Tocqueville’s warning against soft despotism: What comes next?

Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is his discussion of “soft despotism” Julian Zelizer says Tocqeville foresaw a society like today 's in 2025 America .

Zelizer: Beyond the Bad lies the Very Bad: citizens lose the use of their wills, feeling by themselves.

Tocqueville saw the Very Bad when writing Volume One .

He warned of a centralized power that “destroys [institutions and customs] or modifies them at its will.

The sovereign “therefore has a singular power among democratic peoples, the very idea of which aristocratic nations could not conceive”.

Tocqueville warns forebododingly of the Very Bad: For the time approaches, when power is going to pass from hand to hand, when political theories will succeed one another.

Today , when politicians use words like “freedom” or “democracy” it is unconvincing.