Alexis de Tocqueville

The young French aristocrat who came to study American prisons and stayed to write the deepest book anyone has produced about American civic life. Democracy in America saw what the natives took for granted: that the country ran on association, on people joining together to govern themselves. He also saw the dangers, the tyranny of the majority, the soft despotism of comfort, and named the habits of the heart that might guard against them. An outsider who understood the republic better than most of its citizens.