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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: blind - or rather, they can discern but one sole object to be
desired in the universe.
What I have said is applicable to all democratic nations:
what I am about to say concerns the French alone. Amongst most
modern nations, and especially amongst all those of the Continent
of Europe, the taste and the idea of freedom only began to exist
and to extend themselves at the time when social conditions were
tending to equality, and as a consequence of that very equality.
Absolute kings were the most efficient levellers of ranks amongst
their subjects. Amongst these nations equality preceded freedom:
equality was therefore a fact of some standing when freedom was
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