However, you selected one political philosopher who came to America for a short period of time early in this country’s history. While it’s certainly more intellectually sound than people paraphrasing Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck … I would offer up that the opinion of one man holds no more weight with me because of the scholarly nature of the source.

Though, I will not only partake in your game … I’ll even use the same hand you dealt me. The works of Alexis de Tocqueville. In his second book, Democracy In America II (1940) he got off this gem of a line, “I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.”

While your quotes concerning entitlement programs certainly speak to the nature of the modern Democratic Party. The quote I dug up speaks to the nature of the modern Republican Party who at ever turn seem to be looking at every new theory as danger, every social advance as the first step toward revolution, and they most certainly absolutely refuse to move at all.

Furthermore, you miss the point of entitlements being wrong when you bring up Mitt Romney’s quote in relation to what Tocqueville said. Mitt Romney got a 70,000 dollar plus tax credit because he owns a horse. He may be able to talk the talk, but he is certainly not walking the walk. Mitt Romney is just a guilty of taking entitlements as anyone who uses social welfare. The difference, is that we call the entitlements Mitt Romney gets subsidies and we view them as rewards for success and hard work. Whereas we demonize welfare recipients because they are taking from the system and are stereotyped as not putting anything back into the system. I would direct you and any like minded readers of the DCP to the story “Taking Responsibility on Welfare” from the New York Times to see that perhaps the people who receive social welfare aren’t just leaches sucking the leftovers from the bottom of the system.

Your resourcefulness in referencing a preeminent philosopher is respectable. However, the way you simply applied it to Romney’s 47% quote and went on to demonize people who receive social welfare entitlements was not at all respectable. It was, if anything, a vindictive indictment of the lower class … while the upper class and their entitlements went untouched by you. And it’s not that I don’t think the upper class is undeserving of their success, they worked for what they have. I also understand you are a Conservative and I’d assume are supporter of Mitt Romney. It’s fine you don’t want to shit where you eat, however its not admirable. And honestly … I think Tocqueville would be disappointed.

The quote has often been attributed to an 18th century Scottish history professor named Alexander Tytler, who is supposed to have written it in his work, “The Fall of the Athenian Republic.” This raises two significant problems: 1) the quotation cannot be found, and 2) neither can the book. The quote surfaced on the internet sometime after the 2000 presidential election, so we’re probably looking at authorship by a Republican political operative who remains anonymous.

If Mr. Watson would like a more fertile prophecy from the pen of Tocqueville, instead of this “largesse” nonsense, I would direct him to Volume II of “Democracy in America,” the chapter entitled “How an Aristocracy may be Created by Manufactures.” Here Tocqueville writes:

“I am of the opinion, on the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest that ever existed in the world; but at the same time it is one of the most confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless, the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction; for if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy penetrates into the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which it will enter.”

Tocqueville envisions the possibility of the Corporate state, and that is precisely where we find ourselves today. We have passed beyond the realm of democracy, notwithstanding the residue of its empty forms and trappings, and we have crossed over into the region of oligarchy.