The problem with democracy is...
Feb. 23rd, 2004 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursangnome... that it's government by the people, and the people need to go back and retake their civics lessons.
Really, I think a large number of people need to go back to their social studies and history classes. At the moment, these people include a great many conservatives and folks in the Fourth Estate.
These days, when a controversial topic comes up, folks do opinion polls. You see things on CNN like:
"The National Right to Life Committee cites polls showing that 80 percent of the public believes there should be a law recognizing the killing of a fetus as a homicide."
and the President says:
"People need to be involved in this decision.... Marriage ought to be defined by the people not by the courts. And I'm watching it carefully."
What these folk are forgetting is that good governance, especially on the subject of civil and personal rights, is not about giving the majority what they want. It is about giving everybody what they need. Frequently, good governance is about protecting a minority from the majority, and public opinion be damned. Our Founding Fathers set up certain inalienable rights in our Consitution specifically so that those rights could not easily be tampered with by the majority. Our courts took on the responsibility of interpreting the laws against the Constitution because the majority cannot be trusted to always have it's head screwed on straight.
Ask Rosa Parks if the rights of the minority should be decided by majority vote. Or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Or Susan B. Anthony. Or Black Elk. Or Japanese-Americans shuffled off to internment camps during WWII.
Honestly, folks, the majority in the US has a really lousy civil rights record, historically. Appeals to majority opinion on such topics generally mean that your position is not very clearly in the right on it's own locial merits.
Really, I think a large number of people need to go back to their social studies and history classes. At the moment, these people include a great many conservatives and folks in the Fourth Estate.
These days, when a controversial topic comes up, folks do opinion polls. You see things on CNN like:
"The National Right to Life Committee cites polls showing that 80 percent of the public believes there should be a law recognizing the killing of a fetus as a homicide."
and the President says:
"People need to be involved in this decision.... Marriage ought to be defined by the people not by the courts. And I'm watching it carefully."
What these folk are forgetting is that good governance, especially on the subject of civil and personal rights, is not about giving the majority what they want. It is about giving everybody what they need. Frequently, good governance is about protecting a minority from the majority, and public opinion be damned. Our Founding Fathers set up certain inalienable rights in our Consitution specifically so that those rights could not easily be tampered with by the majority. Our courts took on the responsibility of interpreting the laws against the Constitution because the majority cannot be trusted to always have it's head screwed on straight.
Ask Rosa Parks if the rights of the minority should be decided by majority vote. Or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Or Susan B. Anthony. Or Black Elk. Or Japanese-Americans shuffled off to internment camps during WWII.
Honestly, folks, the majority in the US has a really lousy civil rights record, historically. Appeals to majority opinion on such topics generally mean that your position is not very clearly in the right on it's own locial merits.
