Job well done. Thanks, my fellow Americans.
BUT, I’m still not satisfied. While the overall outcome of the election pleases me in many ways, the many referenda that passed around the country frustrate me to no end. They have me thinking this morning about Plato’s Republic, James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill and what they all have to say about the tyranny of the majority. Why is it that in our contemporary society the number of people yelling something has greater value than the substance of what is being yelled? Consenting viewpoints are struck down simply because they are outside the mainstream. “This is a democracy and I have a right to my opinion,” is touted all over the place as if one opinion is as good as another, irrespective of any supporting evidence. And if enough people have the same opinion, well, then, it must be right…right? What? this is ludicrous…we’re actually admitting here that we believe justice is simply the obedience to the rule of the strongest? (Thrasymachus anyone?)
James Madison in Federalist Paper #10 writes:
“When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.
By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of individuals, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number combined together, that is, in proportion as their efficacy becomes needful.”
Tocqueville gives name to this concept in Democracy in America. In chapter XV, in the section entitled Tyranny of the Majority, he writes:
“A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength.3 For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them.”
and he continues:
“In my opinion, the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny. an individual or a party is wronged in the United States, to whom can he apply for redress? If to public opinion, public opinion constitutes the majority; if to the legislature, it represents the majority and implicitly obeys it; if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority and serves as a passive tool in its hands. The public force consists of the majority under arms; the jury is the majority invested with the right of hearing judicial cases; and in certain states even the judges are elected by the majority. However iniquitous or absurd the measure of which you complain, you must submit to it as well as you can.”
And, finally, in On Liberty, John Stewart Mill warns us that:
“when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.”
If asked today whether I’m happier than I was yesterday, I’d probably respond that, “yes, I woke up a bit happier,” but then I’d pause and ask, “but, do you want to know what pisses me off?:”
Arkansas Proposed Initiative Act 1
California Proposition 8
Colorado’s Constitutional Amendment #46
Nebraska Initiative 424
etc., etc.
(if only I could ensure a referendum against referenda would pass…)
