Utah’s Tyranny of the Majority
This opinion letter from Sunday’s Trib expresses well a basic tenent in the design of our Consitution and the purpose of the Senate.
Letter…
In my 18 largely happy years of living and working in Utah I have yet to be more disappointed with my state than I have been these past 12 months.
With our attacks on gays, undocumented immigrants, smokers, and on and on, we seem to have crossed a line from building a better future for all of our citizens to something akin to what John Stewart Mill, in his famous essay “On Liberty,” called a “tyranny of the majority.”
At that time he wrote: “The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise.”
In a state founded by Brigham Young and his Latter-day Saint followers, who themselves were fleeing a similar tyranny of the majority, where their rights as individuals and a minority community were being violently repressed, I find it disheartening that we are imposing a similar kind of retribution on our own fellow citizens.
I can only hope that the actions of the empowered few are what we are seeing and that the true majority of decent, caring and respectful citizens will correct this mistake in direction through the ballot box, at the pulpits of our churches and in our own homes and communities and get us back to our roots as a place where people can live and believe as they see fit.
Steve Boulay
Salt Lake City
February 26th, 2006 at 9:55 am
What are our Republican Morman leaders afraid of? Why can’t they remember the reasons why Utah became Utah? I would be interested in understanding this.
How can a people (the Mormons), who teach as the foundation of their religion, charity, love and acceptance, find it so hard to have charity, love and acceptance for anyone who is different or threatens their way of life?
February 26th, 2006 at 10:53 am
Vacuum of leadership?
February 26th, 2006 at 11:18 am
Spot, you call that an answer? I recognize there is a vacuum of leadership because real leaders don’t want to run, but it doesn’t explain why those who have decided to run and been elected are so afraid of their lifestyle being threatened, why they are so weak that they have to bully to preserve their conceived security.
February 26th, 2006 at 11:45 am
In the absence of a Republic that has inviolable laws concerning personal liberties and limits on State power, tyranny of the majoraty is better known a DEMOCRACY!
Get used to it, by fighting against gun rights for instance, and shoving liberal social agendas down peoples throats, a nation gets exactly what you complain about, tyanny of the majoraty, or mobocracy. Only by coexisting under a Constitutional
Law framework that respects all rights, no matter how despicable you may find them can you expect to maintain rights within a minority.
Congratulations socially liberal America! By stirring the pot you have awakened the very thing you sought to control, Good Job! The only way to maintain minoity rights is to support the Constitution and laws of the land. If you pick and choose which of those laws you would follow then why complain when the “majoraty” kicks you in the ass.
February 26th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Who’s let the Republic take the Decade off?
February 26th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Disclaimer: I’ve know Glenn for going on 10 years, and have spent literally DAYS arguing politics and history with him. He is well read, but very angry which, I fear, has destroyed any objectivity. He is SO angry in fact, that he has little or no interest in solutions, but instead dire warnings of doom. Hence the name of his new blog, http://www.wavesoffear.com. Take your sense of humor with when you go.
Ok, I’ve read your post 3 times now. I give up. When you say “shoved down people’s throats†do you mean through majority representation. No, that would be democracy. Or are you saying democracy is bad BECAUSE it leads to tyranny of the majority?
And what do you mean by “coexisting under a Constitutional Law framework� Coexisting with what? What is the “co†part?
Then, we get to the “pick and choose” part which I’m guessing is about illegal immigration. Is it not?
Because otherwise, someone would have to be a mind reader to understand what the heck you are talking about. I guess some things never change.
Love Cliff
February 26th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
After reading thru the site above.
We may be in more trouble than any of us realize, so knowing the extent of our
Frickedness has its place at the big table.
Don’t write him off too soon.
Mysterious ways and all that.
February 26th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
Cliff; My anger is directed at disingenuous people advocating causes for their own selfish purposes. If you are confused, review.
To clear it up for you, there are existing laws, they apply to all of us. What on earth is the difference between someone wanting to restrict guns(you have the right to have a gun), and someone who wants to encourage agendas that are perceived as anti social(you have the right to be gay)? Does anyone stand up for the gun nut when someone like yourself won’t hire him? Don’t think so. It is all personal bais, most of it not based on the rule of law. In order to have your own rights respected you must respect those that exist as you move forward, no matter of your feelings about them. See, since that is what your sentiments are, just feelings. That you wish to impart them on the unwilling is telling, just as they have their own interests in imparting their beliefs onto you.
