In the United States, we have always had a unique society, built on democratic ideals. An American identity began to form very earlier in the colonial era, and along with this came the "founding father " principles of freedom and equality, which are at the core of American philosophy. Our nation was an experiment born on the idea that these principles would always hold true, and that nothing could hinder their authority. When Alexis de Tocqueville, a man curious about the American way of life, visited the young nation, he took note of many of its distinctive characteristics, such as religion, politics, and the overall culture of American society. In Volume 2 of Democracy In America, Tocqueville indicates his admiration for the nation's enterprising qualities, but remarks in great detail about his concerns for a democratic nation built primarily on conceptual and abstract ideals such as liberty and equality. He was both impressed and disillusioned by American-style democracy: he saw it as a possible model for future national governments such as that in France, yet also as an imperfect system that could experience an array of problems in the future. .
Tocqueville, a Roman Catholic, focused much of his writing on the heavy influence of religion in America. He recognized the substantial influence that faith had on the formation of the American democracy, and mostly saw this as a positive. He writes that "[i]n America religion is a world apart.Within its limits [the priest] guides intelligence; outside, he leaves men to their own devices, and abandons them to the independence and instability which are features of the nature and the times they live in. I have not seen any country where Christianity has hedged itself with fewer systems, rituals, or figures laid before the human mind ideas which were sharper, simpler, or more general " (Tocqueville 517). Tocqueville was impressed by the contained authority that the church had in America.
