… is from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Forward to the 1955 edition of Stuart Gilbert’s translation of Tocqueville’s soaring 1856 masterpiece, The Old Régime and the French Revolution; this passage occurs specifically on page xv:
Even despots do not deny the merits of freedom; only they wish to keep it for themselves, claiming that no one else is worthy of it. Thus our quarrel is not about the value of freedom per se, but stems from our opinion of our fellow men, high or low as the case may be; indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that a man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
DBx: Thus it is that the likes of Tucker Carlson, Josh Hawley, and Donald Trump on the political right join with the likes of Zohran Mamdani, Joseph Stiglitz, and Elizabeth Warren on the political left to reject freedom and free markets. Each holds his or her fellow Americans in contempt – contempt that hides beneath assertions of care for their fellow Americans.
