1/6 Covid-19 and the Rise of "Soft Despotism"

Alexis de Tocqueville coined the term in the 1800s. It describes how a country can be overrun by a litany of small, complicated rules and how this type of administrative control breeds fear, uncertainty, and doubt in a populace.

2/6 “After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community.”

3/6 “It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate.”

4/6 “The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting.”

5/6 “Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it... stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

6/6 Tocqueville concluded that the thing which saves America from this type of tyranny are “habits of the heart” such as family life, religious engagement, civic participation, and social involvement.

Have we lost our habits of the heart?