from our friends at WaPo
because the majority will repress the minority
i mean, that is a legitimate concern. this vote probably would not have gone in our favor 50 years ago… but then again the code wouldn’t have been proposed back then either.
Yeah. I remember from Luna Oi’s recent video the excellent point about how most Southern whites were in favor of Jim Crow, hence why democracy is not always a virtue in and of itself (granted, most Southern whites were informed by a societal structure imposed on them by the Southern elite in the first place). Also worth noting that, at the time of Loving v. Virginia, approval for interracial marriage sat at about 20%. It only reached the 50% mark in 1995 and now it is at 90%, over 50 years since repeal of “anti-miscegenation” laws.
Of course, we’re giving them too much credit. What they really mean is that the majority people (workers) will oppress “aspiring entrepreneurs” by not allowing their own oppression. The same people who coined “majority tyranny” were literal slave owners, mind you.
Technically I don’t think Alexis de Tocqueville (who is thought to have originated the term “tyranny of the majority”), nor JS Mill (who emphasized the concept heavily) were slave owners. But there are definitely plenty of criticisms that can be levied against either of them.
I think Liberals fundamentally understand this truth as well for the most part. Most know about how the US federal government overruled popular sentiment in the past for the better. (albeit, they will still insist on limp-wristed compromise unless pushed into more direct action by radical groups on the ground)
The problem is that suddenly top-down governing is no long acceptable outside the confines of Liberal Democracy and Capitalism. Clearly those are the “default” states, and any oversight by a central authority there is fine to keep things on track, but once you go into “radical” territory like a socialist democracy, clearly it means the government is forcing the people into it!
