Alexis de Tocqueville Anticipated That the Democratic State Would Evolve in a Totalitarian Way towards the Provider State, Expanding the State and Making People Dependent on the State

The Provider State, Hilaire Belloc's Servile State, is obviously a creation of the leftist mentality. It should not be called the Welfare State for, after all, every state exists for the welfare of its citizens. Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America anticipated with great accuracy the possibility, nay, the probability that the democratic state would evolve in a totalitarian way towards the Provider State. In this state, two leftist wishes find fulfillment--the extension of government, and the dependence of the person upon the state, which controls his destiny from the cradle to the grave. Every aspect of the citizen--his birth and his death, his marriage and his income, his illness and his education, his military training and his transportation, his real estate and his travels--everything is known by the state.

--Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1990), 28.