Liberty To Protect Liberty

As a great political thinker in the19th century, Tocqueville studied under a wide range of ideas, including democracy, equality, liberty, revolution and so on. The former scholars always focused on his theory of democracy or the conflict between democracy and liberty. However, the author thought Tocqueville was most concerned about the theme of "liberty", he is essentially a liberalism thinker, and his liberalism is distinctive.In Tocqueville’s famous works "Democracy in America","Old regime and great revolution" and " Memoirs", we could find his love of liberty everywhere. Why was he so fond of liberty? We could find the answer from two aspects:theoretical and socio-political background. In theory, the author thought that Tocqueville’s thought was partly from Montesquieu, Rousseau and Constant. From the social and political background, Tocqueville’s life in France and his visit in the United States played an important role for the formation of his liberalism.From the view of time, Tocqueville was in the last stage of classical liberalism, his thought partly inherited the classical liberalism. Tocqueville not only stressed the liberty of personal, safety, property and other various items related to the field of private life, but also revealed the dangers of this kind of liberty:leading to the devoid of public morality, personal isolation, social apathy and people without any individual character. Being able to jump out from the limits of classical liberalism and aware the drawbacks of the excessive pursuit of individual liberty, Tocqueville became an extraordinary liberal at that time without any doubt.Another important part of Tocqueville’s liberalism was "political liberty", this thought formed during his visit in the United States. The core of the political liberty is political participation, which means citizens actively participate in political life and implement the political rights. To realize this liberty, rational systems are very necessary. Tocqueville focused on three systems, the rural self-government, the federal system and the jury system. In addition, the "liberty of association" and "liberty of the press" were also indispensable parts of his liberalism."Individual liberty","political liberty","liberty of association" and "liberty of the press" constitute Tocqueville’s liberalism thought. However, through in-depth exploration, the author believed that there were close links between these liberties."Liberty to protect liberty" is the essence of Tocqueville’s liberalism thought.Liberty must be achieved through the subjects’own activities, which was always Tocqueville’s belief. In other words, to achieve liberty, citizens must actively participate in social life. This idea contained the protection of political liberty to individual liberty. The most important function of political liberty was the political education for citizens, which was Tocqueville’s discerning place. Futhermore, political liberty was also able to develop civic virtue, cultivate public spirit, confront the indifference of society, and to overcome the various problems of individual liberty, and finally safeguard the individual liberty.Association and publication also played important roles in safeguarding liberty, the most important aspect was to joint weak against the powerful countries, and to defend liberty.Tocqueville’s liberalism thought not only critically inherited the classical liberalism, but also enlightened Mill and other liberals. Today, in the21st century, we recall Tocqueville once again. How time flies! But we can still get a lot of inspirations from his thought, which is the greatness of a "new liberal"...