In my humble opinion, there is WAY too much talk about "the tyranny of the majority." What the majority has long been, in the U.S. anyhow, is not tyrannous but feeble. Nevertheless, there is a deep-set fear of violent hordes here, and our Constitution is befouled with a bunch of unnecessary separations of power, a bicameral legislature, an Electoral College, and assorted other enfeebling provisions. The reasons that stuff is in there, of course, and the arguments for retaining all it, center around fear: fear of a "mobocracy," fear of armed brown shirts, fear of sans-culottes, fear of Bolshevism.
Of course, all of those items are quite sensibly feared. (Think of January 6th for example!) But what is missed by the fearful defenders of our cowering Constitution is that none of those groups, events, or "isms" had very much to do with democracy, even with democracy of the most radical kind. That's what my new paper, "Why Radical Democracy is Inconsistent with 'Mob Rule'" is about.
It has just come out in the new issue of The Romanian Journal of Society and Politics and is available for free download here.
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