From: andie nachgeborenen
You'll take democracy over constitutional rights?
What is your view of Brown v. Board of Education? Or on the other side, US v. Debs (upholding the convictions of the CP leadership for conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the US govt)?
^^^^ CB: Protecting minorities is a contradiction for democracy.
Constitutional Amendments are sort of majority opinion. Of course, they preserve the reputed opinion of a majority at one time for future populations. Nonetheless , "Constitutional Rights" when they protect an oppressed minority, are the wise opinion of some past majority that limits and regulates future majorities that may backslide.
Many Constitutional rights protect the ultimate minority of one, the individual, vis-a-vis the state representing the "majority".
On another aspect, I am not sure that we could not have gotten a majority of Americans to support the principle of _Brown_ at that time. In other words, the Brown court might have represented majority opinion of the U.S. people at that time. Close to 100% of people of color would have supported it. Thus, with just a large minority of white vote, we would have had a majority.
Similarly, the Debs court decision may have represented minority public opinion at the time. If we had had a vote of the whole country at that time ,we might have gotten Debs out of jail.
The latter minority, that the Debs court represented, is the world historic , ruling class minority. Class history is the history of the tyranny of the minority of rich. When we discuss the tyranny of the majority, as we should, as leftists we should use the opportunity to remind that the system itself is fundamentally a tyranny of the minority. This is reflected in the legal system in many ways, in both the legislature and the courts.
Old LBO-talk threads:
http://search.lbo-talk.org/search/swish.cgi?query=%22tyranny+of+the+majority %22&submit=Search%21&metaname=swishtitle&sort=unixdate
27 Historical Specificity [ Tue Apr 25 21:16:34 PDT 2000 rank= 901, size= 7529 bytes, author= brad.hatch ] ... latter. > > Incidentally, that too-radical proposition for Attorney General Lani > Guinier bases her whole argument against the Tyranny of ... 28 Historical Specificity [ Tue Apr 25 02:28:15 PDT 2000 rank= 901, size= 7777 bytes, author= Jim heartfield ] ... latter. Incidentally, that too-radical proposition for Attorney General Lani Guinier bases her whole argument against the Tyranny of ... 29 Populism, Fascism, Corporatism, Oppression, and Repression [ Fri Nov 19 10:28:31 PST 1999 rank= 901, size= 19268 bytes, author= Chip Berlet ] Hi, Geez, you folks have more tangents than a high school geometry textbook. On top of that, there is an alarming slipperiness of language. This is an attempt to put one thread back in the needle. Populism, Fascism, Corporatism, Oppression, and Repression are different concepts. This is a long response, but ... 30 Dems (the system sucks!) / Can Proportional Representation Help? [ Mon May 3 12:51:03 PDT 1999 rank= 901, size= 7310 bytes, author= Paul Henry Rosenberg ] ... minority concerns. This was a primary concern that lead Lani Guinier to first consider the idea of proportional representation ...