Democracy and Majority Rule

A MINORITY VIEW

BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS

RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2009 AND THEREAFTER

Democracy and majority rule give an aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyranny. Think about it. How many decisions in our day-to-day lives would we like to be made through majority rule or the democratic process? How about the decision whether you should watch a football game on television or "Law and Order"? What about whether you drive a Chevrolet or a Ford, or whether your Easter dinner is turkey or ham? Were such decisions made in the political arena, most of us would deem it tyranny. Why isn't it also tyranny for the democratic process to mandate what type of light bulbs we use, how many gallons of water to flush toilets or whether money should be taken out of our paycheck for retirement?

The founders of our nation held a deep abhorrence for democracy and majority rule. In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wrote, "Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." John Adams predicted, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." Our founders intended for us to have a republican form of limited government where the protection of individual God-given rights was the primary job of government...

Sadly, a great many people in this country, as viewed by who is now in elected office, either don't know or don't care what our Founding Fathers said. Many of those that don't care think that way because they believe they are smarter than the Founders, or have convinced themselves that, despite what they wrote, the Founders would do it differently today.

We also have not had leaders often enought, during the last 100 years, that stood up for limited government and preservation of our God-given rights! The progressivist ideas that began seeping in to the government during Presidents Teddy Roosevelt's and Woodrow Willson's terms have taken firm root in and been expanded by the Democrats and the left.