Quotes About Majoritarianism

When the proximate community is dysfunctional, alienated individuals need some other way to channel their need to belong.4 Populist nationalism offers one such appealing vision of a larger purposeful imagined community—whether it is white majoritarianism in Europe and the United States, the Islamic Turkish nationalism of Turkey's Justice and Development Party, or the Hindu nationalism of India's Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

But that's the way America rolls nowadays. Consensus, laws and treaties are out. Smug, religion-soaked majoritarianism is in fashion. It is not coincidence that Bible study is returning to American public schools.

In another dissent, which became famous and influential, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes asserted an almost unlimited government police power flowing from "the right of a majority to embody their opinions in law." Notice that Holmes' majoritarianism led him to assert an essentially unlimited right.

The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with real freedom. Our founding fathers clearly understood this.

America has never been a pure democracy and majoritarianism has always been as much feared as monarchism.