Tocqueville recognised the inexorable march of democracy in the world and, with reservations, welcomed it.
Given his family history and background, Alexis de Tocqueville had every reason to become a reactionary monarchist. Born in 1805, ten of his ancestors were arrested and imprisoned during the revolutionary Terror, five of them guillotined and the rest having escaped that fate only because of the downfall of Robespierre.
Instead, he recognised the inexorable march of democracy in the world and, with reservations, welcomed it. At any rate, he recognised that there was no return to the ancien regime, any more than an omelette can be returned to its eggs. Nevertheless, he also had conservative instincts, not surprisingly for a man of his class, and whenever radicalism threatened disorder, he always sided with the restoration of order, even at the cost of violence.
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Theodore Dalrymple is a contributing editor of City Journal and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
This piece originally appeared in Law & Liberty