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Tyranny of the Masses

 


I was listening to Benjamin Netanyahu on the radio. He was justifying his change in the law that removed power from the Israeli Supreme Court, saying that it was the will of the people. Majority rules. This made me think of “Tyranny of the masses,” a concept that notes: just because a majority of people are for something, that doesn’t make it right. I am sure you can think of historical examples where the people of a country supported a policy that was demonstrably wrong. When everything is completely governed by majority rule, the rights of the minority can be subverted by the majority.

The framers of our American Constitution knew this, and tried to put in some checks and balances into our system of government. This was to guard against all forms of tyranny whether from a dictator, or from tyranny of the masses. One of those checks is that we have a representative government. The people themselves don’t pass laws, but instead elect representatives at the federal and local level to write the laws. A senator or legislator is not bound by the will of the people he or she represents, but can vote their conscience. Obviously, if they go against their constituents too many times, they will find themselves voted out of office in the next election, but the freedom is there for a representative to vote however they wish. Another check against tyranny is that we have three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. If one branch goes too far, it can be thwarted by one of the other branches. That only works if the branches are separated and not all controlled by the same group of people. If the popular majority forces their representatives to create a law that oppresses a minority, it could be vetoed by the president or, failing that, be struck down by the courts.

Countries that don’t have strong constitutional protections, could find themselves susceptible to all forms of tyranny. Yet sometimes even a strong constitution cannot solve the problem. In the 1800’s there were states in America where the majority felt that slavery was an acceptable institution. In the states of the North the majority felt that slavery was an abomination. There did not seem to be any legislative or judicial way out of this impasse. The country elected an antislavery president. The South could claim they were the victims of tyranny of the masses of the majority North, because they did not want to lose their institution that they believed in. The North could claim that each of the southern states were a tyranny of the masses, clearly oppressing a minority. The South rebelled and we had the tragedy of the American Civil War.

There has to be better ways of solving differences than war. How do we avoid such an extreme? We could do worse that to heed Thomas Jefferson (a southerner’s) words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

If we all believed that, and lived our lives by it, tyranny of the masses would never be a problem. Unfortunately, the Civil War happened even after those words were written. Ultimately, its about people. Government is people. As long as people hold Jefferson’s words to be true, democracy works. If they don’t, it doesn’t.

Star Liner

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