Reply #14: but there are ways of doing both

[ulTRAX]

It doesn't take much imagination to realize that we can have a system that protects the concept of majority rule AND yet blocks the majority from running amok.

In the US we have a schizoid approach to this issue. The Framers created a system that gives special powers to SOME citizens based on state residence at the expense of others. This system can give us minority rule on occasion. That SHOULD scare us all.... but apparently it doesn't.

But the states as a condition of ratification insisted on a Bill of Rights which uses legal measure to block the majority. Clearly this system is preferable to protecting small states than the civic inequality used in the first approach. Why should ONE citizen who chooses to live in Wyoming have a 3.5x heavier vote for president than a citizen who chooses to live in California? What is the moral justification for SOME citizens to be granted such power to protect their interests and not others? Why not racial minorities? Gays? Women?

In the US all belief in democratic principles has been replaced with Founder worship. We're brought up to understand and validate what happened back in 1787, to gloss over the deep flaws in the system even if, as 2000 proved, the entire course of US and world history can be changed WITHOUT the consent of the American People.