Tyranny of the majority
refers to any scenario in a democracy where a majority of citizens votes to oppress a minority. For example, if 80% of the people in a country vote to enslave the other 20%, that constitutes a tyranny of the majority. The outcome is a democracy with the brutality of an oppressive dictator.
Tyranny of the majority shows that it's insufficient to justify governance solely on the basis that what a majority wants it should get.
Governance ought to require both a majority's will and moral justification for the act. But people will vote immorally on occasion. To protect against this, modern democracies have in place limits that minimize the possibility and impact of a tyranny of the majority. For example, the United States has a Bill of Rights as well as other constitutional amendments that guarantee personal liberties from the government. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude; along with our country's separation of powers, which (among other features) grants the courts the power to strike down unconstitutional legislation, it's unlikely for a majority of people to get away with enslaving the remaining minority.
Nevertheless, tyrannies of the majority happen every year. For example, many non-Arizonans decry tyranny of the majority
against Arizona's constitutionally questionable enforcement against illegal immigration, just as non-Southerners decry tyranny of the majority
when some Southern states force their public schools' science textbooks to give equal credit to evolution and creationism as scientific doctrine. Conservatives tyrannize reproductive rights, and liberals tyrannize fetuses. Democracy turns us into little tyrants who carry voter registration cards.
There are two ways to stop a tyranny of the majority. The first is for the majority to see the errors of its immoral ways and to stop oppressing the minority. This is great when it happens, but it's far from inevitable. Usually, tyrannical majorities keep on with their tyrannizing until they're forcibly stopped—often by a larger, encompassing majority. This is the second way to stop a tyranny of the majority, and it's called kicking the problem upstairs.
It's what happens when, say, the federal government imposes uniform civil rights laws on all fifty states: smaller, individual majorities are swallowed into a larger, centralized majority—one that supports equal civil rights. The smaller, anti-civil rights majorities are diluted into powerlessness.
The United States has a long history of kicking problems upstairs to the federal level. It's a tactic underlying many progressive causes. Just as puritanism is the fear that someone, somewhere might be having a good time, progressives fear that someone, somewhere might be taken advantage of. The progressive fights for a good cause, and many of the benefits we enjoy today are due to progressives' victories, but as with most benefits there are costs. The act of forcibly ending a regional tyranny of the majority by kicking the problem upstairs brings about its own problems—often ones that don't manifest until later. Much later.
One problem is that tyrannies of the majority don't end merely because problems have been kicked all the way to the top. Tyrannies of the majority still happen at the federal level, owing to the same kinds of democratic pressures that cause them to form at regional and state levels. Only, once a problem has been kicked to the top, there's nowhere left to go—except possibly to war.
We ought to consider the act of kicking problems upstairs to be a nonrenewable resource. Like other nonrenewable resources, its use confers a benefit. But like other nonrenewable resources, its use is finite and produces waste. The benefit is that we resolve tyrannies of the majority affecting us now. The waste is that we're left with governance that's more centralized, and it's inevitable there'll be larger majorities tyrannizing larger minorities later. And because future people suffering those problems won't have an upstairs to kick their problems to, they'll have less means for resolution.
Because of this, we ought to be selective and prudent about what we kick upstairs. This means we ought to let people in other regions and states keep more autonomy for resolving their own conflicts.
13 comments:
Excellent post. A different presentation of the idea Catholic thinkers usually call subsidiarity. Things should always be taken care of with the most local authority possible.
It's hard to believe but it's not a caricature to note that there really are people who believe that "Majority rule" is a way to prevent moral failings in government.
I think something of this unexamined idea is present in those who think that if we just bring democracy to every country, we will make the world safe and it will solve international problems.
Surely the type of neocons in power who espouse this as policy don't really believe it, but the followers seem to.
Registered voter count in the USA is less than 60% of the eligible populous.
Current voter turnout is less than 50% of registered voters.
80% of those who actually vote is 24% of the populous.
24% are oppressing the rest with passion and participation.
This gets even more absurd within the US Senate.
60 Senators create a filibuster proof voting block.
To be elected only one more vote than your opponent is needed.
