Helena Rosenblatt

I represent you.

We don't need these representative institutions.

We don't, because I speaks directly to you.

I am you, sort of.

I mean, that's what a demagogue does, and that's what populism is, right?

Is that you don't need the intermediaries.

And they were very worried about this.

And the system they came up with, constitutional liberalisms, was meant to make it impossible.

But that also made them really think more than ever that we needed an educated citizenry.

Intellectuals needed to step up.

Newspapers needed to step up and educate the public as to what it means to be a citizen of a liberal regime, of a liberal form of government.

They wrote articles, Madame de Stael wrote novels in which she was, you could see her trying to foster the right kind of moral inclinations.

By that I mean compassion, generosity, sociability, understanding, understanding of shared responsibilities that you needed to educate people to this.

Because without it, without an educated, critically minded, alert person,

The people will fall prey to unscrupulous actors, demagogues.

This was on their minds the whole time because they saw how vulnerable those liberal constitutions could be.

They really depended on a morally educated, civic-minded, educated and alert citizenship.

So, yes, they shied away from that word.

Individualism really was kind of a synonym for them to selfishness.

And Tocqueville, you'll see, uses it that way, I think, in Democracy in America.