Alexis de Tocqueville on 'Political Correctness'

In his Sept. 24 column, "The Value of Debate in the War on Terrorism," Adam Frankel '03 touches on a feature of American life that goes beyond our current preoccupation with the war on terrorism. There is a manifest reluctance in America to engage in truly far-ranging debate on any controversial issue, unless that debate can be cast safely as a form of entertainment, such as CNN's Cross-fire or ABC's Politically Incorrect, and even the latter is now imperiled over just one remark that offended sponsors.

A while ago a European employee of McKinsey & Co. remarked during lunch that the views among Americans on almost any issue struck him as so homogeneous that to him, Americans came across as "almost brainwashed." I rejected the idea of "brainwashing" and referred him to a more elegant explanation, to which our own daughter had referred me years before when I had offered a similar assessment of this nation's narrow and invariably technical debate on the deeply troubling moral issues surrounding our health policy.

Possibly to the surprise of many freedom-loving Americans, in his famous Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: "I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." He went on to say:

"In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases; but woe to him if he goes beyond them."

De Tocqueville hastened to add that he who breached the permissible limits on free speech would not be subjected to an auto-da-fe in our democracy. Instead, he would be marginalized politically, socially and sometimes economically. "You are free to think differently from me and retain your life, your property and all that you possess," de Tocqueville had the indignant majority tell such a deviant, "but you are henceforth a stranger among your people. You may retain your civil rights, but they will be useless to you, for you will never be chosen by your fellow citizens if you solicit their votes; and they will affect to scorn you if you ask for their esteem."

Were he to write about America today, de Tocqueville probably would describe what he called the "tyranny of the majority" as "political correctness." At any moment there is in America — including in academia — a politically correct view for every issue of major import, be it foreign policy, domestic policy or major ideas in general. Anyone who dares step outside the narrow boundaries around the politically correct view will swiftly be infelicitously labeled, either as a socialist, or a fascist, or a sexist or some other ____ist, and, in the current context, as unpatriotic or cowardly. In many instances, such labels can be outright career killers, just as de Tocqueville warned and The New York Times reports Sept. 29 in its "In Patriotic Time, Dissent is Muted."

At the moment, the politically correct view in connection with the Sept. 11 terrorist attack appears to be that there is, in Arab nations, a high incidence of a mental illness that makes those who have contracted it hate with envy our Constitution and our zest for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is pretty much the explanation that President Bush promulgated shortly after the attack and that the nation now has embraced to the exclusion of further debate on other possible causes of such hatred. The politically correct remedy for this mental illness appears to be that we must bomb or shoot someone soon (although, as The Wall Street Journal's lead editorial of Sept. 29 concedes, "there seems to be some confusion in Washington" over just who that should be). In any event, goes the politically correct current doctrine, "we" must be prepared to take casualties as "we" fight the terrorists in their sanctuaries abroad.

According to Mr. Ted S. Liao '02's letter, published in the Sept. 24 issue of the 'Prince' as well, Messrs. Nathaniel Hoopes '03 and Peter Hegseth '03 labeled Mr. Dan Wachtell '02's earlier call for restraint in our war on terrorism "cowardice masquerading as conscience." It is the classic smear of which de Tocqueville wrote. In this case it triggers the fair question whether Messrs. Hoopes and Hegseth have joined or soon will join our armed forces, personally to carry the recommended fight to the terrorists, or whether they, too, prefer to show their "courage" and their "patriotism" by letting others take that risk, like so many "brave and patriotic" talking heads in the Congress and in our media who now seem eager for war and ready "to take casualties." Uwe Reinhardt is the James Madison Professor of Political Economy in the economics department and the Wilson School. He can be reached at reinhard@princeton.edu.