It is our choices, great and small, that defines us both individually and collectively. Too many people on both the Right and the Left fear what they perceive as the loss of control that is inherent in any sort of collective decision making process, particularly where it affects their wallet. This is never because of some high-minded ideal, but out of pure avarice, no matter what their reasoning.
We hear these same individuals voice their fear of the "tyranny of the majority," that majority who share the same rights and responsibilities as they do. Their reasoning is that they have an inalienable right to do as they will, and that the government should bend to their will, to their interpretation of our Constitution, even if it is contrary to the desires of the majority of the American people. Thomas Jefferson wrote of the weakness of this argument in a Letter to the Citizens of Annapolis in 1809 (The Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson , Memorial Edition; Volume 16, p. 337; 1904.), "Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends, the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them."
Jefferson expanded his view on the subject in a letter to Alexander von Humboldt nine years later, in 1817, "The first principle of republicanism is that the lex majoris partis [majority rule -- RJG ] is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal rights; to consider the will of the society enounced [formally declare--RJG] by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism." (The Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson , Memorial Edition; Volume 15, p. 127; 1904.)
Too many libertarians, especially the disciples of Ayn Rand, think that this degree of surrender of their right of self-determination is too much to ask of them in exchange for the benefits that arise from living under this country's political system, and within our American society. They remind me of Lisbeth Salander, heroine and Asperger's afflicted genius of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy. She runs around the trilogy expecting the whole world to permit her to play by her own set of rules, several times to her own detriment. No compromise is her watchword. It is only in the end, when she is reminded by the judge at her trial that he cannot release her as a ward of the state--and thus become a full-fledged Swedish citizen--unless she agrees to give the quite rightly (as we have learned in the three books) despised police an interview, as is her responsibility as a citizen under Swedish law. Lisbeth bends a little, and gets her rights as a citizen, and her freedom. But she then discovers when she asks her trial attorney to become her attorney for all of the legal matters in her life, that freedom has a price: responsibility not only for yourself, but for and to others. Modern society is much too complex for the lone wolf; you only get hunted down and (usually metaphorically) killed.
As to the tyranny of the majority, Jefferson understood that not only it could happen, but that sometimes it would happen. "Against such a majority we cannot effect [the gathering them into the fold of truth] by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments."--"Notes on Virginia Q.XVII," 1782. (The Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition ; Volume 2, p. 223; 1904.)
But Jefferson also saw no just alternative for our nation, especially among those like Scottish philosopher David Hume, who despised the common man, "And where else will [Hume,] this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men, find the origin of just powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority?" --Letter to John Cartwright, 1824. (The Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition ; Volume 16, p. 44; 1904.)
There are far too many libertarians who believe that in a modern democracy, where there is a presumption of relative equality between the individual citizens within the nation-state, the majority against the minority is like two wolves and a sheep discussing what to have for dinner. This is a false premise. First of all, two wolves and a sheep could never be deemed equal under any circumstance that I can conceive of in my mind. In practical terms, if the only repast for the carnivorous wolves in the area is that one sheep, the wolves would be much better off in the long term asking the sheep how to become vegetarians.
No, equality is represented by an analogy of three wolves sitting and deciding which of them will become dinner for the other two. Once again, that is a short term, and highly irrational solution. No matter what, at some point in the future, you are (at best) going to have one hungry, living wolf, and two wolves dead and eaten, unless they change the carnivore paradigm under which they are operating. As I said above, modern society is much too complex for the lone wolf; you only get hunted down and (usually metaphorically) killed. If our species is to survive, we had better hope that the metaphor of the lion lying down with the lamb comes to pass, and soon.
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