[washingtonismoney]

The county-by-county depiction of red vs. blue is well known to all of you.  The founders went to great lengths to protect the rights of those in the minority.  Therefore, we have the Senate, based on regional equality, and the House, based on concentrations of population.  This to me is just one of the beauties of our republic.  Those who focus solely on the power of large concentrations of population play dangerously with promoting the tyranny of the majority.

Well, some of the founders did. Madison and Hamilton, for instance, thought the Senate was pretty stupid.

And of course appealing to a purported tyranny of the majority is an easy principle -- but it's worth asking: when? why? for what purposes? for instance, preventing the tyranny of the majority from shutting down speech is very desirable. That's why the Bill of Rights is a good thing. Making sure corn farmers get their ethanol subsidies? Well, I've cherry-picked (corn picked?) favorable examples, but there needs to be some differentiation.

I would guess most advanced economies have a parliamentary system that are much more oriented to the majority. While I prefer living in the U.S. to other countries, I didn't perceive a tyrannical hellscape travelling through them. Why? I don't mean this facetiously; appealing to the Founders is all well and good, but it's not as if they came down from the mountain with the tablets. It was a product of many compromises, and a particular time and place. We shouldn't treat their words as holy writ, unalterable and unquestionable.

[washingtonismoney]

The county-by-county depiction of red vs. blue is well known to all of you.  The founders went to great lengths to protect the rights of those in the minority.  Therefore, we have the Senate, based on regional equality, and the House, based on concentrations of population.  This to me is just one of the beauties of our republic.  Those who focus solely on the power of large concentrations of population play dangerously with promoting the tyranny of the majority.

Well, some of the founders did. Madison and Hamilton, for instance, thought the Senate was pretty stupid.

And of course appealing to a purported tyranny of the majority is an easy principle -- but it's worth asking: when? why? for what purposes? for instance, preventing the tyranny of the majority from shutting down speech is very desirable. That's why the Bill of Rights is a good thing. Making sure corn farmers get their ethanol subsidies? Well, I've cherry-picked (corn picked?) favorable examples, but there needs to be some differentiation.

I would guess most advanced economies have a parliamentary system that are much more oriented to the majority. While I prefer living in the U.S. to other countries, I didn't perceive a tyrannical hellscape travelling through them. Why? I don't mean this facetiously; appealing to the Founders is all well and good, but it's not as if they came down from the mountain with the tablets. It was a product of many compromises, and a particular time and place. We shouldn't treat their words as holy writ, unalterable and unquestionable.