81 CHRONICLESnPERSPECTIVEnFREEDOM OF OPINIONnAND DEMOCRACY by Thomas Flemingn”I know of no country in which there is so little independencenof mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.nIn America, the majority raises formidable barriers aroundnthe liberty of opinion: within these barriers, an author maynwrite what he pleases; but woe to him if he goes beyondnthem. Not that he is in danger of an auto-da-fe, but he isnexposed to continued obloquy and persecution. His politicalncareer is closed forever, since he has offended the onlynauthority which is able to open it. Every sort of compensation,neven that of celebrity, is refused to him. . . . Fettersnand headsmen were the coarse instruments which tyrannynformerly employed; but the civilization of our age hasnperfected despotism itself, though it seemed to have nothingnto learn. Monarchs had, so to speak, materialized oppression:nthe democratic republics of the present day havenrendered it as entirely an affair of the mind, as the willnwhich it is intended to coerce. . . . The master no longernsays, ‘You shall think as I do, or you shall die’; but he says,n’You are free to think differently from me, and to retain yournlife, your property, and all that you possess; but you arenhenceforth a stranger among your people. You may retainnyour civil rights, but they will be useless to you, for you willnnnnever be chosen by your fellow-citizens, if you solicit theirnvotes; and they will affect to scorn you, if you ask for theirnesteem; you will remain among men, but you will bendeprived of the rights of mankind. Your fellow-creatures willnshun you like an impure being; and even those who believenin your innocence will abandon you, lest they should benshunned in their turn. Go in peace! I have given you yournlife, but it is an existence worse than death.’n”The ruling power in the United States is not to be madengame of. The smallest reproach irritates its sensibility, andnthe slightest joke which has any foundation in truth rendersnit indignant; from the forms of its language up to the solidnvirtues of its character, everything must be made the subjectnof encomium. No writer, whatever be his eminence, cannescape this tribute of adulation to his fellow-citizens. Thenmajority lives in the perpetual utterance of self-applause;nand there are certain truths which the Americans can onlynlearn from strangers or from experience.n”If America has not as yet had any great writers, thenreason is given in these facts; there can be no literary geniusnwithout freedom of opinion, and freedom of opinion doesnnot exist in America.”n— Alexis de TocquevillenDemocracy in AmericanLike so many of Tocqueville’s observations, his commentnon freedom of opinion in America seems more anprophecy than a description. In the century and a half sincenthe publication oi Democracy in America, we have given upnthe prudery, on which Tocqueville remarked, along with thenpatriotic self-applause he found so amusing. The spectrumnof political opinion has also shifted radically—with shadesnof red predominating—but the intolerance of dissent maynbe greater in the 1980’s than it was in the 1830’s.nWe have a free press, it is true, and almost any variety ofnopinion can be published, but an advocate of aristocracy willnstill find himself a stranger in his own land. The list of taboonsubjects is extensive, and it is perilous even to mentionnthem: racial differences in physical and intellectual aptitude,nthe moral status of slavery and apartheid, the demerits ofnfemale suffrage, the cost—financial as well as political — ofnour commitment to Israel (although the last is increasinglynfashionable on the pro-Soviet left). On campus and inn