Alexis de Tocqueville never met Nancy Slater White, but he would have liked her.
Tocqueville, of course, is the observational author whose 1835 book, Democracy in America, is considered by many to be a seminal work in defining what made America and the American character unique among nations. White was a Bethlehem, Pennsylvania businesswoman and community leader whose death in Northern Virginia, at the age of 91, left her with few contemporaries but plenty of devoted friends and family to mourn her passing.
At a time in which defining what makes America great too often boils down to an election return, they offer a lesson on why we should be thankful this weekend.
Raised in a time when opportunities were limited for women, Nancy White attended college on a scholarship, becoming a social worker and doing whatever was necessary to protect abused children – at one point tracking down a judge on the third tee of a golf course to get a court order signed before it was too late to help a particular child.
But it was in voluntary community efforts that she shone. Fifty years ago, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was largely a “company town.” While Bethlehem Steel continued to thrive, by the 1970s it would soon face the stresses resulting from growing competition – foreign imports and non-union mini-mills producing steel less expensively.
That was in the future, however, and steel executives continued to throw their weight around, diminishing the influence of local businesses and residents in shaping their own community and future. So White jumped in, helping create a merchants’ association to gather collective strength and fend off the ideas of professional planners who proposed things like banning on-street parking in the business district – a concept that surely would have eviscerated local shopkeepers.
With her husband, White used “sweat equity” to build two restaurants and a toy store in the city, developing a reputation that came in handy when she successfully managed the mayoral campaign of her friend, Frances Morrison – roles that women did not hold in those days. It mattered little that White was a Republican and Morrison a Democrat. There was a common goal to be achieved, good ideas to execute, and local problems to be solved: Let’s get on with it, politics be damned.
The concept of voluntary association to accomplish goals was familiar to Tocqueville. “In the United States,” Tocqueville wrote, “there is nothing the human will despairs of attaining through the free action of the combined power of individuals.”
“If a stoppage occurs in a thoroughfare and the circulation of vehicles is hindered, the neighbors immediately form themselves into a deliberative body; and this extemporaneous assembly gives rise to an executive power which remedies the inconvenience before anybody has thought of recurring to a pre-existing authority superior to that of the persons immediately concerned.”
As for investing our hopes in centralized government, Tocqueville dismissed the notion. Centralized government, he noted “excels in preventing, not doing.”
We were a new nation, and one that could grow without hindrance from old world aristocracies and monarchies. “Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living,” he wrote. “Labor is held in honor; the prejudice is not against but in its favor.” In the old world, the poor had no hope of escaping their class; the rich took guaranteed wealth for granted. In the new world, they saw opportunity; they hustled.
This was unique to America. Voluntary associations – citizens organized for mutual purpose — balanced out what Tocqueville viewed as the potential dangers of an unfettered “every man for himself” democracy. In the political world, the thriving existence of voluntary associations empowers a minority, protecting against a “tyranny of the majority” that could abuse its power and oppress unpopular minorities and marginalized individuals.
This was happening nowhere else in the world. But success, Tocqueville cautioned, depended heavily on civic engagement by citizens within their communities. Unengaged and isolated individuals would prove unhappy and poor citizens of a representative democracy. To achieve common goals would require connection and collaboration and, yes, even compromise.
Tocqueville theorized. White – and millions of Americans then and since – put theory into practice.
“Yes, but its different now. National elections now create hard passions,” you say. And yet: “Long before the date arrives, the election becomes everyone’s major, not to say sole, preoccupation. The ardor of the various factions intensifies, and whatever artificial passions the imagination can create in a happy and tranquil country make their presence felt. . . . As the election draws near, intrigues intensify, and agitation increases and spreads. The citizens divide into several camps, each behind its candidate. A fever grips the entire nation. The election becomes the daily grist of the public papers, the subject of private conversations, the aim of all activity.” So noted Alexis de Tocqueville 189 years ago.
But end they did: “This ardor dissipates, calm is restored, and the river, having briefly overflowed its banks, returns peacefully to its bed.” The people returned to their work, their families, and engaging in their communities.
What is different now is a laziness our forebears could not afford. Engagement, real engagement, is difficult. It takes time. It takes commitment. It’s easier to “post.” It’s harder to “solve.” It’s easier to claim allegiance to a social media “community” where everyone agrees; harder to face a live person across a table.
Which may well be the real danger to the experiment begun some 248 years ago.
So … a moment this weekend to give thanks to those who brought us where we are. And a moment to say a prayer that we are up to the challenge to help it prosper and in so doing prosper ourselves.
Despite our imperfections, that nation Tocqueville wrote of, and that Nancy White added her own sweat equity to, offers the greatest opportunity and the greatest freedom to seek that opportunity of all nations on earth.
Out of all the places we could have ended up, we ended up here. That, alone, is worth giving thanks for.