This said the laws exist now and if you would subvert the ones you do not like, how is it that you are any different than the gay bashers and those that would legislate against them? It is only because you think so, and have a sense of moral elitism. Wars have been waged on people for less. Your posture is pure ARROGANCE!
No real solutions can be offered to a people that are so clueless as to the nature of their delusion. No amount of evidence can be heaped up to point out the hypocrisy of this method of thinking. You bring the war and conflict to your own door.
As for pick and choose, immigration is just one issue where this is occuring in this morally bankrupt Nation.
Shoved down peoples throats, means what it says, One need only watch broke back mountain the movie to understand the outright assault on a particular red neck value system. If you don’t like it, too bad, just ignore it. What is sad that by attacking the culture you don’t like and forcing laws upon it, you actually STRENGTHEN it. Good luck.
ps: if you are gay and reading this, political expediency would dictate accepting civil unions and the rights and obligations they entail. I am in full support of this. To do otherwise is to invite civil war upon you, and since marriage in this culture is between God, man, and a woman, you can add religious war to list of what will be dumped on you.
You understand me to be a person that has come to believe that there is no turning back for thsi Nation, and that our race could be run. One question Cliff, before we go over it(the cliff) When you are trapped inside a burning house do you whisper?
February 26th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
Sooner or later, liberal thinkers will be in the majority here in Utah, especially as the state continues to attract out-of-state businesses to set up shop here in Utah. Once we are in the majority, we can drive the Mormons back to Missouri; excepting, however, my six sister wives - they can stay. That will solve the problems being created by our current legislators and their wacky supporters.
February 27th, 2006 at 8:26 am
There you go drinkin again Vermont.
The statement while in jest, belies the intolerant and facist nature of ALL americans(small a) these days. You simply replace with what you think is right, for what they think is right. That is fundamentally social facism, and the 2 extremes richly deserve one another. Nature abhors a vacuum, so it decided to create your side to hopefully make you both extinct.
February 27th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Anonymous is right - got into a special batch of high-alcohol brew last pm. But seriously, sooner or later the Mo-base has to take responsibility for electing they types that bring us gay-bills, religion-bills, and all other sorts of bills designed to control and interject “morals” on us Godless types while, at the same time, refusing to acknowledge (or outright consider as false) the more serious issues concerning, for example, the environment (e.g., global warming) and the ever increasing gap between rich and poor (e.g., denying immigrants in-state tuition). If I and my type go extinct while crushing these moral crusader, anti-environment-types out of existence, then I have served the common good in an immeasurable way!
February 27th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Study the 2nd law of thermodynamics and ask yourself if political differences are simply the way entropy operates within the social construct of human beings. Do not moralize, just watch the wasted heat.
The Mo’s have their manner of foisting, as do the godless,… just have a goddamn holy war and be done with it. It would serve the national interest and halliburton could rebuild the temple with taxpayer money after the godless destroy it. BTW, nobody out where I’m at cares who wins. g
February 27th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Hey Glenn,
As any engineering student of the 2d law will tell you, it is meaningless to discuss the 2d law without first defining the boundary of your system. You failed to define the boundary of your system, thus leading me to conclude that you ain’t got a foggy notion of what you are talking about.
Crawl back into the bottle and go back to sleep.
February 27th, 2006 at 11:58 am
Boundry would be the human race, in totality squabbling away energy,… politics and warfare being the vehicle, in a maximization of entropy, man as the “reaction”. Does that clarify at all? g
February 27th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Hardly!
February 27th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
I have always considered man an agent of entropy, and the clue is that the most powerful nation is also the most wasteful. What’s interesting is that one simply sums up mans caloric impact in all the things he does, burning fuel etc. If we are causing global warming then we are increasing at the frequency and speed of chemical reactions at a base level.
Almost of mans activities create entropy in the systems they interfere with. Digging holes for minerals, smelting them, tilling soil, heating the atmosphere, waging war, and on aznd on, increasing entropy. This is devoid of morality, just a simple observation, like watching ants.
Despite claims to be in control of himself man is clearly unable at this stage to mitigate his entropic effect on any system. He is actually “burning” like any other series of reactions and in addition proves to be the catalyst of many others.
Consider that is really all you are.
February 27th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Glenn,
What you “have always considered,” and what really is, are apparently concepts remarkably different from one another. But ok, in a metaphysical sense, I’ll buy your entropy analogy. So what? What the GDFH is the twisted point you are trying to make? That any increase in entropy equates with a corresponding decrease in morality? Using your twisted definition - as best I can discern - entropy will increase through nothing more than exercising normal thought. So what? Get to the point and just say it, man! Geeesh!
