Original: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v85v7cj4x08v5w5/june2023-432fgr.pdf?dl=0

Tocqueville’s Warning to America: Our Liberty Is at Stake
(Introduction)

In 1831, a 26-year-old named Alexis de Tocqueville sailed to America on a matter of grave import.

The Frenchman was visiting to study – what else? – our young nation’s prison system. He was on assignment from King Louis Phillipe I, a liberal ruler who survived a whopping seven assassination attempts. Understandably, the embattled king was quite interested in bolstering his country’s detention centers.

But as alluring as our prisons and penitentiaries were, Tocqueville quickly abandoned his mission…

He opted, instead, to travel across our great land, jotting down observations that would become the basis for the classic text Democracy in America.

This two-part work sought to express the uniqueness of America’s culture and government… and the ways the country might be undone. It contains a host of thoughts that remain painfully relevant today.

But it’s this specific excerpt that stood out most as I was handed the pen to introduce this month’s issue…

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.

Tocqueville is describing the conditions that could lead to despotic rule.

When a nation depends fully on its own government for survival… and for happiness itself… and is incapable of meeting its own needs… that nation is no longer free, he argued.

The prescience of this idea is especially clear at a time when “decentralization” is often uttered as if it were a curse word. I want you to keep Tocqueville’s warning front and center in your mind as you explore this month’s issue.

The Issue at Hand

The concept of liberty, as always, was close to our writers’ hearts this month. Like Tocqueville, Andy questions the role of a government that has swelled to unprecedented size… and has an outsize effect on your money.

The antidote, as you’ll see, is an investment that thrives in times like these. It’s an essential business that’s filling in the cracks as America is dragged toward an uncertain future… and making a killing doing it. In fact, sales recently doubled. But that’s only one of the reasons to get excited about this well-positioned company.

Later in the issue, Alpesh Patel shares a strategy for wealth building that works in any climate. It’s yet another way to take the idea of liberty into your own hands.

And to round out this issue, Joel shares some of his experience with government overreach. It’s a recent tale that shows how inflexible regulations – though intended to help – very often end up hurting the folks bound by them.

Thanks to some nonsensical rules, Joel is out a chef… and an all-star employee. It’s a story that will no doubt have the business owners among us nodding along…

Or, perhaps more likely, shaking their heads.

I’ll share one final quote from Tocqueville before I leave you in Andy’s, Alpesh’s and Joel’s capable hands. It sums up the themes of this month’s issue well.

It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life.

Not all prisons have walls…