15% of the populous can select a Senator.
40% of the Senators are out voted therefore discounting the wishes of that portion of the populous.
Resulting in 9% of the populous controlling the legislative process.
Nixon was right there is a Silent Majority.
Bob Marley was right.
Get up, stand up. Stand up for your rights.
Josh— You raise two related points that didn't at all enter my mind when I wrote the post. Thanks!
About our country's push to convert other countries to democracy, I remember years ago talking with a conservative who was convinced that the key to world peace is having every country be a democracy. "Modern democracies have never fought each other" was his basis. At least he had the good sense to use the qualifying word "modern". The democratic city states of the Greeks had no problems going to war against each other in the 3rd century BC, slitting each others' throats, and leaving the peninsula wide open to Roman invasion—which, by the way, was the product of a republic. "Well, it's different this time." Indeed, just like the "New Economy" of the late 1990s, home prices last decade, and my sarcasm in this sentence.
Anonymous— You make a good point that "majority" is often a fiction in our country. Though, our two-party system makes your numbers unlikely. For example, when 40 senators get filibustered, the citizens who voted for the 40 candidates who lost their election are probably represented in part by the 60 who're filibustering. But your overall point is spot on.
In any case, I'm not a fan of our country's general push away from a republican government and toward a more democratic government. Such as with a push to do away with the electoral college, we're trending ever closer to mob rule, with every elected official representing the People, not the States, and who pander to short-term interests. Mob rule destroyed the Roman Republic by creating conditions that made it necessary for political powers to coalesce into a single head-of-state. I don't see us avoiding this kind of harm should we continue our present course. I say: keep the electoral college and repeal the 17th!
The sad thing is that the people who are often the most vocal (or that get the most air time...cf your comments about "status quo" with regard to corporate owned media) in the political sphere are only opposed to tyranny when it's the other guy doing it. We in many areas already have some pretty tyrannical government, but the left are only opposed if it's George W. instigating, and the right if it's Obama. What has substantively changed under Obama that the left were so mad about a few short years ago? What do the right think is really going to get fixed under a Romney administration? Political blindness, whether or not it's willing, makes far too many overlook these questions. I think the answer to both of them is "nothing."
Josh— There exist important practical differences between the two major parties and how they govern. The differences lie in the (often unglamorous) details—e.g., how things get regulated and taxed, where and when troops get deployed, etc. These things matter.
Nevertheless, I agree with your sentiment insofar as I'm baffled and saddened by how many people support a party platform, issue by issue, all the way down the line—or nearly so. Such willingness to conform to the party—rather than holding "independent" views—reminds me of watching a sports game with an emotionally invested fan who thinks the referees' calls helping his team are correct calls and the calls hurting his team are wrong. This is why I think politics should embrace the foam finger.
Let's take your example of troop deployment. I may be oversimplifying, but my memory includes extremely vocal anti-war protests that were in the news on a weekly, if not daily basis in all media. I seem to recall a pretty big difference in the hawk/dove dichotomy of rhetoric during the last campaign season, with Obama seeming to be the spokesman of a draw-down-the troops approach, and the republicans touting a "we have to win the war" type argument. Has our use of military force overseas really changed since Obama took office? Really really changed? I say the big picture is still the same today as if we had four more years of Bush or McCain or whoever. To his credit, I don't think Obama has ever advocated or endorsed torture, but how is the expansion of the drone strike program in line with "liberal" values?
There are less glamorous details that are different, but there is a huge continuity, especially when you look beyond the elected officeholders to the bureaucratic positions.
And for the record, I personally think Obama is a terrible choice, who advocates many grave evils, but that Romney is just a slightly less terrible choice, who also advocates some different grave evils (with him it depends on which office he is running for as to what his deep convictions are). But this time I'm done with these two farcical choices. I won't vote for either of them.
Josh— I agree with most of what you wrote. The big picture hasn't changed, and there's "huge continuity" between one administration and the next. I'm heartened that you'll won't be voting for either Obama or Romney because neither candidate, as you see it, represents you. I believe people should vote their conscience, and if that means voting for someone in a fringe party and who has "no chance of winning," then so be it.
