In a 2008 episode of the Fox suspense series, 24: Redemption, newly-elected American president Allison Taylor stands before the throng to deliver her inaugural speech. In what is meant to be a philosophical moment for Madame President, she trots out an aphorism that has become incredibly familiar in modern parlance:
“In every democracy, people get the government they deserve.”
Taylor gives credit for the quote to the famous French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville.
She (or, more accurately, the screenwriters) had apparently not done her homework. Although de Toqueville wrote hundreds of pages on democracy, he never penned that particular string of words.
The folks at Fox aren’t the first or only ones to have baselessly perpetuated the myth that this quote belongs to de Tocqueville. A quick Google search reveals that the false credit is bandied in all kinds of blogs, forums, and other niches of the web.
De Tocqueville isn’t the only supposed author, either (though he seems to be the most popular). Suggestions have included such prominent figures as Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain. Of course, none of these attributions contain citations to primary sources.
So where did the quote really come from?
It’s tough to say, but the line bears a striking resemblance to a quote from a letter written by French politician and philosopher Joseph de Maistre in 1811. His son, Rodolphe, published the letter posthumously in 1853 as part of a collection of his father’s writings called Lettres et opuscules inédits. At one point, de Maistre remarks, “Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle merite” (“Every nation has the government it deserves”).
Lithograph of a painting by Pierre Bouillon (1776-1831); lithograph probably by François Le Villain, who was active around the same time. Public domain image.
The original point of the comment seems to have been forgotten. De Maistre had been speaking of the Russian czarist government, not of democracies. He was criticizing the value of written constitutions by pointing out that successive leaders of the Russian state would reverse the policies of their predecessors based on their own whims.
De Maistre would be vexed to see his words used as a call for the people to guide political policy: he was one of the most vocal members of the counter-enlightenment in Europe, and dead-set against the democratic revolutions going on at the time. De Maistre believed in the reinstitution of hereditary monarchy in France, guided by what he thought to be the divine hand of the Christian church. He was a proponent of hierarchical authoritarian government, not democracy.
De Maistre’s critiques of the Russian state blamed the lack of moral education among the clergy for that government’s vicissitude. He wrote:
“Between a Russian pope and an organ-pipe I see no great difference; both emit sound, and that is all. I have repeatedly asked intelligent Russians whether means might not be found to civilize the clergy, to introduce it into society, to get rid of that disfavour which now more than ever attaches to it, and to make it of use for education, public morality, &c.”
He concluded that without the moral guidance of an educated church, the Russian people could not handle the reforms toward Westernization that had become so attractive to the Russian leaders of the era. (St. Petersburg was the capital at the time, and had been built a century earlier as part of a bid to put the country in closer contact with Europe.)
By 1879, six editions of Lettres et opuscules inédits had been printed. That year, The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature reprinted a commentary on de Maistre’s letters that had originally appeared in the Quarterly Review; de Masitre’s famously cynical comment was mentioned in both.
Modified versions of this quote begin appearing shortly after the publication of the letters in the second half of the nineteenth century, and were passed around from there in something reminiscent of a protracted game of 'telephone.' It wasn’t long before the words had been twisted to make them sound - as faux-president Taylor intended them to be taken – like a call for citizens living in participatory democracies to be vigilant against corruption.
In 1920, for instance, an article in The Blacksmiths Journal retold a sermon given by Arthur Brisbane decrying the excessive political power being wielded by privately owned railroads in the United States.
“It need not surprise you, for the United States is only just beginning an extremely interesting career of industrial feudalism,” Brisbane said, “with dollars for the soldiers, financiers for generals and a hundred millions of citizens for the ‘conquered populations.’”
Brisbane added that the situation was merely a reflection of Americans’ values: “Do the hundred millions deserve anything better? They do not. People get exactly the government they deserve.”
Similarly, a 1922 edition of the theological publication, the Homiletic Review, featured a discussion on the reasons for the decline of the nation of Judah. In an interesting parallel of de Maistre’s own top-down thinking, the author cited the moral deterioration of religious leadership as the first cause of the ancient culture’s ruin. Ironically, though, the infamous phrase was not invoked in this section of the essay (if it had, it would have aligned closely with de Maistre’s own meaning). Instead, it appeared in its new role, implicating the common people in Judah's decay:
“If good leaders are necessary, so also are good people. It is often said that people get the government they deserve: certainly in a democratic country the government must be a more or less faithful reflection of the tastes and character of the people; for any national catastrophe the latter, no less than the former, must bear a very heavy share of the blame.”
As indicated by this passage, the phrase had already evolved into a popular expression under the changed meaning.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the expression, now completely altered in implication, was being paraphrased by writers of all kinds. One such use occurred in 1942, when science fiction author A. E. van Vogt published a short story called The Weapon Shop.
The main character of van Vogt’s story discovers that an underground society of rebels is engaged in a secret war with the ruling empire in which he lives. As his alliance to the empress dissolves, a member of the rebel faction explains the crux of their philosophy to him:
"People always have the kind of government they want. When they want change, they must change it. As always we shall remain an incorruptible core ...of human idealism, devoted to relieving the ills that arise under any form of government."
This call to action is almost the complete opposite of what de Maistre would have recommended. Yet even under such loose phrasing, the basic syntax and structure bear his mark.
Just because the expression as it's understood today contradicts the original intent doesn't mean that the modern understanding carries any less truth behind it. However, neither de Maistre nor his thoughts should be misrepresented. That kind of decontextualization is the first step to full-blown revisionism.
