How Tocqueville Schooled Bernie Sanders 200 Years Ago
Religion & Liberty Online

How Tocqueville Schooled Bernie Sanders 200 Years Ago

sanders-tocquevilleBernie Sanders appears to think all we need to be happy is more money,” says Samuel Gregg, Acton’s director of research, but Alexis de Tocqueville dismantled that idea two centuries ago.

Tocqueville’s first reproach was that socialism—whatever its expression—has an inherently materialistic understanding of humans. “The first characteristic of all socialist ideologies is,” Tocqueville insisted, “an incessant, vigorous and extreme appeal to the material passions of man.” Tocqueville may have wrestled with religious questions for much of his life. Nevertheless, he refused to accept that we’re just another species of animal whose fundamental needs are purely material.

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Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).