This work is represents a reincarnation of de Tocqueville.No need to re-write de Toqueville. His insights stand.
Why are Americans religious... ask de Toqueville. Why are Americans patriotic... ask de Tocqueville. Why is America strong... ask de Tocqueville. He'll say it's because Americans believe in themselves, each one, individually. There is no incentive for betterment in lands where social positions are fixed, such as under aristocracy or socialism, and, especially, the twisted mixes of both as we have in Europe today. In those societies the world is fixed and has nothing new to say. For amusement and politics they reach for ideals, all the while knowing it is impossible. Americans don't give a damn for poetry. The purists call it "practical." De Tocqueville would call it self-interest. Betterment is the American imperative.
I'd gather that those here who like this article see themselves in the praise, and that those who dislike it see our failures the greater. Don't bother with examples of American socialism or defeat. None of it has changed the core americanism of the individual. Sure, we've had our socialists and our bureaucrats and our EPA and our 55. And yes, we have our factionalism and severe partisanship. No, it's not a New Deal creation, or Clintoon, or modern angst, it is and always has been the American way. Not all Americans choose well -- that's the beauty in America. Socialism has had every opportunity not to fail here, just as did every other populist movement, from the farmers of 1780s Massachusetts to William Jennings Bryan to FDR. Listen carefully to their rhetoric: even our leftists have had to honor the individual.
Therein is de Tocqueville's insight. America is the individual. Everything American is built around it. Education, politics, and culture, America is the individual. Don't forget what de Tocqueville came here to study. He wanted to know what is it a society based upon the idea that "all men are created equal." Therein is the genesis of the individual.
To hell with Marx, to hell with Nietzche. To hell with de Gaulle, and to hell with the Third Way.
For I am an individualist first, last and all the time, and I am bitterly opposed to the theory of Socialism -- that is -- to transfer the object of individual effort to State control and State supervision.-William Howard Taft
Some people just know it.