Don’t forget that the same initiative that got rid of the excise tax also put tax changes in the hands of the people. Any increase in any tax, fee, or service charge has to be put to a popular vote before it can go into effect.
Lemur866,
But who decides what the rule of law is?
And if compromise is impossible, who has the final authority?
We have only human beings to choose from, and they’ll either reflect a majority or a minority opinion.
But who is this “we” you are talking about? The people?
A majority upholding an established system is a shining example of the “tyranny of the majority”.
We don’t have a template for doing things right, we just have to think it up as we go.
Trying to force the majority to do things they don’t like isn’t going to succeed for long.
Think about it this way:
A direct democracy may not work that well, but if a majority absolutely wants to institute it, it certainly is going to work better than trying to force them to stick with the old system against their will.
Jaakko: I’d like to see a real-life example of this “tyranny of the minority” you propose.
Lacking that, a plausible hypothetical can be inserted, but you lose points for this…
Yer pal,
Satan
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I’d just like to weigh in on the side of Lemur and Satan, who seem to be pretty much in agreement. I think I disagree with Jaacko, but I’m a bit mystified by his disagreement with Lemur…not that he does, but what his argument is. Jaacko, would you please restate what you’re saying there in different terms, perhaps with examples of what you mean by the generalities you use, for clarity’s sake?
Satan:
How about an ethnic group comprising 12% of the population cajoling the other 88% into making it a worse crime to commit an assault against them because you dislike their skin color?
How about if approximately 540 out of 300 million of them think it is a neat idea?
kasuo:
But they’re well-informed and competent enough to elect people to govern them? How do you figure that one?
Ptahlis:
One obvious answer to this dilemma is to lessen the scope of decisions for which the government is responsible.
Satan, Polycarp,
I was more criticising the idea of the tyranny of the majority as a threat than trying to give reasons for accepting it (as I believe it is here already). The tyranny of the minority is just an ordinary tyranny like the Nazis or the Soviet Union, and it was there just to illustrate my questioning of the tyranny of the majority thing.
But I’ll explain myself more throroughly.
The OP (as in the Opening Post, right?) asked whether a direct democracy would be an idea worth considering. It received a lot of criticism, some of it very much justified, but also things I disagree with.
I took particular issue with the idea of the “tyranny of the majority”, together with the rule of law option described by Lemur.
So what is a tyranny of the majority? You call direct democracy such, but doesn’t every successful system base itself on majority support?
In the US’ case, a sufficient majority already enforces the current system. Assuming that the people would make informed decisions, why would a direct democracy suddenly result in bad things, when there is no previous evidence of the majority wanting it?
Similarly, if the majority did want to rape the minority, don’t you think it would have done so already?
The US is already a tyranny of the majority, it just filters ideas and brings expertise into decision making by having elected representatives. If a majority wants something enough, it will still happen, no matter how bad you, I or anyone else might think it is.
Installing a direct democracy would probably be a disaster, but rather due to ignorance than any majority’s power. An important difference IMO.
Then comes the rule of law. Lemur presented it as an option to the tyranny of the majority (or minority for that matter).
I say that the rule of law, in a society such as the US, is nothing more than an extension of the majority’s will. It wouldn’t be there if it didn’t have enough support.
As an example, look at US libertarians, many of whom feel oppressed by today’s laws.
I kind of agree, as by being in a too small minority they have no way of changing the system to their liking.
We others are the two guys raping the third, the libertarians.
We don’t see it as immoral and the system works, but it still is just as much a tyranny of the majority as a direct democracy.
So there. I may have misunderstood the points you guys have made, but this is how I think.
**
Well, I am against hate crime legislation, Phil (I know, besides the point).
That said, I think that the politically correct times we live in allowed that to happen as much as the minorities themselves complaining. In other words, a whole lot of people who are NOT in that minority decided to help “protect” that minority, which makes that position less of a minority position.
Also, a majority can still decide to go along with the wishes and protect those who have a minority opinion, even in a true democracy, which is somewhat closer to what we have here. I know… charitable of them, huh? :rolleyes:
That said, now that I think about it, the only people who are being subjected to “the tyranny of the minority” in this scenerio (were I convinced it was even that cut & dried) would be those who are KILLING or attempting to kill the minority, not the whole majority. And I would HOPE that those who are killing people are a small minority themselves.
So I don’t know if it stands up all around, Phil.
I don’t know what you mean by this:
Is “it” the rape that I brought up in my obviously over-simplistic example? Color me confused…
Yer pal,
Satan
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In a totalitarian regime of any ideology, one may do what the government permits one to do.
