Social critics have often been concerned with the tenuous connection between the self and the social order in America. Writing before the middle of the last century, Tocqueville stated that the people of the United States “form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands…. Each man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.” Tocqueville's concern here is with one of the negative effects of the shift from an aristocracy to a democracy.