If each citizen did not learn, in proportion as he individually becomes more feeble and consequently more incapable of preserving his freedom single-handed, to combine with his fellow citizens for the purpose of defending it, it is clear that tyranny would unavoidably increase together with equality.
Alexis de Tocqueville, “Of the Use Which the Americans Make of Public Associations in Civil Life,” in Democracy in America
Rugged individualism is highly overrated.
You are indeed a learned man, John. De Tocqueville was a most observant and perspicacious commentator on America and humanity in general. Indeed the French philosophers: Voltaire, Rousseau, Descartes (cogito, ergo sum,, Pascal, Bergson, and Sartre.
“…And it’s a hard,
and it’s a hard,
it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall”
Bob Dylan (1963)