken democracy is
amazingly relevant
as we are experiencing—
As you know, it was relevant in
the 50s,
it was relevant— 
it's not relevant now,
it's relevant— Tocqueville
feared that democracy—
He lived in fear of the 
collapse of democracy.
He predicted a civil war, not a
civil war
the way it happened, he
predicted a race war in the
South, not a war between the
states.
But he died before the
Civil War,
but he corresponded with
America. Is it going to happen?
Is a union going to hold?
He feels about the violence
in the territories and the
lawlessness in the territories.
Now, what else do we—
We share the same,
we share similar fears.
And the other thing, the third
thing I would say, I've
mentioned John Stuart Mill a 
couple of times today,
but you read John Stuart Mill 
was a great mind, [inaudible],
extraordinary character.
You know, you're reading a 19th
century author, you understand?
Tocqueville, except for a few
sentences here and there,
you think it was written
yesterday. It just is amazing,
the modernity of the star.
So I would say yes, on all
three accounts.
>> Dr. Kevin Butterfield: Well,
thank you, Dr. Olivier Zunz.
Thank you to all of you for
being here tonight.
And thank you so much for this
wonderful exhibit.
Everyone that had a hand, both
the the donors and the creators,
in putting it together.
Now, we have an opportunity to
enjoy a reception.
Take another look at the
exhibit. And let me thank you
again for being here tonight.
Thank you.
[Applauding]