I come to you from a Franco-American background, and thought I could provide some insight on feminism and current politics because of my deep experience of two cultures that both consider themselves to be the "bastion of freedom and human rights". I am probably less anti-feminist than most here (because I believe you can’t fight for justice unless you take everybody’s point of view into account and nuance you opinions and systems, whether or not AWALT), but I've been spending more and more time on this subreddit, and am pretty sure you will all find what follows to be interesting.

First off, some historical context. Although many politicians and other propagandists wish us to believe all the "miracles of democracy" appeared in a matter of years by the greatness and rationality of humans, this is not the case. Notably, the "French Revolution" (ie, actually getting to a stable democracy) was a process that spanned some 80 or so. As an ironic example, without the iron grip of Napoleon and his bureaucratization of democratic principles, it is hard to say what the final result would have been ; we might not even have property rights in Europe.

After Napoleon's First Empire, a monarchic power closer to the British kind (where the parliament had more and more political influence) rose and stood for some 30-odd years. It is during this period that a young aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville (tock-veal), decided that from June 1831 to May 1832, he would spend a year in the only true democracy of the time, the birthing and expanding United States.

This experience defined him. He spent the next ten years of his life writing his opus magnum : Democracy in America. In a first volume, published in 1835, he analyzes the American political system, the institutions, incentive schemes, power structures – what’s good, what’s bad. His analyses are compelling, especially for a form of government that was so novel at the time. He is a founder of political science (the smart kind).

The second volume is even more fascinating. In it, Tocqueville analyzes American "society" as he saw it. What a democratic, rather than aristocratic, social structure looked like – in a word, the "religion of the human rights" as it was being born. The accuracy and depth of his arguments, as well as the predictions he makes, are as riveting as they are chilling.

Tocqueville believed that the great dynamic behind the rise of democracy was a phenomenon he coined as "equalization of conditions". For Tocqueville, "equality of conditions" is the idea that every man, women, child, drukard, prophet has the exact same quantity of an abstract, spiritual value, which we generally refer to as "human value" or "human dignity". This idea was in stark opposition to aristocratic regimes, where being born into a line of nobles meant being literally "worth more" than a commoner – however, in a democratic society, even though you can still have servants, you cannot own slaves. Tocqueville realized how attractive was this idea that the nobleman isn’t better than the commoner, nor the man better than the woman, nor the white man better than the black man. To him, any regime that would try to go back from such a "democratic society", a "religion of human rights", back to an "aristocratic" one would inevitably fail. Hierarchical power structures would remain, so long as each human had the same basic rights (isonomy, ie, you don’t get better treatment just cause you’re white) and the same political power (isegory, ie, only ever one vote per citizen be he king or fool).

He prophecized that this dynamic would inexorably bring democracy to be the only form of viable regime for the large bureaucracies and empires that were being constructed at the time.

Interestingly, Tocqueville did not dislike democracy, quite the contrary.

But he was wary.

Here is an excerpt, nearing the end of the second book, from a chapter titled "What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear".

Remember, this was published in 1840.

" […] No sovereign ever lived in former ages so absolute or so powerful as to undertake to administer by his own agency, and without the assistance of intermediate powers, all the parts of a great empire: none ever attempted to subject all his subjects indiscriminately to strict uniformity of regulation, and personally to tutor and direct every member of the community. The notion of such an undertaking never occurred to the human mind; and if any man had conceived it, the want of information, the imperfection of the administrative system, and above all, the natural obstacles caused by the inequality of conditions, would speedily have checked the execution of so vast a design. […] When the Roman emperors were at the height of their power, the different nations of the empire still preserved manners and customs of great diversity […] their tyranny was extremely onerous to the few, but it did not reach the greater number; it was fixed to some few main objects, and neglected the rest; it was violent, but its range was limited.

But it would seem that if despotism were to be established amongst the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them. I do not question, that in an age of instruction and equality like our own, sovereigns might more easily succeed in collecting all political power into their own hands, and might interfere more habitually and decidedly within the circle of private interests, than any sovereign of antiquity could ever do. […]

When I consider the petty passions of our contemporaries, the mildness of their manners, the extent of their education, the purity of their religion, the gentleness of their morality, their regular and industrious habits, and the restraint which they almost all observe in their vices no less than in their virtues, I have no fear that they will meet with tyrants in their rulers, but rather guardians. I think then that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world: our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I am trying myself to choose an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it, but in vain; the old words "despotism" and "tyranny" are inappropriate: the thing itself is new; and since I cannot name it, I must attempt to define it.

I seek to imagine under which new traits despotism may appear in the world. I see an innumerable crowd of people, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure themselves some petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, as if living apart from the rest, is a stranger to the fate of all others—his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of humankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them – he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists only within himself and for himself alone; and if a family still remain to him, it may be said at any rate that he has lost his Fatherland.

