Why Americans are Restless

2. When a society devotes their focus to equality opportunity, this weakens the individual’s access to a fair chance at success. Also, when striving for equality, the entire society can never be completely satisfied. There will always be at least one group in the minority that is unhappy and goes not see themselves as having an “equal” opportunity. Tocqueville writes, “When men are more or less equal and are following the same path, it is very difficult for any of them to walk faster and get out beyond the uniform crowd surrounding and hemming them in” (Tocqueville 167). Tocqueville means that when equality is set in place, it is much harder for the individual to have success because they will always be in competition with one another. Tocqueville continues to state, “No matter how people strives for it, all the conditions of life can never be perfectly equal. Even if, by the misfortune, such an absolute dead level were attained, there would still be inequalities of intelligence which, coming directly from God, will never escape the laws of man” (Tocqueville 167). Therefore, the individual within the society can never fully have equal rights and opportunities to everyone else. There will always be a factor, which disallows them to have equality with the rest of their society.

5. Tocqueville believes that Americans are restless because they do not necessarily know what they want or are inconsistent with their desires. Americans cannot stay with something that they are doing, and when a bigger, better deal or opportunity comes along, they take it. For example, Tocqueville writes, “An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he will clear a filed and leave others to reap the harvest…” (Tocqueville 165). This argues the fact that Americans cannot steadily keep with what they originally want to achieve. This is a probable case to why other countries see Americans as greedy individuals, when in all actuality we are only striving for what we want to accomplish.