Another post on de Tocqueville and I can't come up with a title

"it is our inexperience of liberty in action which leads us to regard freedom of association as no more than a right to make war on the government"

This is an idea we kind of talked about in class. It's one of the reasons democracy was able to take root in America; we were already use to the idea of freedom of association. It's something that is now (and was then) so natural to us (even de Tocqueville described it as a "natural right")that we don't even think about using it as a tool of destruction. We get together and talk about our politics and laws and we needs to be changed and what doesn't and through our democratic system make those changes that we feel need to be made. Because in America it's such an everyday happening, you don't realize that other people in the world use it to take down their government, not aid it along in it's natural process. These past few weeks in the Middle East and northern Africa could be no better example of this and I'm very intereseted to see what happens later down the road in these countries.

I wonder what de Tocqueville would have to say about all of it.

A new perspective?

In class today we unanimously decided that de Tocqueville was writing down his ideas primarily for the French audience. While I still agree with that statement I would like to add something we didn't talk about in class.

I think Democracy in America, in today's world, is better received by American audiences. In a way he takes us back to our roots, our point of departure if you will, and gives us a reminder about what this country was founded on. Not only does he give us this reminder of where we came from, but his foreign perspective allows us to understand ourselves in a new light. His analysis on America makes us say things like "oh yea, of course" or "yes, that's why democracy works here" that we normally wouldn't say. It's kind of like when someone asks you to tell them what your best attribute is. It's really hard to answer because you can't analyze yourself from the outside perspective. It's refreshing to hear both the pros and the cons an foreign observer gives on the idea of American democracy.

Why America worked according to de Tocqueville

First off, I would like to say that although de Tocqueville can be a bit heavy to read, I am really enjoying it. What I love most about his writing is the way he uses his French background to make his examples clear. Last semester the focus of my French 231 class was on comparing French and American society so reading de Tocqueville is very meaningful to me and my knowledge from last semester is making his ideas make a lot more sense.

What I was most struck by in this reading were the reasons he gave for democracy's success in the colonies. I think what he was trying to say was that freedom is what lead to the freedom of America. Officially, the King of England was in charge of the colonies. As de Tocqueville pointed out, the king had no idea what was going on here. Just for a brief example, states were formed backwards from the way they were supposed to. The freedom the settlers had to reject aristocracy in America gave them the foundation to shake off the artistrocracy that controlled them from thousands of miles away.

I remember writing about a similiar idea in an earlier blog post. When we were studying the Declaration to Independence one of our readings made a point of saying the colonies upset about the small (compared to the ones in England) amount of taxes they had to pay so they decided to break away from England (of course it was much more complex than that but that's the idea in a nutshell). They weren't used to be being governed anymore and that's the way they liked it.

Up, up and away!

It's so different reading Cullen now after we've read all the articles and had all those discussions on the 2nd Great Awakening. Even in places he never explicitly talks about the movement we can see sings of it and gain better understanding of other historical events now that we understand more about it. I know for me it was easier to understand how the home-town hero, rough and rugged Andrew Jackson was elected into office in 1824. He was in the public eye and in office right around the time the 2nd Great Awakening was getting under way with "common people" all over the country rising up to to things "common people" had never done before. To think about it in this sense is really quiet amazing. Today we think of America as a place where "anyone can make it" but before the 2nd Great Awakening this wasn't always true. It was the educated and the wealthy who were able to take charge of America and make a difference.

Another point of Cullen's I was able to better understand from our previous discussions was upward mobility. We know from earlier that the 2nd Great Awakening really got underway because people were tired of the rigid and melancholic religious doctrines. I can't say I blame them. Not only is it difficult to listen to someone, such as the Puritans,say that no matter what you do your fate is set and you have no choice in religion. Not is it difficult to accept, its even more so when you realize it doesn't fit in with the young America's ideas of freedom, democracy and upward mobility. It's impossible to live in the paradox the two present and is perfectly clear why the 2nd Great Awakening took off when it did and how the faces of these movements changed from what America was used to in the past.

Round and round and round we go

Reading "The Democracy of Christianity and the Character of American Politics" I was able to make a LOT of connections to so many other things we've studied in AmCon and other subjects I've had the opportunity to study. Thinking about this article in relation to other subjects I've studied, I was struck my the cyclic nature of so many different areas. We're told we study history so we "don't repeat the past" but when you look at it, we repeat the past all the time.

