Second, the book is called “Democracy in America,” not “On Democracy.”

Third, de Tocqueville visited America in 1831, not 1822.

Fourth, while he did lament the tyranny of the majority, de Tocqueville would have found your use of Prop 8 as a (politically fashionable) example of it utterly distasteful, as he was himself a Roman Catholic. For future reference, you don’t just get to use ANY popular vote you happen to disagree with as evidence of tyranny of the majority. There is a real principle there and it’s not just a cheap rhetorical device with which to wring your hands whenever things don’t go your way.

Fifth, it’s actually a good point to bring up, and apropos of the frisbee story. Here’s what de Tocqueville said about “soft despotism” (i.e., excessive regulation):

“Thus, after having successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

To Guy McG and all the other lefties: if and when the country turned into a bleak East German-style dystopia, I would fully expect you and your political contemporaries to continue decrying “the right-wing propaganda machine” and saying that we’re as free and unregulated and untaxed as we’ve ever been. Like Carolla says, put a family of beavers on top of the Empire State Building and they’ll start collecting wood to build a dam. In your case(s), you’re so enslaved by your ideology you can’t help but to keep mindlessly repeating your mantras and limited HuffPo statistics, no matter what’s going on around you to the contrary.