Hey, Gentle Readers, what time is it? It's Rossiter Time!\n\n
6. The fallibility and potential tyranny of majority rule.\n\n
OK, I'll begin the note by saying that majority rule is certainly fallible (what isn't?) and is potentially tyrannical. I am all in favor of restricting the power of the majority to beat the crap out of the minority. I do place both the fundamental liberties and equality before the law higher than I do democracy. So I agree with the Conservative Tradition on this, as far as it goes.\n
But.\n
I do believe in majority rule, or at least in democracy, which isn't quite the same thing. And I think that the whole idea of democracy is losing ground, so here's Your Humble Blogger's cranky little defense of it, and of what it entails.\n
Liking democracy means liking democracy even when you lose elections. Liking democracy means being willing to accept compromise; liking democracy actually means embracing compromise, but I am willing to compromise on that. Liking democracy means rarely getting your way, and liking it. Liking democracy means fighting hard for what you believe in, and working with and for the people who fight against you. Liking democracy means having dirty hands, and liking that, too.\n
We're at war, now, a war I don't think was a good idea, started by a president that I not only didn't (and won't) vote for, but a president I think won the election dishonestly (OK, not dishonestly, but I do think that the will of the electorate was thwarted). The Senate has acted particularly badly, in my opinion. In addition to the war, there are about a zillion (maybe 1.5 zillion) policy matters on which I disagree with the Senate majority, the House majority, and the President.\n
That's OK. All right, that's not OK, but the reason it's not OK is that I have failed in the marketplace of ideas. I have—everybody has—the responsibility to fight for public opinion. I don't have the right to win that fight. I do have the right to fight it again, and again and again if I have to. I also have the responsibility to cooperate when I lose.\n
Unless, of course, it's a moral matter, and I'm willing to go to jail over it. Or I emigrate. But either way, understand that the majority is within its rights to act like the majority. I don't get to appoint the president, I don't get to decide what people should believe, and I don't get to win all the time. What I get to do is fight in the battleground of ideas, and that's enough.\n
Thank you,
-Vardibidian\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, Gentle Readers, what time is it? It’s Rossiter Time! 6. The fallibility and potential tyranny of majority rule. OK, I’ll begin the note by saying that majority rule is certainly fallible (what isn’t?) and is potentially tyrannical. I am…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}