In arguing for democracy's universal promotion in the world today, America's leaders simplify democracy's procedural requirements and reduce the nature and degree of participation required of its citizens. Tocqueville's more sophisticated analysis of the essential underpinnings of a healthy democratic society argues that the genius of American democracy lies in its juxtaposition of two separate democratic tracks, one national and the other local. On one track, to be sure, he situated the broad freedoms assured by our deftly balanced national constitution. But he assigned equal pride of place to a complementary track of robust “secondary liberties.” After recounting Tocqueville's lifelong effort to determine the appropriate levels of such local engagement, indexed to considerations of religion, national security, and the progress of civilization itself, the essay explains that Tocqueville never took for granted democratic political transitions, seeing them as products of human wisdom and choice, not historical necessity.

Are guestworker programs exploitative? Egalitarian and neoclassical theories of exploitation agree that they always are. But these judgments are too indiscriminate. Privileged guests are the exception, and the exception points toward a more sensitive standard for identifying exploitation. This more sensitive standard, the sufficiency theory of exploitation, is used to analyze several guestworker programs. Even when guestworker programs are exploitative, it is argued that the unfairness should be tolerated if the exploitation is modest, not severe, and if the most likely nonexploitative alternative worsens the plight of the disadvantaged.

Mark Gibian's major study of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.'s political theory casts Holmes as a democratic pluralist in the line of Richard Rorty who instantiates his commitment in the literary form of untrammeled table talk. Gibian's thesis can be challenged through a close reading of Holmes's main political work, The Professor at the Breakfast Table, revealing that Holmes's defense of free expression as the core of American national identity is counterpointed by a more fundamental appeal to nondiscursive reconciliation. Treating The Professor as a “dramatized essay” or “proto-novel” opens the possibility that the work's meaning is most fully disclosed by placing conversation in tandem with the deeds and recorded gestures that develop its plot. Through a dramatic reading, Holmes emerges as a humanist balancing aristocratic and democratic principles, rather than as a liberal discourse analyst.

In God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought, Jeremy Waldron argues that Locke's defense of human moral equality is inextricably tied to a theological doctrine: “Locke's equality claims are not separable from the theological content that shapes and organizes them.” Moreover, Waldron suspects that this points to a more general truth, namely, that an adequate secular defense of human equality is not possible. He writes, “I actually don't think it is clear that we—now—can shape and defend an adequate conception of basic human equality apart from some religious foundation” (GLE, p. 13). If Waldron's claim of the inseparability of equality and theology in Locke's theory is taken as a claim about what Locke himself thought he was doing, I shall not dispute it, though, as I shall argue below, I do not think that Waldron's argument for this claim is satisfactory. If Waldron's claim is rather about the theory that Locke created, which I take to be a system of propositions whose implications and significance are not necessarily fully known to its author, then I disagree. I think that there is, in Locke's theory, a separable secular defense of moral equality intertwined with the theological defense, but I shall not try to prove that Locke intended this to be a separate defense or even thought (as I do) that it could stand on its own.

I am grateful to all the participants in this symposium for the attention they have paid to my arguments in God, Locke, and Equality (GLE) and for the kind things they say about the book. I am grateful, too, to the editors of this Review for offering me the opportunity to respond. In this brief note, I want to answer some of the criticisms that have been made of my interpretation, particularly in regard to Locke's account of the underpinnings of basic equality. I shall not say much about the suggestion which I advanced at the beginning and the end of GLE to the effect that we—even now, in the twenty-first century—ought to take seriously the view that the principle of basic equality requires for its elaboration and support something along the lines of Locke's religious views and that, just as basic equality was not conceived or nurtured on purely secular premises, so it cannot be sustained on purely secular premises. A full elaboration and defense of this suggestion would require much more space than I allotted it in GLE or than I can allot it here. I hope eventually to provide this in a book, which will deal with basic equality directly rather than through the lens of John Locke's work. Here I will discuss this aspect only by way of brief response to the efforts by Professors Zuckert and Reiman to show (not just to say) that basic equality can be supported on purely secular foundations.

From right to left, from Reagan to Mitterrand, seemingly everyone wants to befriend Tocqueville and line him up on his on her side. No writer, except perhaps Orwell, has such appeal across political boundaries, and a judicious quotation from Tocqueville, no matter how much out of context, is believed to buttress any argument. While I too have spent a couple of decades of my intellectual life admiring and writing about Tocqueville,1 I have been unable either to forget or ignore a seamy side of Tocqueville, a dark side that has its roots both in his aristocratic heritage and also in his century's rush to global conquest. His two hundredth birthday is a good time to shed light on his embrace of war and empire.

Rousseau's relationship to the phenomenon of modern nationalism is a consistent theme of political theory and the history of ideas. This article argues that Rousseau's thought can be seen as providing the foundation for nationalism even if he would not have endorsed it. That Rousseau's thought bears this relationship to nationalism can be seen by reexamining his argument through the lens of Benedict Anderson's concept of nations as imagined communities. Rousseau's account of political psychology, sovereignty, and the proper limits of the nation provide the core of the analysis of this question.

Tocqueville describes the spirit of enterprise—along with the taste for material well-being—as “the distinctive characteristic” of the American people. This paper explores the American spirit of innovation and enterprise, beginning with the centrality of this spirit for America's commercial greatness. Tocqueville observes that the taste for innovation is a part of American national character, and its roots can be traced to the equality of conditions which characterizes democratic life. But the same equality of conditions which promotes the spirit of innovation also can also threaten it, for equality of conditions paradoxically encourages individuals both to rely upon their own judgment and to defer to the majority's. Although the effects of the spirit of innovation in the commercial realm are positive, its effects on other aspects of American life are more ambiguous.