It must be acknowledged that in few of the civilized nations of our time have the higher sciences made less progress than in the United States; and in few have great artists, distinguished poets, or celebrated writers been more rare. Many Europeans, struck by this fact, have looked upon it as a natural and inevitable result of equality; and they have thought that if a democratic state of society and democratic institutions were ever to prevail over the whole earth, the human mind would gradually find its beacon lights grow dim, and men would relapse into a period of darkness.
To reason thus is, I think, to confound several ideas that it is important to divide and examine separately; it is to mingle, unintentionally, what is democratic with what is only American.
T. David Gordon | “Alexis de Tocqueville and American Exceptionalism: Exegeting Tocqueville” | October 16, 2023
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T. David Gordon
Dr. T. David Gordon is a teaching elder in The Presbytery of the Ascension. Before retirement, he taught at Gordon-Conwell Seminary (1984–98) and Grove City College (1999–2021).
More by T. David Gordon ›
Have you read, Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America by David Horowitz? He has a somewhat different view not speaking specifically to de Tocqueville but on American exceptionalism et al
Are there any works you recommend that have most shaped your thinking about America, how it started, and where we are today?