Here is our ambition, here is our goal. The principles recognised by the Declaration are abstract and raise difficulties when we attempt to link them to reality. The two central principles, Freedom and Equality, have always been contradicted by the facts. This leads to a tension in the modern democracy between the abstract rights and their reality. Freedom is conceived as a capacity vis a vis the State and also fellow citizens.
Law aims to ensure the respect of it.
However, it seems that Freedom and Equality are antinomic in so far as freedom, in its stricter meaning, tends to lead to inequality. Equality, itself, seems integrally unrealisable as there is a natural inequality between human beings that cannot be totally remedied by society. To recognise that human beings are equal by nature and within society equates to an ideal which would only be realisable, according to political theory, in despotism. This regime allows equality by use of the lowest common denominator. Tocqueville was aware that equality, carried to an extreme, induced uniformity.