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Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Alexis de Tocqueville. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote one of the greatest books on the American government system, "Democracy in America." It should be required reading of any American citizen. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of the puzzle...

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Alexis De Tocqueville. Click image (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Alexis De Tocqueville was a French diplomat, political scientist and historian. He was a great admirer of the American Founding and its Constitutional republican political system. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidential spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of the puzzle...

Early in the nineteenth century the brilliant French observer Alexis de Tocqueville gave this estimate of America and Americans in his book Democracy in America: “There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than America.” A similar assessment could not be made at the end of the twentieth century. That is not to say that the Christian religion exercises any great influence over the souls of men in any nation today, but the loss of its original influence is certainly as great if not greater in the United...

No doubt every FReeper is familiar with the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville. The French political scientist and historian is best known for his monumental work "Democracy in America." In his later years, De Tocqueville broadened the scope of his studies and observations. Who knew that way back then he brilliantly recognized Islam for exactly what it was, and the dangers it posed to the world.....

Have you ever lied about reading a book? Maybe you didn’t want to seem stupid in front of someone you respected. Maybe you rationalized it by reasoning that you had a familiarity with the book, or knew who the author was, or what the story was about, or had glanced at its Wikipedia page. Or maybe you had tried to read the book, even bought it and set it by your bed for months unopened, hoping that it would impart what was in it merely via proximity (if that worked, please email me).

“Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” So wrote Alexis de Tocqueville. Yet, judged by the standards of those old “pulpits aflame with righteousness,” is America still a good country?

Link: Mark Levin : Alexis De Tocqueville, The Republicans and Steve

Conservatives and liberals clash frequently on a wide array of issues, from taxes to trade, from deficits to defense. But their greatest conflict may lie in their contrasting attitudes toward civil society. Conservatives regard the institutions of civil society -- families, churches and communities -- as sources of hope and renewal. Self-styled "progressives" see these institutions as seedbeds of prejudice and ignorance. Conservatives believe that poverty stems largely from a lack of spiritual resources, resources that are typically transmitted through private, voluntary groups. Progressives view poverty as a simple lack of resources. Conservatives believe that social justice is best pursued...

After three years of eating steaks the size of elephants' ears, Kevin bids farewell The BBC's America correspondent Kevin Connolly is packing his bags for a new post in the Middle East. During his three years in the US he has visited 46 out of 50 states and covered the country's election of its first black president.Sometime around the spring of 1835, a young Frenchman called Alexis de Tocqueville travelled to the United States on a mission guaranteed to make Americans bristle with irritation. He was going to understand them, and explain them. De Tocqueville was smart, Gallic and aristocratic...

In this day and age when the founding principles--and the Christian origin of those principles--of the United States are under attack from liberals, secularists, humanists, socialists, and Marxists, it is more important than ever to maintain familiarity with the facts and truths of where we came from. If someone is able to rewrite the past, he is also able to rewrite the present and alter the course of the future. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian, traveled America as it was coming into its own as a nation. He wrote down his observations about this unique new country...

An article in The Wall Street Journal (April 12) breathlessly informs us of the latest fad on the Incredible Shrinking Continent -- "As Religious Strife Grows, Europe's Atheists Seize Pulpit: Islam's Rise Gives Boost To Militant Unbelievers; The Celebrity Hedonist," the headline teases. The "Celebrity Hedonist," isn't geriatric frat-boy Hugh Hefner, but Michel Onfray, a 48-year-old author dubbed "France's high-priest of atheism" in the Journal piece. Reporter Andrew Higgins describes the doyen of disbelief -- commander of the faith-less -- strutting onto the stage of Caen's 500-seat Alexis de Tocqueville auditorium, dressed in black from head to toe, to deliver...

Upon Joseph Ratzinger’s election to the papacy in April 2005, many commentators correctly noted that Benedict XVI’s self-described theological “master” was St. Augustine. The fifth-century African bishop is widely acknowledged as a giant of the early Church whose life and writings are counted, even by his detractors, among the most decisive in shaping Western civilization. Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, is full of citations and themes drawn from Augustine’s texts. The encyclical’s publication appears, however, to confirm that another, more contemporary thinker has influenced the way that Benedict XVI views religion in free societies and the nature...

Religion has always been linked to political power, often controlled by kings and despots. In a democracy, there's a different kind of link. Freedom allows everyone to raise questions, confront dogma and challenge beliefs. That's why maintaining the complete separation of church and state is crucial. Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting the United States in the early 19th century, identified this separation as crucial to democratic governance. Religion gave support to democratic political institutions because it restrained the exercise of liberties, appealing to conscience and morality in lieu of imposition by the state. De Tocqueville's words came to life in the...

When Alexis de Tocqueville and his traveling companion, Gustave de Beaumont, arrived in Newport, R.I., in May 1831, the country was barely 50 years old--and Tocqueville wasn't yet 26. Andrew Jackson was president and John C. Calhoun was vice president. Politically, the event of the year was Nat Turner's slave revolt in Virginia. Steamships existed and a primitive rail system had just come into service, but the first of the wagon trains had yet to cross the Rockies. In faraway Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, then 22, gave his first political speech (atop a beer keg) on the subject of "the navigation...

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 that 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 they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent...