by Jeffry R Fisher

Created on: November 23, 2009

Popular Feelings:

Ask most people their feelings about democracy, and you're likely to get a glowing appraisal if it were the very highest ideal in all governance. However, if you ask people to define democracy, very few will get beyond majority rule. The combination leads to the popular notion that majority rule is automatic justification for anything.

Since majority rule by itself can be as rude as two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner, there's clearly something missing from our romance with democracy. Either we must add more ingredients or else we should cool our feelings and look elsewhere for a higher governing ideal.

Justification:

The usual justification for majority rule is that it (by definition) imposes on fewer people than minority rule, monarchy, or anything in between. However, this presupposes the need for a consensus (that any rule must be imposed on anyone).

Some decisions are like that. Consider what side of a two-way road to drive on: Choosing the same side as other traffic going in your direction is probably more important to you than any personal preference. Being contrary, or even compromising by driving down the middle would cause head-on collisions.

In cases like this, majority rule serves even the minority by achieving consensus. That's because the consensus has value in itself (and even a rule from an aristocratic monarch would be preferable to anarchy).

Exception:

However, not every decision so clearly needs a consensus. Consider the question of eating pork. If a coalition of animal-rights advocates, vegetarians, Muslims and (as odd political bedfellows) Jews achieved a majority in some jurisdiction, would it be proper to ban the possession and sale of pork?

Of course not. Since it's possible for every person (or family) to eat a different menu without colliding head-on with others, even majority rule, imposing on only a minority, imposes more than necessary. There's a superior ideal here, one that democracy orbits without touching, and that's LIBERTY.

Enumerated Powers:

On decisions where liberty is practical, the moral comparison between majority and minority rule becomes a false dichotomy. A majority may impose upon fewer people than would a minority, but liberty imposes on fewer still (none). Therefore, on such decisions, majority rule can't be justified.

That's why the US Constitution (among others) grants only enumerated powers: It lists the few questions for which majority rule is justified. Limited justification is also why the process for granting new powers (amendment) requires supermajorities and tedious involvement of the states: A near consensus is needed to prove that a consensus is necessary. A mere legislative majority that grants itself new power is committing an act of treason against the people it was elected to serve.

Conclusion:

No matter how warmly demagogues speak of it, democracy is trumped by liberty. I suggest that when people rhapsodize about democracy, they're really responding to the liberty that their particular democracy has been forced to respect.

The majority rule aspect may be the least evil way to decide those few questions that need consensus, but the preponderance of joy and prosperity in a successful democracy owes less to the wisdom of majority rule than to the many ways that the majority rule has been held close to necessity.

In other words, democracy is only as valuable as its constraints. In that, democracy is not an inherent good but merely a useful feature of a necessary evil.

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