Alexis de Tocqueville’s urging of the uprising of civil society in response to the imbalances of power between the mass majority in the U.S. and minorities came early in the history of a newly-dubbed democratic America. While visiting America in 1835, Tocqueville formed his idea of civil society through the example of democracy that he observed in terms of “the nonstate sphere of intermediate…association… founded on localism and the politics of interest” (as quoted in Ehrenberg, 1999, p.