In Hatch's article we see this cycle of dissidents wanting to break away from the restrictive complexities of religion to simplify their spirituality and from those who break away we have more groups who break away from that. It seems almost never ending. Amy Johnson Fryholm spoke a bit about this during her lecture on apocalypticism and the differences in interpretations amongst those stories.

What was new to me in this whole ideal of cycles was how democracy and religious reforms where so interconnected. Its almost too difficult to see which came first. It makes perfect sense to me. If you have a whole nation of people with this intoxicating and invigorating energy its inevitable its going to spill over into other areas of life. Its kind of like when we talked about the abolitionists paving the way for women's rights. The nation rallied together and once they settled the issue (or started to) of slavery they had all this bundled up energy and motivation to do something else; so on it was to women's rights. It would be very interesting to see how else "energy" flows through American society. Can we link the energy and the movement all the way from the days of the American Revolution to today?

Amy Fryholm

To me, the most important idea in eading "Rapture Culture" was the idea of find a religion that "feels right" to you. As Amy pointed out countless number of times in her article, people get so caught up in their own views that they fail to see how similar the variations in religions ideas truly are. The example that struck me the most was when she was talking about the woman, Sarah. I think Sarah's narrative about her views vs the views of her parents and grandparents illustrates the "comfort" religion should bring. Religion is not about whose "right" or whose "wrong" its about what brings peace into your life.

I've never read the series Left Behind but from what I can infer from Amy's article is they push this "comfort" factor. We can see what religion they are coming from and what the creators and the authors believe, but they just want to find a way to integrate salvation and living a godly life into America culture. Amy points out that on their website they never specify a particular church for readers to attend, but one that places its foundation within the Bible.

Clearly, the creators of left behind have been successful. Like I mentioned earlier, I have never read the series, but I was familiar with it and their ideas before reading Amy's article.

Although our readings were pretty clear and easy to interpret, I feel as though they left me with more questions than answers.
Clearly women played a huge (but quiet) role in revivalism. What's not so clear to me is why. As we learned last semester, women, particularly in the church, didn't have much power. Especially in a widespread movement such as this one. Not only did women not have much power in society, they were seen as (in a way) secondary members to churches to their husbands. It was the men who ran the services, studies and the ones who were allowed to explore religion in a collective way. Women were expected to sit and listen. If they were denied participation, why were they so interested in religion and eager to become members of churches. It doesn't makes much sense to me. It's like giving a kid a basked of Halloween candy and saying they're not allowed to eat it. Why would any kid enjoy a Halloween like this?


My initial reaction to Mary Ryan's article was "who cares about this town?" and my second reaction was "wow, she had some amazing data to work with". What I found curious was the very specific years she gives as "revival periods". Johnson said in his history book that the 2nd Great Awakening has not clear start and end. So how did Ryan nail down such specific dates? What was it about these particular years (especially because they were so close together in time yet separate periods in her article) that made them revival-ing?

Brooks on Whitman

I did what DeAne suggested and read Whitman's essay "as fast as I could". She was absolutely right. I didn't take in a word of it (but I got through it). I went back and read Brooks’ commentary on the essay and although I still have to go back over Whiteman's original essay, I am starting to see some themes develop which are easy to relate to class.

My first AmCon "ah ha!" moment came at the end of Brooks’ commentary. He says "the nation could not readily communicate its mission, either to the world or to itself." This demonstrates what we spent the whole semester discussing and discovering. We can't easily define who we are or what we stand for as Americans. As we well know, concepts such as freedom, the American Dream, and democracy change with time, place and people. It’s amazing to think a powerful, enthusiastic country such as the United States of America can’t even really describe itself.

Looking back over Brooks’ commentary an earlier statement stood out after I thought about our inability to describe ourselves as a nation. He says “it is misleading to think one can arrive at a single, consistent judgment about the United States (or perhaps about any society).” Perhaps this is the reason we cannot describe ourselves easily. Too often we look for a single answer but in reality, there isn’t. Like we’ve discussed and discovered earlier, things change depending on the time, place and the people. The best thing we can do is adapt, keep an open mind and understand the changing nature of this country and its visions.