I often wonder if in their deliberations, the Founders gave much thought to the idea of the "tyranny of the minority". I believe Madison mentioned it alongside the "tyranny of the majority" in the course of contemplating a Bill of Rights, but I wonder how much the distinction between the two was explored.
Because it's significant. Questions of "tyranny" aside, power wielded by the majority is at least constrained by the need to remain in the majority. It necessarily yields to political and cultural change. And yet it is precisely at the moment when such power is held in check by its natural guardrails that we become vulnerable to the more formidable threat.
In order for power to be held by a minority, it normally involves taking advantage of systemic flaws in the mechanisms of democracy, and/or engineering them by the selective abandonment of crucial, voluntary norms (as you discuss in your piece). Untethered as such from the accountability of majoritarian rule, the governing class is incentivized to exploit this to the fullest extent, finding ever more insidious ways of lowering the threshold of support necessary to maintain power. Once this contract between the governing and the governed has been violated, the moral integrity that once sealed it rationalized away, society becomes unstable and prone to violent revolution.
In the past, our courts have served as the vital bulwark against a tyrannical political coalition. Yet because of the Federalist Society, our highest court has been explicitly engineered to thwart democratic rule and deliver verdicts friendly to the minority that currently threatens our social fabric.
As such, I fear we are locked in a downward spiral where the political pressure which normally fuels a healthy, functioning democracy is now being trapped, and will inevitably seek release in ways that will cause ruptures at our weak points. And it can be hard to know where those are until they break and we are left to repair the damage.
I often wonder if in their deliberations, the Founders gave much thought to the idea of the "tyranny of the minority". I believe Madison mentioned it alongside the "tyranny of the majority" in the course of contemplating a Bill of Rights, but I wonder how much the distinction between the two was explored.
Because it's significant. Questions of "tyranny" aside, power wielded by the majority is at least constrained by the need to remain in the majority. It necessarily yields to political and cultural change. And yet it is precisely at the moment when such power is held in check by its natural guardrails that we become vulnerable to the more formidable threat.
In order for power to be held by a minority, it normally involves taking advantage of systemic flaws in the mechanisms of democracy, and/or engineering them by the selective abandonment of crucial, voluntary norms (as you discuss in your piece). Untethered as such from the accountability of majoritarian rule, the governing class is incentivized to exploit this to the fullest extent, finding ever more insidious ways of lowering the threshold of support necessary to maintain power. Once this contract between the governing and the governed has been violated, the moral integrity that once sealed it rationalized away, society becomes unstable and prone to violent revolution.
In the past, our courts have served as the vital bulwark against a tyrannical political coalition. Yet because of the Federalist Society, our highest court has been explicitly engineered to thwart democratic rule and deliver verdicts friendly to the minority that currently threatens our social fabric.
As such, I fear we are locked in a downward spiral where the political pressure which normally fuels a healthy, functioning democracy is now being trapped, and will inevitably seek release in ways that will cause ruptures at our weak points. And it can be hard to know where those are until they break and we are left to repair the damage.