Nevertheless, there exist important differences between Democrats and Republicans. In the case of the use of the military, it's reasonable to expect that, these days, we're more likely to pursue a foreign occupation with the conservatives in charge and a "precision" strike sort of thing with liberals in charge. Yes, both parties will happily expand the use of the military overall and seek to maintain the status quo of the United States maintaining an empire of client states worldwide. But the details are different, and to many people the differences matter.
Again, though, if those differences don't matter to you, then it's good that you'll be voting for someone else. For the record, I'll probably do the same.
By the way, thanks for your comments. I like reader comments of all kinds, but the ones that are both sincere and seriously minded warm the cockles of my heart. Thanks!
I like how you put "precision" in quotes.
It's not that the differences don't matter. It's that too little of the time are the differences predictable based on the campaign rhetoric or party platform. It's rare that in issues that really matter, that the politicians will do what they say.
This is not a new complaint of course, but the pervasive homogenizing and brainwashing effects of mass media on our culture and the increasing raw power of our states combined with ever increasing centralization in government, business and the collusion between the two, makes this problem more and more acute.
It's bad if Mayor Jones of a small to medium town says one thing to get elected, and then when in office breaks his promise. If it's egregious enough, his voters will get mad and vote him out of office. And in any case, the damage is more or less restricted to the town of which he is mayor, and he has to face the people he betrayed, as a member of that community.
When a President does the same thing, the ramifications are literally global. And he faces no real personal prospect of negative consequences. In this case though, what if the choice for the betrayed voters is no choice at all though, but in almost every major thing a guarantee of more of the same, in reality, regardless of what they say they "stand for"?
Josh— I don't think things are as bleak as you think they are. No, they're much bleaker.
In this country, a lot of people blame the Republicans. A lot of other people blame the Democrats. And still a lot of other people blame both the Republicans and the Democrats. But I believe that all three of these views are misguided. I believe that both parties are, on the whole, giving the People what the People want. Yes, I know this is blasphemy, but hear me out.
The American people are like a person on a diet, trying to lose weight. (Insert jokes here.) The government is like a guy who keeps handing the dieter cookies. (The cookie represents any subsidy, handout, tax cut, or other policy that keeps the sugar rush going at the expense of long-term prospects.) And the dieter says, "Stop handing me cookies. I'm trying to lose weight." And government says, "Then why do you keep eating these cookies I give you?"
I believe the reason so many people believe that one or both of the major two parties is at fault has to do with the conclusion following from that belief that there exists a solution to our predicament that entails nothing more than voting out of office those "bad politicians." Whether the bad guys are in one party or both doesn't matter. Because the point is this is a safe belief. It suggests that one isn't really at fault for eating those cookies, that instead the fault lies with the person giving them away.
Things are bleak exactly because democracy is alive and well in this country. We see the government doing things we don't want it doing. But the government is We the People. We must change ourselves. Though—and perhaps you and I agree on this—the bigger the electorate, the harder it is to get these kinds of change to happen.
Thanks again for your thoughts!
These are good thoughts that I don't disagree with. I think they are the other side of the coin. It does matter that there are bad people with power, and it also does matter that the majority behaves in the way you describe. As you point out, this is the way democracy becomes dictatorship. Hell, even as confused a personage as George Lucas made this point in a dramatically ham-fisted way in the Star Wars prequels.
It's hard not to appear cynical when describing this situation. There is little that individuals can do in a political sense I think. Certainly I don't think it's cynical to note that just repeating the mantra that you should get out there and vote (because your vote counts!) is effectively worthless.
My vote only counts for how it affects me and my conscience.
I think your perspective is a good and balancing holistic view of the political situation. I no longer believe dogmatically that democracy is an inherently superior form of government. To belabor the point again, I'm not sure any kind of government can really work for such a vast empire as America. It's too vast in land, and too great and too diverse in population.
Now I will sound like a fringe internet conspiracy theorist, but don't take the following as a prediction, merely a possibility.
