The tyranny of the minority

American’s penchant for favoring the underdog, or a David against a Goliath, or an individual over a group, or a minority group over a majority group has reached a crescendo not displayed in many decades. As idealistic and tolerant the penchant is, it can work against our national interests, that is the greater good of us all. It can take us down.

The First Amendment right to free speech is being abused. We’ve come a long way from “not crying fire in a crowded theater” to “a politicians right to lie”. All this has happened in a lifetime. When a teacher’s “right to free speech” exceeds contractual obligations to “teach an approved curriculum”, then the pendulum has swung too far one way, and the larger group of students suffer when taught something other than the curriculum.

Prisons used to have a main objective of protecting the larger population from the minority of criminals. Somehow it morphed, again in a lifetime, into a rehabilitation objective that put more minority criminals back on the streets and among the majority of citizens. And there have been other reasons to release this minority group of criminals back into the general population. Where this minority group gained priority, or even equal budget treatment, can be the subject of books, but the majority general population suffers for it.

If a man murders a pregnant woman, in most places he is committing two murders. But if the same woman has an abortion, that is perfectly legal, and not a murder of the unborn child. While a seemingly crazy policy, it is more evidence of the tyranny of the minority.

In politics, the rules in our federal Senate for filibusters have changed, again in a lifetime. Filibusters today are most gentlemanly, without the physical discomfort of the old filibuster rules. Now one Senator has only to declare his intention to filibuster to stop the “voter elected” simple majority of Senators from going forward. This is an egregious tyranny of the minority, especially in its routine use.

Promiscuous sexual behavior , not sex out of marriage, is still a minority behavior most Americans think. It becomes a tyranny of the minority when the majority are expected to fund for the medical and psychological costs of such risky behavior. The are alternatives for the majority, such as higher funding for cancer or heart disease research.

Illegal aliens, as in those people who are not citizens of the USA and came here anyway without going through the legal wickets, amount to an estimated 4% to 7% of the population. They are clearly a minority of people living within our borders, but have become a tyranny of the minority by the amount of political attention and benefits being thrown at them. The unwillingness of so many of this minority to assimilate is the “icing on the cake” in affronts to the majority of Americans.

American economic minority groups who have aligned or coalesced on economic common interests have also become nation-threatening minority entities. When organized as voting blocks, and pandered to by politicians, in the past they have broken the code that also breaks democracies. When they can vote monies from the haves to the have-nots, the National will fall financially. If ever there is a case for the majority rising up against the minority, this is a future one, albeit one that is seldom discussed these days, though it should be. Perhaps one or two votes may not matter, but the compilation of all these past uncoordinated good ideas applied to minority economic groups, when added together, is another case of the tyranny of the minority. In this case, even many of these minority groups don’t recognize the negative impacts that will ruin them.

Others have experienced or observed their own tyrannies of the minority. And some may be moved to make even more laws, rules, or regulations about correcting or minimizing this problem.

There is an alternative. It is called the “national interest”. This alternative takes citizens running for offices at all levels, local, state, and federal; citizens who put national interests above all other interests, which are often very many. This alternative also takes voters to use “national interest” as one of their considerations in whom to vote for. If it took a lifetime to get to the tyranny of the minority that we have today, perhaps in another lifetime the Nation can return to a majority that practices “largesse” in pursuing national interests. For the more politically current, call it a majority soft power way to lead and improve America. In all cases, we should not let our political minorities ruin a good deal for our kids, and later future generations.