Often cited as an important reason for US success as a global power, our diversity has finally come home to roost, and it’s taking a destructive, cruel toll. A unique magic glue that we somehow thought would keep myriad groups in America working at unison with a common goal forever, has unhardened, lost both its adhesive properties and cohesive strength, leaving us with a divided America. No; not as a simplistic two-part nation, but as a fragmented Humpty Dumpty beyond the conservative-liberal political fray.
Almost two centuries ago, French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville in his book “Democracy in America” (1835) not only gave us a sociological perspective on America’s equality and individualism but what might be construed as a study on economic success. His travels in 1831 along geographically-expanding America, in the midst of an agrarian evolution, as well as an industrial revolution, gave him an insight that we might consider preluding today’s globalization. Tocqueville saw a surging nation without any apparent geographical borders [that could be readily enforced by other nations]; a very rapidly increasing immigrant population fleeing the economic woes in Europe; and the lack of commercial barriers (duties) imposed by small governmental units.
And within a century of Tocqueville’s travels, the United States did become a miracle, colossus-nation that combined an enormous contiguous land mass; a productive large population; and a government which provided 80-plus percent of the population with what could be described as reasonable socio-economic mobility and, yes, freedom.
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