Democracy in America was one hell of a read. Probably seven times in the last five years or so, I have picked it up and read it from cover to cover. Some places there are more underlined lines than those I left alone.  It is back as my bathroom read. You have to put yourself into the year 1848 to appreciate lines like this:

...my hatred is concentrated against those who, after a thousand years of equality, introduced slavery into the world again. Whatever efforts the Americans of the South make to maintain slavery, they will not forever succeed. Slavery is limited to one point on the globe and attacked by Christianity as unjust and by political economy as fatal; slavery, amid the democratic liberty and enlightenment of our age is an institution that cannot last. Either slave or master will put an end to it. In either case great misfortunes are to be anticipated...(363)

God protect me from trying, as certain American writers do try to justify the principle of Negro slavery; I am only saying that all those who formerly accepted this terrible principle are not now equally free to get rid of it.

Any intermediate measures seem to me likely to terminate and that shortly, in the most horrible of civil wars and perhaps in the extermination of one or other of the two races. (360)

Western Europe had abolished slavery.  Twelve years or so later, the Tsar abolishes it...well sort of. And America is a result of the enlightenment in Western Europe. For Tocqueville, THE END IS NEAR. QED he is predicting civil wars not just a civil war.

Tocqueville warns the South that even if they were victorious in their attempt to break the union, they will end up in other wars with the 'negro race' and the North will not come to their aid. (358)

And even though folks like Scalia and Sessions might feel that the eyes of the rest of the world have nothing to do with us, Tocqueville is saying it is idiotic to forget your roots America. Western European Thought alone will not countenance this sin.

But what is to happen when emancipation occurs?

To give a man liberty but to leave him in ignominious misery, what was that but to prepare a leader for some future slave rebellion. Morover it had long been noticed that the presence of a free Negro vaguely disturbs the minds of those no free, infecting them with some glimmering notion of their rights. In most cases the Americans of the South have deprived the masters of the right to emancipate. (362)

I know I am jumping around a bit, but Tocqueville is jumping around. Because he is having as much trouble coming to grips with the enormity of the problem of race in America. Slavery is just on of the issues. In other words, abolish slavery and you will still have slavery, just in another form.  Just as it did in Tsarist Russia and in America.

He even sites a model for one possible outcome, and that model is Spain. Eventually the 'moors'just kind of gave up and left for their countries of origin. (358)

He also speaks of racial mixing.

There are parts of the United States where Europeans and Negro blood are so crossed that one cannot find a man who is either completely white or completely black; when that point has been reached, one can really say that the races are mixed or rather that there is a third race derived from these two but no precisely one or the other. (356)

This just became of interest to me because of the class structure among the African Americans over the last century or so where the 'lighter' blacks created their own special caste or class. But as far as Southern Whites, no such class was admitted... You are 25% black? Then you are Black. Are you 8% Black? Then you are Black. That's it. End of discussion.

And you look at Germany in the first half of the 20th century, writing all these studies on the European Jews. Once you reached some percentage of being Jewish, you were Jewish. And they got very technical about it in terms of whether or not the grandparent of Jewis Descent was male or female. And those ideas changed over time. 

By abolishing the principle of servitude, the Americans make slaves free.

Perhaps what follows would be hard to understand unless I quote an example, and I will choose that of New York. In 1788 the state of New York forbade the sale of slaves in its territory. That was a roundabout way of prohibiting importation. Henceforth only the birth rate increased the Negro population. Eight years later a more decisive measure was taken, and it was declared that from July 4, 1799 all children born of slave parents should be free. That closed all means of increase; though there are still some salves one may say that slavery does not exist.(350)

See, we have to remember that slavery was abolished in the North OVER TIME.  And people were not holding hands and singing: 'We Are The World' either.

Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known.

So the Negro is free, but he cannot share the rights, pleasures, labors, griefs, or even the tomb of him whose equal he has been declared; there is nowhere where he can meet him, neither in life nor in death.

In the South, where slavery still exists, less trouble is taken to keep the Negro apart; they sometimes share the labors and the pleasures of the white men; people are prepared to mix with them to some extend; legislation is more harsh against them, but customs are more tolerant and gentle. (343)

Well now I may let loose my disdain for the liars and hypocrites:

Daily Beast:

Thirty-eight-year-old Audra Shay's campaign to become the next chairman of the Young Republicans went from obscure to infamous over the past week, after The Daily Beast revealed details of posts of her Facebook account. Specifically, a thread where one of her friends posts that ""Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist... Muslim is on there side [sic]... need to take this country back from all of these mad coons... and illegals," and Shay responds eight minutes later with: "You tell em Eric! lol."

"This is an outrage and I CANNOT believe this nation has him as our leader! It makes me sick!" She posted a few minutes later: "My disdain for Obama is directly proportionate for his disdain of this country."

Taken by themselves, the exchanges on Shay's page might be dismissed as an isolated ugly incident.  But there's a pattern emerging from the fringe of the GOP grassroots. Three weeks ago, former South Carolina State Election Director and Richland County GOP Chairman Rusty DePass "joked" on his Facebook page that first lady Michelle Obama was descended from a gorilla which had gone missing from a local zoo. Days later, Tennessee state legislative aide Sherri Goforth emailed out an image labeled "Historical Keepsake"--showing august portraits of all the presidents of the United States, ending with a pair of googly-eyes peering out from a black background to symbolize President Obama. When confronted, the aide to State Senator Diane Black said only that she regretted sending the image to the wrong email list and from her government address. She was "reprimanded" by her supervisors but not otherwise punished (a forced furlough at Memphis's National Civil Rights Museum would have been an inspired penalty). And of course, all this has taken place after Chip Saltzman's bid to be RNC Chairman was derailed by his decision to mail out a parody CD featuring the song "Barack the Magic Negro." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124692407982802911.html#mod=rss_Politics_And_Policy

And our own friends at Cafe have discussed the pool incident at length. http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/cjames/2009/07/why-guilty-white-liberals-feel.php#comment-3522650

But be sure to read Jonnienohands' comment in that blog. Remember everyone is on the alert for a liberal that may sound racist. As though we, and I mean me, get a racist thought from time to time...

You see a liberal understands his or her shortfalls. Understands that things must change because we are all a part of the system that perpetrates injustice.

The South would point out the deficiencies of the North with regard to their racial and racist policies. This in an attempt to cover up their own sins.

Neoboho gave me this gem called Mississippi Goddam..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAYVaHEMK0I

Nina Simone gives voice to some of her problems with the North.

Racism is not only a disease of the South. But I believe it is an inextricable disease of the Republican Party.

My last blogs on Sessions and Steve King would complete this gig. Steve Katz & Old Golden Decoy referred me to sources in my Sessions piece.

I intend to get back to Tocqueville several times this summer on other subjects. And has an interesting take on Native Americans and Alexis detested Andrew Jackson. And for good reason.

(The tome from which I quote is Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville, translated by George Lawrence, Harper & Row, 1966 NYNY)