In a free society, one may do whatever the government has not seen fit to prohibit. We live in one of the latter. Please note the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and the pertinent clause of the Fourteenth, in this regard. (Granted that interpretation by the Supreme Court tends not to be over-literal in reading them, but still…)
Now, in a strict democracy, any law approved by the majority becomes binding on all citizens. And of course in a generic republic, the same is true of what the legislature passes. This constitutes the “tyranny of the majority” in that the minority is obliged to obey those laws. Regardless of what “freedoms” it may have thought it had prior to their passage. A majority of right-wing Christians could require you to attend church each Sunday, or keep your business closed in honor of the Lord’s Day, even though Sunday had been your best business day. On the other hand, a majority of First Amendment absolutists could require that Hustler or XXX-rated videos be made available to any purchaser proferring the cover price, including your 13-year-old son whom you would prefer not be exposed to that stuff for a few years yet.
The “tyranny of the minority” is something of a catch phrase that seems to refer to a person or persons in the minority claiming their rights in defiance of the preference of the majority, as for example the Jehovah’s Witness family that insists the school their children attend not require the Pledge of Allegiance, which on their doctrine is paying homage to a false “god,” i.e., the U.S.
The “rule of law” derives from the ancient concept that there are some basic principles of law governing all men, that the king cannot make decisions in despite of it but is bound by it. Naturally if law is in place, it may be changed as the social contract under which the government is conceived to operate allows, whether this be the U.S. constitutional system, the Common Law of England, the Divine Right of the Stuart Kings, or whatever.
Under the U.S. system, certain rights are guaranteed by the Constitution (including its amendments) – and by most state constitutions – so that federal, state, and/or local governments may not supersede them, no matter how large a majority wishes to do so, without first enacting an amendment to the Constitution to so permit. (Allow me to avoid going into the intricacies of federal jurisdiction vs. state constitutions.)
For example, “school prayer” is not illegal. A public school, being an instrument of state government at long remove, is prohibited from mandating that students pray. It is also barred from prohibiting students from praying if they so choose. Because their right to choose whether to pray, and if so to whom, is protected as against the state by the Fourteenth Amendment. And the Congress cannot enable the states to pass either such law, being prohibited from doing so by the First Amendment.
Needless to say, the constitution can be amended to allow such laws as are now barred by the guarantees it presently contains. But amendments are purposefully made difficult of passage as a protection against “impulse” changes.
Just to be complete, the constitutional theory outlined here is not limited to the U.S. Based on Sweden’s interesting method of protecting rights, the traditional term for it is borrowed from the Swedish: grundlag (plural -en) – literally “ground law.” Sweden has several grundlagen (four when I studied comparative constitutional law, and I believe a couple have passed since) which require special majorities in the Riksdag to pass and to supersede. You will recall Matt_mcl speaking of the new Canadian constitution (not called that, IIRC).
Bottom line is to protect those things particularly dear to the hearts of all men by restricting government from taking them away from any group.
By the way, a non-constitutional example of how “rule of law” works is what is either a classic case in penal law or one of the more interesting urban legends of our day:
In such-and-such state (as I heard it, Delaware), grand theft was defined as taking over $100 to which you had no legal right. Petty theft was defined as taking less than $100.
A man was arrested for stealing a $100 bill. He was charged with grand theft and petty theft (using the classic prosecutorial device of “lesser included offense” – so that a jury might acquit of one but convict of the other). His lawyer, being relatively sharp, noted that the law of the state required strict construction of penal statutes. He then raised the definitions of the two crimes.
You can see what is coming. Under the laws of Delaware, stealing precisely $100 was not a crime. Case dismissed. (And the legislature promptly changed the laws!)
Yes, Jaakko, I agree that the majority usually gets its way. But often it requires a supermajority to accomplish this. If you held a vote tomorrow, I bet you could find 50%+1 of the voters who’d support making Christianity the official religion of America. Maybe not, but let’s pretend. Well, the majority may get its way, but should it get its way? No. Now, if enough people wanted to, they could repeal the first amendment. All it takes is 2/3 of the house, 2/3 of the senate, then ratification by 3/4 of the state legislatures.
The reason that the majority agrees to abide by this restriction of its power is that although you may be in the majority in one issue, you are sure to hold minority views on other issues. So even though you think a state religion would be a good idea, you agree that it cannot happen without a great deal of trouble. In return, you are protected against another arbitrary repeal of the second amendment, which you might support wholeheartedly, although 50%+1 of the population disagrees.
So the constitution is a compromise, an agreement by the majority that the majority should not always rule, for the protection of the majority of the people–since even if you agree with the majority of the people the majority of the time, you are sure to find yourself in the minority sometimes.