Globalization

Who said this?

“What I have said of America applies to almost all the men of our time. Variety is disappearing from the breast of humankind; the same ways of acting, of thinking and of feeling, the same pop songs and fashions, are encountered in all corners of the globe. This does not come only from the fact that all the peoples are more open to one another and copy each other more faithfully, but that in each country men are moving further and further away from the ideas and the particular sentiments of a caste, a profession, or a family, arriving simultaneously at that which is closest to the constitution of man, which is everywhere the same.”

OK, I cheated. The phrase about “pop songs and fashions” was meant to fool. Take that away, and who’s talking?

Tocqueville.

Call it early globalization.