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Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in the winter of 1831( at the age of 25 ) with his companion, Gustave de Beaumont. They stayed for ten months and traveled much of the country east of the Mississippi.
The objective for the journey from Paris?
Well, it was complicated. Alexis, a lawyer and an aristocrat, didn't get along very well with the new monarch, Louis Phillipe--a little distance, he figured, might be better for his career. So, he proposed that he and M. Beaumont research the penal system in the new world to discern strategies of incarceration that might improve French prisons.
But, the outcome that most of us remember is the classic, "Democracy in America" that de Tocqueville penned after he returned to France--not a treatise on French prisons. A major thesis in his exploration of the American "experiment" was this: the new country works because it holds two often opposing notions as basic to the democracy. The two tenets: the rights of the individual and the consideration of the common good. Tocqueville described the equal weight given to both, describing the image of an entire village helping a neighbor raise a barn; and the equally strong right of the individual.
One hundred years later, a group of sociologists at Berkeley decided to study those two fundamental elements of American life to see if they were both equally weighted. Their study, published in the 1930s, reported that indeed both elements were still equal--that the individual's rights were highly valued in our society; and the search to discern the common good, the good of the community, was evident in villages and cities across the land.
The study was replicated by Berkeley sociologists again. It was the 1980s: post WWII, post Vietnam, post women's rights, civil rights, a huge move toward patient rights and protections,and a million other movements small and large. This time, however, the outcome was different. The researchers reported that the pendulum had swung. No longer was there equal weighting between the individual and the common good. This time, 150 years after de Tocqueville's observations, the rights of the individual heavily outweighed the rights of the community/ those representing the common good, the good for all.
Litigation had escalated during the 50 years between the two studies, including seminal cases that reached the Supreme Court and changed the face of America's history--Roe v. Wade that led to legalized abortion, Karen Ann Quinlan and Peggy Cruzan's case that led to legislation to protect the individual's right to choose whether, and under what conditions, they chose to die.
This past week, all of the above facts, many of which I teach in my medical ethics classes, were front and center for me because of the devastating tragedy in Blacksburg, Virginia. It's frankly taken me all week to figure out how to write coherently about it, to make sense of it, to imagine the sorrow of all those involved.
But, I'm involved, too. I'm not interested in Monday morning quarterback-ing. However, the Virginia Tech deaths reminded me of what I see as the danger in our current society that honors individual rights, individual privacy, the individual with less regard for the impact that weighting places or the effect it renders on the community at large.
What if the academic community had taken a risk and scrutinized the shooter more carefully? Listened to the faculty, some of whom were outspoken about his behavior and the possible consequences? Don't misunderstand, I'm not sure any more could have been done based on the little I know from media coverage. But I do know that we, as a society, seem somehow timid, maybe even fail courage when it might not be "going with the flow". Or, worse, that we might risk litigation if we don't protect an individual's rights--even if the greater good is possible.
I recognize that it's more complicated than either/ or. Take the Supeme Court's decision this week--to ban partial birth abortions. On the one hand, it is an opportunity to keep abortions limited to the first two trimesters, and, except for health reasons of the mother in the third trimester, prevent this procedure's use for women who could have made the decision earlier. But, many on the left see it as a wedge that will re-open the debate on a woman's right to choose, and eventually, because of the political composition of the Court, overturn Roe v. Wade.
Gun control is equally as complicated. While we have a right to bear arms, the number of weapons in our country is staggering, the ease with which they can be obtained, frightening. Is it good for our individual rights to bear arms end up putting adolescents at risk?
My heart aches for all of us. I suppose my turning to analysis of our evolution as a country is my attempt to creat order out of the chaos of this past week. An opportunity to mourn a little for another loss of innocence in a nation. I wonder if maybe we've temporarily lost our way. I worry that we have lost our moral compass--not the fundamentalists' notion of morality that proposes a legalistic approach. But rather, digging deep down into our collective conscience, and discerning --What is the Right Thing To Do For All of Us? A return to an ideal that believes in the transformation of men and women engaged in dialogue and looking toward something bigger than themselves.
And, I wonder. What would de Tocqueville see if he walked down Broadway or Michigan Avenue, or Rodeo Drive today? I think he might tremble.
M.C.
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