Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  American History/Political Science

Paper #10

Tyranny of the majority was coined by de Tocqueville in his study and book, “Democracy In America”.  A difficult political term to define….but I will try to explain it a bit……this is one of those terms in politics that takes thought and interpretation……depends where you stand, politically and who you are talking about…….

Tyranny of the majority, used in discussing systems of democracy and majority rule, is a criticism of the scenario in which decisions made by a majority under that system would place that majority’s interests so far above a dissenting individual’s interest that the individual would be actively oppressed, just like the oppression by tyrants and despots.

And then there was the Federalist #10 written by James Madison:

No. 10 addresses the question of how to guard against “factions,” or groups of citizens, with interests contrary to the rights of others or the interests of the whole community. In today’s discourse the term advocacy group or special interest group often carries the same connotation. Madison argued that a strong, large republic would be a better guard against those dangers than smaller republics—for instance, the individual states.

But first, in case there is any confusion, the Federalist Papers were a bunch of editorials written by founding fathers that were in support of a strong central government during the debate over the “new” Constitution.

What can we say about this subject?

If you are old enough to remember your Civics class….what was the major theme of the class?  America is Great and majority rule….right?

Okay that is out of the way…….now let us look at any given public traded corporation……it takes a majority of the shareholders to pass any issue that confronts the operation of the company….That is call ‘Majority rules”! Then why when a majority, a simple majority, of 51% a bad thing….I was taught that the majority rules….is it rue or not?