Hmm …

… An Undemocratic Future?: Catholic World Report. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… Tocqueville’s intelligence and insight did not bring him influence, and democracy and Western society have gone their way without reference to his warnings. The outcome has been a setting increasingly unfriendly to democracy. People have become more interested in comfort and security than self-rule, and a technological and globalized world seems too complicated—and problems such as terrorism, environmental degradation, and economic instability too pressing, far-reaching, and resistant to solution—for popular rule to appear workable. Under such conditions Russia and China can seem better symbols of things to come than the New England town meetings that so much struck Tocqueville when he visited.