evidence: Léon Noël, Alexis de Tocqueville (1848). Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain [...] As a freshman, in 1967, I read the book, in an American history course, as it is most often admired and cited. It’s intriguing how many of Tocqueville’s observations about the strengths and weaknesses of the American political system and social order have endured: the workings of the federal system, the separation of powers, the promise, perils, and consequences of individualism, the potential dangers of the tyranny of the majority, and much more. [...] Tocqueville’s greatest accomplishment, in my judgment, is not that he presciently foresaw the future or that he somehow unlocked the key to the American (democratic) genius, as I was taught as a college freshman. Rather, I believe that he illuminated key tensions in American democratic life. The long-recognized tense relationship between democracy and tyranny, and the more recently recognized tension between democracy and the despotism of an anti-intellectual populist segment of a polarized society. Tocqueville’s gift to us is the illumination of tensions inherent to American democracy. Sometimes this led him to mistaken conclusions, such as in his observations about race, class, and gender.