Tocqueville opens with the assertion that his French contemporaries have noted the growing popularity of equality over freedom and that he will explain how this comes about. Equality is particular to democracy; forms of freedom can exist in other systems, but equality cannot. Tocqueville also believes that the worst effects of equality are harder to perceive than its benefits. He states, “at the moment when they have become most violent, habit has already made them no longer felt” (480). The benefits of equality, in contrast, reach easily into most aspects of human activity. Europe experienced some social equality well before it had political freedom, which helped make the former more preferred. Tocqueville considers the love of equality virtually limitless, even if individuals prefer both: “they want equality in freedom, and, if they cannot get it, they still want it in slavery” (481). This echoes Tocqueville’s earlier concerns about the tyranny of the majority: Just as Americans are unconcerned about the suppression of minority voices, people in general will prefer equality to political freedom.

Tocqueville is also critical of individualism, which he calls a focus on self and family so that an individual “willingly abandons society at large to itself […] it will finally be absorbed in selfishness” (482).