Answer:
A desire for personal gain over the good of the community is what Tocqueville warned might threaten American civic life and democracy.
Explanation:
Tocqueville believes that the breaking of the old ties not by a conservative attitude, but because free of all responsibility towards their peers, and occupied exclusively with their personal interests, individuals indulge in a dangerous conformity, accepting docilely all the social rules imposed by the individualism. This passivity certainly produces a behavior of indifference towards the management of the public thing, thus allowing the majority representation to exercise a new type of authoritarianism over the minority; authoritarianism this exercised with popular consent, the so-called, despotism by the consent of the people. That would be a very dangerous threat to American civic life and democracy.
