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Democracy in America launched a comparative method whose object is less the study and analysis of contrasts and similarities between societies than is the exploration of their differences. This work both provides a central reference and represents a genealogical moment in a tradition of methodological culturalism, which takes as granted the homogeneity of national political traditions and favors the study of values and mentalities over that of political practices and social relationships. The ideological effects of this approach, which leaves out division and conflict within each national "culture," are questioned first on the basis of the classical opposition between "the" French political tradition and "the" American (or Anglo-Saxon) one and second through the question of the relationship between men and women. This opposition lays the groundwork for scrutinizing how, a century and a half after Tocqueville, political discourse in France examines and wards off the demons of their own society’s division, the fear of an "immoderate" democracy.