It's a shame that politicians are using a knockoff product when the real thing is so fine. Democracy in America offers profound analyses of the roles of religion, morality, and voluntary action, though its insights are subtler than the purple prose of the counterfeit. We could make a nasty crack about politicians who cannot tell Alexis de Tocqueville from Maurice Chevalier, but that would be irrelevant since they seldom write their own material anyway. The lyrics of politics come from staffers, whose tight deadlines often keep them from checking original sources. That somebody probably got it from another piece, whose author got it from . . .
Bad information tends to linger and spread.
Here is a personal brush. In 1992, I served on the staff of the Republican platform committee. Of course, after decades of repetition, it has in fact become an old adage. It just isn't Tocqueville's.