Tyranny of The Majority: Yay or Nay?
by My opinion of the system of "Tyranny of the Majority"
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” Thomas Jefferson in this quote mentioned the chief problem with the system of Tyranny of the Majority. The founding fathers of the United States of America failed to foresee the dilemna that the Constitution would open up great opportunities for the tyrannical majority rule to completely pacify the minority’s rights. Unfortunately, the system of democracy, utilized by many of today’s societies embraces this system of “tyranny”. Tyranny of the Majority is an unfair and unjust policy for two main reasons.
A problem with tyrannical government is that a mere two percent of votes could drastically affect forty-nine percent of the people in a nation. This policy has been known to cause various civil wars and revolutions around the world. For example, the American Revolution was a result of the Tyranny of the Majority. The King of Britain back in the eighteenth century thought of his thirteen American colonies as a major business opportunity. Since, at the time, England was the majority, the king ruled over the Americans without representation, an entirely unfair policy for the minority since the minority had no say in how they wanted to live their lives. Another example of rule by tyranny of the majority was slavery in the United States. However even though there were not a greater number of white slave owners, the slave owners had the money and the spots in government which would ensure limitless persecution of the blacks.
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Post Commenthfj
On February 8, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Nice article. Even though i agree with your article to a certain extent, what we have in place in our nation is still better than most nations Even though our constitution has had one loop-hole after another exploited to cater to the wealthy and famous of our nation, we have mostly been our own worst enemy for not speaking our minds on a lot of these issues that pertain to us. We should strongly voice our opinions as Americans to the daily operation of our great nation instead of leaving it up to the ten term senators to cater to these special interests groups and selling their votes as they stuff their already overfilled pockets. Well done.