alt Hacker NewsRespect for minorities also needs to happen in democracies.
Even if democracy in some strict sense means that majority decides, you still need to care about the minorities to keep the system credible.
Otherwise any minority will soon realize that they will never win and break out of the system.
Replies
That's the point of a constitution: you take certain matters out of the hands of any (normal) majority.
Of course, one can bicker about what the constitutional amendment process actually is, and obviously about the actual content of the constitution. But the central point remains: minority (and majority) rights are protected by a constitution that cannot be altered by a (simple) majority vote.
.... the problem comes, however, when the minority decides it wants more than the constitution provides.
I guess that’s called tyranny of the majority?
David Graeber wrote how in Sparta everyone carrying weapons meant that they couldn’t afford to displease even a small fraction of them. So they had to resort to 100% consent and not majoritarian voting.
And then goes on to assert that the majoritarian voting process works only in a system where the state apparatus has an absolute control over violence with which the disgruntled minority opinions are suppressed. I think it sort of helped to resolve some of my internal contradictions around democracy as it exists today.