Is the American regulated state today what the signers of the U.S. Constitution had in mind for the country in 1787? Obviously, interpretations of its provisions have evolved with political and societal changes over the past 225 years. However, it would seem that the incredible growth of agency regulation, particularly over the past 80 years, could not have been foreseen or even approved back in 1787.
Writing in 1833 in his Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville said he was impressed by the accomplishments of non-governmental associations in America. "Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations...but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fetes, to fund seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons and schools."
Today, Tocqueville would find that such associational organizations have declined immensely, to be replaced by governmental programs, agencies and regulations. Indeed, there are so many rules today that it seems that the United States may have switched to the continental cicl code system of law, where specific statutes embody every detail of regulated life.
In his book, Tocqueville warned about regulation usurping associational life and individual initiative:
"Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like the authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided that they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it choses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilities their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
"Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.
"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of men is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
Tocqueville also pondered why, in a democracy, an individual obeys society and what are the normal limits of such obedience. He concluded that a person obeys "because he recognizes the usefulness of his association with his fellow men and because he knows that this association cannot exist without a regulating power." For Tocqueville, the general truth is "that the individual is the sole and best placed judge of his own private concerns and society has the right to control his actions only when it feels such actions cause it damage or needs to seek the cooperation of the individual."
Do you agree with Tocqueville?
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