Marsha Blackburn: “in 1831, a young Frenchman who sought to understand the motivating principles behind the world's newest independent…”

“in 1831, a young Frenchman who sought to understand the motivating principles behind the world's newest independent Nation mused: In America, the principle of the sovereignty . . . is not either barren or concealed, as it is with some other nations; it is recognized by the customs and proclaimed by the laws; it spreads freely, and arrives without impediment at its most remote consequences. Alexis de Tocqueville had come to America on a research mission. He had had no special training in government or political science, but he had been fueled by a desire to know if the principles that had guided the early American Republic could help his fellow Frenchmen. Even as an outsider, de Tocqueville had seen freedom, not a lone figurehead or compulsory philosophy, as the foundation to build upon. Freedom had been what he had seen as an enduring foundation. Today, however, the belief in a moral right to self-governance is more often than not portrayed as quaint and the kind of fierce independence that drove our Founders to the battlefield as outdated in comparison to modern concepts of so-called global governance and polite codependence. Yet, when I look at the state of the world and all of its competing philosophies, I am very grateful for our bold commitment to self- defense.…”