Above these humans stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to insure their extasy and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, forethoughtful, and soft. It could be likened to the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for virile age; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual infancy: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. This government willingly labors for the happiness of its people, but of this happiness it wishes to be the sole agent and the only arbiter. It insures their security, foresees and provides for their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates their legacies, divides their inheritance ; if only it could simply free them entirely from the troubles of thinking and the bother of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits. After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. […] A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience. I do not however deny that a constitution of this kind appears to me to be infinitely preferable to one, which, after having concentrated all the powers of government, should vest them in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons. Of all the forms which democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be the worst. […]

One often forgets that it is in the minutiae that it is most dangerous to enslave men. I, for my part, would be tempted to believe freedom to be less important in the great things than in the meager ones, if one could be assured of the former without the latter.

[…]

It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one could trick me into believing that a liberal, wise, and energetic government could ever spring from the suffrages of a subservient people. "

A few notes before I conclude. The word "liberal" in the last paragraph has greatly evolved. As Tocqueville uses it, it is with its original definition : a defender of fundamental liberties ; this idea was key to the Enlightenment and was later adopted and distorted by various acceptions of movements for "human rights".

The expression "if only [the power] could simply free them entirely from the troubles of thinking and the bother of living" is untranslatable (I did my best). It is one of the most beautiful sentences I have ever heard in French, but the richness of its meaning is very hard to convey. Originally, it is "que ne peut-il leur ôter entièrement le trouble de penser et la peine de vivre ?" The structure is reminiscent of theater speech, of the "oh, woe is me" sort of lamentation. But here, with the expressions he uses, literally "trouble of thinking" and "pain of living", you can infer that it is very sarcastic, because "peine" is mostly used as "bother" in French, as in "ne te donne pas la peine" which means "don’t even bother". With this sentence, he perfectly describes all the banality and worthlessness of life in a society that enforces prosperity and idleness rather than dreams and accomplishment.

In addition, Tocqueville shows a few times in his book an uncanny mastery of critical thinking : he even knows when he is missing a word when he speaks about despotism. In another similar instance, he uses "materialism" (the belief that everything is but matter) to exactly describe and warn of what Nietzsche coined as "nihilism" later. Nietzsche did this in order to dissect the two forms of materialism : nihilism is the idea that life has no intrinsic, divine-given value. What to do then ? One answer is joyous and self-determining "I’ll just arbitrarily decide that this is important, if only to me, and fuck everyone else", the other depressive, idle, content and passive "nothing matters… let’s just eat cake and watch Netflix" think emo or just most humans in a consumerist society.

When Tocqueville describes this "despotism by softness/tenderness" I am instantly reminded of Hannah Arendt’s definition of totalitarianism : "A regime that seeks to insert itself into every realm of every being’s life". Political correctness, 24h news, mandatory civic education, omnipresent advertising... anyone ? With this definition, democracy is a tender totalitarianism.

So my argument is that Tocqueville, back in 1840, had noticed that the pursuit of "equality" would ultimately lead to the enforcement of "identity" (as in ‘identical’) : ie, conformism. However, conformism can not be insured by the making the "lows" of society become the "tops", it can only be ensured by making everyone the "lows". In addition, you can’t ensure fairness in every case for as complex a problem as "the exact differences between men and men, women and women, men and women", so everyone HAS to be the SAME, maybe they’re actually born the same and it’s just society that moulds them ! ... whether this is scientifically justifiable or not. Consequently, your dreams are allowed to be petty ; being a great ski instructor ; but not great ; if you want to be Alexander the Great, you’ll be told you’re actually Hitler.

In the end, only by reviewing this version of justice, the "human rights" ; this version of the moral religion that governs our society, "equality of outcome/conditions" ; can we truly hope to improve our societies for the better. My money is on "equality of opportunity" (ie, to allow <insert epic man here> to be treated like the heros of old and be given more rights or power than a random Chad or Chump as long as he pays his dues) combined with an ultimate spiritual objective the nietzschean "happy nihilism", which is a form of love for life rooted in passionate stoicism – "amor fati", the love of fate.

It is this mentally that I tend to find more here that has attracted me to this community.

Anyhoot, thanks to those that read this fully. I hope this will launch debate in the comments ; I thought this politically incorrect analysis of democracy could interest some here.

[A full source can be found here : http://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm#link2HCH0073 although I reviewed some parts of the translation I understood particularly well, in order to stay closer to the subtext in the French wording. If you are interested in democracy, the most intelligent analysis I have ever read is titled "The end of history, or the last man" by Francis Fukuyama, an American scholar.]

TLDR : an early XIXth French scholar visited the USA for 1 year, saw the core of democratic ideology, and used this to predict the form despotism would take in democracy, which he described as a unwittingly totalitarian bureaucratic control of moral beliefs and human endeavors, while maintaining prosperity.