Redskins

[Mike]

Those make for unfair comparisons though. Whitey, honkey, cracker, Caucasian... racial terms for white people don't offend most white people. We see them as cute or funny. That's because we are the people with the advantage in this society. Racial epithets for white people have never been used to oppress. They've never been used to separate us from the mainstream as a way to justify taking away our rights. When we hear them, we don't automatically assume that the speaker views us as inferior because of that label... that we are less than fully civilized human beings. We, as white people, have very little cultural baggage or emotional connection to those words. You cannot fairly compare a white person being called a cracker to a black person being called the n-word. We simply don't have the same framework for processing it. That's why it's harder for white people to understand.

It's similar to a woman complaining about unwanted sexual attention and a man justifying it by saying, "I'd love it if a woman treated me that way!" Well, of course you would... you likely have no experience with such an experience being out of your control. To you, it's harmless fun, and you can reign it in whenever you want. To women it's a real physical danger that could potentially hurt them just trying to get out of it. Men and women don't have the same experiences or context with which to process this. Sometimes it's hard to remember how different someone else's interpretation of events can be.

[TheMaster]

Random fact:

Black slaves were the original crackers. The term cracker actually comes from the slaves that were entrusted by their owners to whip slaves that "got out of line", not from saltine crackers being white. So, calling a white person a cracker is historically inaccurate.

[Ronster]

[Mike]

Decisions made by Supreme Court justices is decidedly not a of majority rule, even when nominated by democratically elected presidents. The Supreme Court has often made decisions that become the law of the land that are not supported by the majority. To claim that as majority rule is a stretch to try to maintain some specific notion of what democracy is.

Presidents have often made decisions the majority disagrees with. There are lots of places where Congress has passed laws not supported by a majority. That's both good and bad. We have a representative democracy, because presumably we are too stupid to make decisions as group, so we choose people to do the hard thinking for us. There is good in that, but it is often abused as well.

Either way, when the will of the majority it often not the law of the land, then it seems disingenuous to refer to our system as "majority rule".

[Elle]

[akiva]

[Elle]

Maybe if a few million slaves could have voted... but who is defined as "ruling" determines from whom the majority is drawn in the first place. Ancient Athens was by no means ever a true "majority" rule even with direct democracy.

[Ronster]

[poorpete]

Fun aside: America did not become a true democracy until the late 60s early 70s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

"Whether national elections are free and fair" - Voting Rights Act of 1965
"The security of voters" - Voting Rights Act of 1965
"The influence of foreign powers on government" - Not really an issue since 1776
"The capability of the civil servants to implement policies" - 1789

[Elle]

That is their decision procedure, yes. When they agree to take a case, however, they only need four out of nine, a different decision procedure. If we suppose those nine were the only people in the nation who could vote, their decision procedure would not mean the nation had a majority rule government; it would have an oligarchy. You can have a democracy with a different decision procedure in which the largest plurality wins. In our system we permit ballot proposals that come from a petition signed by a minority. Sometimes we demand a supermajority or 2/3 vote. None of these procedures speak to who holds power (everyone, in theory) or whether the majority is able to vote in rules that deprive a minority of constitutional rights without having to actually change the Constitution. Which requires more than a majority. The opposite of tyranny is democracy, in other words. How that democracy operates is a separate question. Ours deliberately enshrines rights of minorities.

[Mike]

@Ron... Right, but the majority of justices does not equate to the majority of the nation. For good or ill, our government very often does not serve the will of the majority. We set it up that way on purpose, because sometimes, the majority is short-sighted and easily swayed and doesn't know what's best for it. At least, that was the opinion of our founding fathers.

[Elle]

Or even if it did know what was best for it, that doesn't mean it is the same as what is Best in general. This is specifically why we do not have majority rule.

[akiva]

[Elle]

Right. Majority isn't functioning here as an abstract notion encompassing anything that comes down to a majority vote, but means a majority OF something. The majority of electors may pick a different President than the majority of people who voted, so the majority as an abstract concept there tells us nothing.