This blog has various writers it recurrently cites; but it
has a special place of honor for Alexi de Tocqueville – along with Daniel J.
Elazar. Some time ago, it included in an
earlier posting, an extended quote from Tocqueville. The quote is from his famous “travel log” of a
visit to America in the 1830s. Here is part
of that citation:
It
is not impossible to form an imaginary picture of the surpassing liberty which
the Americans enjoy; some idea may likewise be formed of the extreme equality
which subsists amongst them. But the
political activity which pervades the United States must be seen in order to be understood. No sooner do you set foot upon the American
soil than you are stunned by a kind of tumult; a confused clamour is heard on
every side; and a thousand simultaneous voices demand the immediate
satisfaction of their social wants … Meetings are called for the sole purpose
of declaring their disapprobation of the line of conduct pursued by the
Government, whilst in other assemblies the citizens salute the authorities of
the day as the fathers of their country … This feeling pervades the most
trifling habits of life; even the women frequently attend public meetings, and
listen to political harangues as a recreation after their household
labours. Debating clubs are to a certain
extent a substitute for theatrical entertainments. An American cannot converse, but he can
discuss; and when he attempts to talk he falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a
meeting; and if he should chance to warm in the course of the discussion, he
will infallibly say “Gentlemen,” to the person with whom he is conversing.[1]
This
writer described this description of a people as the best example of a people
being federated among themselves, he has ever read.
One can characterize these citizens as
readily disposed to talking to each other.
This dialoguing helped the writer come up with an instructional approach,
again, described previously in an earlier posting, “Some Generic Elements of
Debate.”[2] The point here is that the use of federation
theory to guide civics instruction calls on students to talk and talk a lot –
just like Americans did in the 1830s.
It seems that a natural rights guru thinks
differently. Robert Greene, in his best-selling
book, The 48 Laws of Power, has the
following advice:
When
you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common
you appear, and the less in control. Even
if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague,
open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful
people impress and intimidate by saying less.
The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.[3]
Greene offers three main examples supporting his advice, one
non-example, a c. 450 BC, Roman warrior, Coriolanus, and two positive examples,
King Louis XIV of France, and Andy Warhol, the twentieth-century artist.
Coriolanus,
who had spent the bulk of his career engaging in battles away from Rome,
finally decided to venture into Roman politics and submitted himself to an
election for consul (the highest position of the Roman Republic). He didn’t win and almost talked himself into
being executed by what he had to say in a couple of speeches – verbal attacks
on the common folk. Without these outbursts,
historians, according to Greene, believe he would have won easily.
King Louis
often said nothing but “I shall see” to his ministers and, by doing so, kept
them wondering and anxious as to what he was going to do. Their imbalance weakened them and strengthened
Louis. How? The advisors, to fill in the silence, blabbed
on and revealed more about themselves to their detriment. Oh yes, Louis is also famous for one other
thing he said, “L’etat, c’est moi” (“I am the state”).
And finally,
Andy Warhol followed the example of another artist, Marcel Duchamp, “who
realized early on that the less he said about his work, the more people talked
about it. And the more they talked, the
more valuable his work became.”[4] Consequently, Warhol was noted more for his
glare into a camera lens than any wisdom uttered from his mouth.
Of course,
Greene is writing for the benefit of businessmen who want to become more
powerful and, therefore, richer. Tocqueville
wanted to describe what was becoming a vibrant republic that was guided among
its citizens by a view of governance and politics; that being federalism. The claim here is: civics teachers are truer to their
responsibilities if they use Tocqueville, instead of Greene, to guide their
efforts in the classroom.
[2] Robert Gutierrez, “Some Generic Elements of Debate,” Gravitas:
A Voice for Civics, October 3, 2017, accessed March 28, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2017/10/some-generic-elements-of-debates.html
.
[4] Ibid., 35.
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