Obviously tyrannies of any kind by definition rely on force to coerce compliance with the regime. The scary thing is that not only are more and more branches of government bureaucracies taking up arms (sorry no citation here but I can look for some if necessary) but the arms they have are overwhelming. It was one thing for the founders to imagine they were protecting the populace against tyranny with the second amendment, where a local militia could have some chance against the day's professional militaries. Today I really don't think that is the case. The force available to the US military is more than overwhelming if they wanted to use to control our own people.
I hope this stuff never happens, but history does not give me hope as I see it.
Therefore, I don't put my hope in the government or any elected "leader," but as a Christian I have to put my hope in God ultimately.
You are right that both parties are placating the people. Let's take an example that is very important to me, and to many people I know: abortion. Republicans claim to be fighting for an end to abortion, and in some cases they make small victories, and for many people like me, that was enough to make us vote for them again and again. Even if the candidate was lame, even if he had other egregious flaws, at least he was anti-abortion, and that issue is so important as to trump all others. So the republican party is giving us what we want, in their rhetoric. But if they were as committed to that issue as those of us who voted for them almost exclusively on that basis, then something would be done. But it's a cliffhanger, an issue that benefits them more by being a perpetual rallying cry than if they actually solved it. It's like the perpetual crisis caused by wars in 1984, which incidentally we also have literally with our country's seeming endless wars to "protect us and ensure our liberty."
Sorry for ranting. It's so easy to chase rabbits when I try to write on the internet. I admire your blog posts for being clear expressions of usually one clear thought.
And if this reply sounds bitter, I ask that you not read it that way. I actually feel much more free about politics than I once did. It's not apathy, but I can't get worked up about something that is a fiction and a show. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, you know.
Cheers.
Josh— The scenario you describe surrounding abortion has a name: captive constituency. It's what happens when a largish group of similarly minded voters lock in their vote to one party. The usual result is, as you describe, overall neglect from that party.
As for your comment about "branches of government bureaucracies taking up arms," I'd like that citation. This is news to me.
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-immigration-agents-are-loading-up-on-as-many-as-450-million-new-rounds-of-ammo-2012-3
There are lots of stories like this one: http://www.naturalnews.com/035585_Michigan_farms_raids.html
In the last couple years, where traditional, small farms are subjected to armed raids and harassment by various local, state, and/or federal agencies. These things are usually reported on alternative niche news blogs and the like. Obviously these raids don't affect the price of milk at Walmart.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/09/man-visited-by-armed-epa-agents-not-satisfied-with-answers-wants-agency-changes/
How about the TSA? http://pjmedia.com/blog/armed-tsa-agents-threaten-travel-journalist/
I don't know what to make of the claim by Rand Paul here, but he claims there are 40 armed federal agencies: http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/24/rand-paul-amendment-to-demilitarize-the
Obviously some of these must be necessary, but I think there is growing anecdotal evidence that our country is undergoing an increasing militarization/police state transformation. It's not affecting most of our everyday lives yet, but it is there in the fringes and in special places (like airplane travel) where they can make claims of security taking precedence.
And when you also consider the actual military of the US: http://defense.aol.com/2012/03/16/the-military-imbalance-how-the-u-s-outspends-the-world/
Wow. I guess I would rather be a tiny bit alarmist in my observation than a guy surprised by the sudden transformation of our "Republican democracy" into a totalitarian state like Nazi Germany or Napoleonic France or whatever historical precedent you want to use. I don't know that we are really headed there, but it is a definite possibility, and I think we should be willing to talk about that and consider potential warning signs rather than ignore them because "that can't happen in our democracy, the greatest land on God's green earth."
Does that make sense?
Josh— Those articles describe more of the same: government agencies violently enforcing laws and policies. Nothing new. And it doesn't help that the articles are one-sided. For example, the one about pigs neglects to mention that many of the "farmers" are raising illegal pigs for hunt clubs, not food production. Yes, if you continue breaking the law then you can expect to eventually be visited by the Man, and He will be armed.
But you're right that we should be open to discussing the possibility of the US becoming a totalitarian state. As you say, it can happen here as much as elsewhere. I expect We the People will cling to the status quo as long as possible and with much coercion toward ourselves, long past the time that the status quo has become self-destructive.
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