Essay Topic No. 2--Due in Discussion Sections, Week 9

"Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association (Democracy in America, 403-404)." Many commentators have viewed Tocqueville’s treatment of the American proclivity toward voluntary organization to be his most important insight into the nature of the American society he observed in the 1830s. Why is this point so important to Tocqueville? What defects in American society did he see it as solving?