I think Alexis de Tocqueville explained all this about 160 years ago. If Tocqueville were around now, we'd call him Al. Al de Tocqueville was in fact a French nobleman and political thinker who traveled for years throughout the New Land and wrote a classic commentary titled "Democracy in America."

Here is what he said about the future of American culture:

"Is it your object to refine the habits, embellish the manners and cultivate the arts, to promote the love of poetry, beauty and glory? If you believe such to be the principal object of society, avoid the government of democracy, for it would not lead you with certainty to that goal. But . . . if you are of the opinion that the principal object of a government is . . . to ensure the greatest enjoyment and to avoid the most misery to each of the individuals who compose it, then equalize the conditions of men and establish democratic institutions."

History produced no greater admirer of America's promise, or of democracy's broad, civilizing benefits, than Tocqueville. But he understood and predicted many of the inevitable effects of a democratized society, one of which was that there would be great downward pressure on the arts and social manners. There would for a certainty be grand achievements, as democracy spread opportunity among any brilliant mind, such as Duke Ellington's; but in a land of opportunity, with many chances taken, much of our culture would be half-baked and hapless.

The fear has been that a relentlessly slovenly, ahistorical culture would break loose eventually from the underpinnings, or girders, painstakingly erected around the nation since its first years. This is, after all, a young nation, and the institutions and habits--the "culture" in that word's most serious sense--that pass down to succeeding generations is a national treasure. No, a national necessity.

I'll tell you where the bottom is. We just hit it. It's lying 10 stories high, as rubble, in the streets where the World Trade Center once was. I am not going to suggest that this event is somehow going to forestall the forces driving our culture lower. The causes of that have deeper roots now than mere bad taste. And it may well be that in many ways, what happened Tuesday "changed everything." But what we have most wonderfully learned since Tuesday about America is how much has not changed.

We know that some 300 firemen and policemen went into those obviously doomed buildings and died for others. We have seen men and women standing for hours to give their blood to others. And we now know, because we have read and heard everywhere and constantly, in print and on television, over our phones and in our e-mails, the voices of Americans saying what Patrick Downes of Boston said in this newspaper yesterday:

"If the terrorists think they've broken our resolve to fight against and prevent such acts of injustice toward our nation, they're wrong. If anything, it will strengthen our resolve to do so. The land of the free and brave will remain so, and we will not be deterred from fighting for and upholding the principles of democracy." That is not sentiment. It is belief.

That was last week, and when he said it, I wondered whether he was right. But he knew. Whatever else may be loose in the American land just now, one of the enduring wonders seems to be that an admirable resilience of spirit and clear-eyed common sense endures in the American people. So much so, despite all the rest and all the downward pressure on the culture, that one wonders if by now, after centuries of hearing the same call that went up in smoky plumes last Tuesday morning, the hard answer back isn't finally embedded in this nation's genetic code. It looks like it is.