An idea · Nineteenth Century · first attested 1840
Soft Despotism
The nursery in place of the dungeon: a power that lulls freedom to sleep by providing everything.
Tocqueville named two dangers hidden inside equality itself. The first is the tyranny of the majority: a democracy presses on the individual not with a prison – with the unbearable weight of everyone agreeing, from which there is nowhere to hide. The second, quieter and worse, is soft despotism. In place of a tyrant rises an immense tutelary power, mild and provident, that takes every care off the citizens' hands and leaves them only to enjoy themselves. It does not break the will; it softens it, until a people willingly becomes a flock and the state its shepherd. Men surrender their freedom not to a monster – to a nursemaid, and this, Tocqueville wrote in 1840, is the likeliest end of the modern democracies.