It’s Not ‘Minority Rule,’ It’s The Point
By: David Harsanyi
July 06, 2022
One of the more popular grievances from the contemporary left revolves around the notion that our nation has been subverted by “minority rule.”
Here is the pollster Nate Silver:
“Despite the various, very serious threats to American democracy, things would *mostly* be fine if the balance of elected power more closely reflected the popular will (e.g. Senate seats proportional to population, no Electoral College, less gerrymandering).”Silver is confusing the inability to coerce others with minoritarianism. It is not a serious threat to American democracy that New Yorkers are unable to dictate Oklahoma’s abortion laws. Nor that Texans can’t compel Rhode Islanders to adopt their gun laws. It’s the point.
Elites like to mock the proles when they point out that we don’t live in a democracy. But the system Silver believes problematic tempers divisions. It is the core idea of American governance. If the United States is more divided than it ever has been in modern times, as a New York Times reporter recently claimed, we have even less reason to dispense with the mechanisms and institutions that diffuse power and constrain one side of the divide from lording over the other.
The anti-constitutionalist’s argument usually has two strands that (illogically) intersect. The first is to assert that the Constitution is a work of slave-owning white men who used antiquated and counterproductive ideas that undermine modernity and “democracy.” The second is to argue that we have absolutely no idea what the founders intended, anyway.
more
https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/06/its-not-minority-rule-its-the-point/
