This is a quick post to thank TPMCafe and my fellow panelists here for this fascinating discussion of my book Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies. It's really interesting that so much discussion landed on the idea of fear, and whether another kind of threat looms aside from what Heather called the "specific, classic form of demagoguery that Mike so elegantly traces" (thanks).

Heather, Brian, and Matt have focused, in their own ways, on a quieter, more under-the-radar, even more insidious kind of danger -- whether the fear that plays through our hearts in today's disturbing economic time or the complacency of those who casually watched as George W. Bush arrogated to himself so many extraconstitutional powers. I draw the distinction in the book between "hard" and "soft" demagoguery, borrowing from the political scientist James Ceaser at the University of Virginia, and I think the distinction has something to say to us here. I write in the book:

"Hard" demagogues actively stir the passions through antagonism and division. "Soft" demagogues, on the other hand, employ flattery, currying favor through impossible promises.16 In both cases, demagogues connect with large groups of ordinary people. And in either instance, they often earn the reputation of a villain, which they usually deserve.

This discussion brings me to a usually ignored passage from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. De Tocqueville is one of the heroes of the book, and at the end of his vast and bizarrely prescient tome on American democracy he includes a haunting few paragraphs about the dangers not of demagogues -- the "specific, classic" danger I focus on in Demagogue -- but of something very different: complacency among a democratic people.

De Tocqueville wrote his book to convince the French that democracy could succeed in France, in its second turn through Europe, after the disastrous and bloody "cycle of regimes" that occurred during the French Revolution, which began in "liberte, egalite, fraternite" and ended with guillotines and Robespierre.

De Tocqueville was generally felicitous in his description of democracy's power, which began in his observation of America's "mores" -- our deep constitutional values -- which, he argued, kept demagogues at bay and the democracy secure.

At p. 663 of his 700 page book, however de Tocqueville allows himself a meditation not on demagogues and tyranny, but on a more refined, deadly threat. "I myself seek in vain an expression that exactly reproduces the idea that I form for it myself and that contains it," he confessed, for "the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable. The thing is new, therefore I must try to define it, since I cannot name it."

His concern was that citizens, en masse, could become obsessed with "Small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls," that would lead people to only care about "his children and his particular friends," who would become "the whole human species for him."

Amid this wave of inward thinking, an "immense tutelary power" could emerge among citizens. It would posture as one who "willingly works for their happiness," but with a dangerous twist: "it wants to be the unique and sole arbiter of that."

And then individualism begans to disappear while a new kind of tyranny emerges from the new "sovereign." Read this haunting, elegaic passage in full:

Thus, after taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is a shepherd.

Demagogue is a book about demagogues, yes, and about instability, violence, the "cycle of regimes," and overthrows. But it is more fundamentally about constitutionalism -- a culture of freedom where citizens always control the government. I write in the book about Hannah Arendt's idea of "natality" -- that each individual does, and should, have political power, because of her ability to create something new -- an idea, a thought, an action -- to be born. The death of natality -- the fact that the sovereign can "prevent things from being born" -- fixated de Tocqueville.

This, to me, is the greatest danger today -- that the maze of mass media, unscrupulous politicians, poor civic education, unchallenging ideas, and a sense of political powerlessness contrive to create a new kind of "sovereign" -- the unintentional concentration of power into those a culture of dependence and complacency (and, yes, fear) that saps our constitutional powers.

And this book is one small attempt to breathe some oxygen into our political discussion. Against anything that "hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes," in de Tocqueville's words, we need political discussion that's more like a strong cup of coffee. Freedom might be a bit strong, a bit bracing, even acidic, but it wakes us up and forces us to look through the eyes of morning, daylight, and the future -- for better or for worse, that's in our hands -- that lies ahead.