February 27th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
In response to Utahs tyranny of the majority: I think the Author made a mistake in linking smokers rights with everything else.
Allowing gay marriage does not undermine straight marriages. What undermines marriage is the way polygamy has operated. It is hypocritical for Senator Hatch to say that marriage should be between 1 man and 1 woman. Than he says polygamists should be left alone and that most of them practice family values and love their children. Thats selective libertarianism.
After a 30 day waiting period and vigorous background checks people should have the right to buy a gun. The NRA should cooperate in ensuring that people with mental problems and past criminal conduct should not have the same access to guns as everybody else.
The Rush Limbaugh/Bill Mahler approach to smoking doesnt work. IT IS A HEALTH ISSUE. We dont let restaraunts or bars operate if they violate health code violations. They cant serve spoiled food. They can’t refuse to serve Mexicans, Blacks, Asians, etc. in the name of proprietors rights. Smoking is a behavior. If I’m on a bus or a plane I don’t mind sitting next to a gay, Mexican, Black, Asian, etc. individual. I do mind sitting next to someone who smells like he just ran 20 miles in a sewer.
We dont let the drinker force his vodka down a non-drinkers throat. We don’t let a chocolate eater force his Hershey bar down a person with diabetes. Yet this society still lets people smoke in front of people with asthma and other health problems. These non-smokers face an early death because of it.
The old libertarian slogan still holds true: A person has a right to swing his arm all he wants until it comes in contact with someone elses nose. …….I heard a caller on Air America explain something else that made me think. Most people who don’t smoke are Republicans who make $50,000. a year or more. They are also the ones that buy the tobacco stocks. They make their God damn blood money off the poor Democrats that buy their poison. The tobacco drug dealers make Al Capone look like a boy scout. -Kurt
February 28th, 2006 at 8:27 am
The point is, and as I know you, the rigidity of your own thought process is as exasperating to me as my own process is to you. This is the exercise. On a real physical level the “rules” that govern material in it’s active kinetic or chemical reaction state on Earth, act on humans also. So I postulate that man being made of the same stuff, is governed to some extent by that. The ideas people hold are generally diametrically opposed to other humans bringing the endless conflict of our species and in turn the greater entropy we see. In short, we cannot control this, like potassium when it meets water, the fire and heat and increase of entropy in that “systems” you are so fond of , IS, and seemingly cannot be otherwise.
Humans then in this regard do not have too much control over their destinies then, being as meatballs in a cosmic spaghetti bowl. Our feelings that we do I sometimes believe simply give an egotistical comfort as we go about our duty to entropy to disperse energy ever farthur and generally wreck the place.
Man, it is unarguable, has in an increasing manner utilized more calories and created more entropy while engaging in his “life”(civiliasation?) which to a detached observer looks like a “reaction” . More to it we are catalytic which by scientific definition ” aids and abets in reaction while being unchanged by it”
To look at you on a Saturday night is to reminice of some simple tribesman upon the discovery of fermentation, minus the loincloth. We are still driven by primal motivations by and large despite what we consider “modernity”. In fact most modernity is a loincloth, and one that burns copious amounts of highly organized molecules reducing them to their more disorderly, lower state.
Damn, and we do a good job.
ps: Keep in mind that there is much about physics we haven’t a clue about. Describe magnetism and why for example. Should at least take your break.
February 28th, 2006 at 8:33 am
For your benefit VT., defined morality is the means by which the conflict, defined by entropy, waxes continually. Morality is like the software by which humans do their work in creating greater entropy. The universe makes sure that it is ALWAYS in diametrical conflict.
February 28th, 2006 at 9:42 am
To get back on topic Cliff, undocumented immigrants are illegal aliens that are defacto felons, as are the people who hire them felons as well. To allow this to continue gives the crowd you don’t like license to commit their own crimes with impunity. The laws if not respected cascade in a river of lawlessness, with all the related felons (illegals and their employers) giving themselves a pass, deluded that they are somehow different than cheney/bush and the rest of the gang.
Let the round up of all the criminals begin.
February 28th, 2006 at 11:50 am
World Health Org., did an 8 yr. study on second hand smoke, found that it didn’t harm non smokers. Report was eventually brushed under the rug….not politcally correct!
Illegals are taking construction jobs. American men who made $20 per hr. operating dozers, we let go, in order to hire illegals at $8.00 per hr.
February 28th, 2006 at 11:58 am
Mooseytrack you should be skeptcal of so called scientific studies funded by the tobacco industry. Even Philip Morris acknowledges on their web site that second hand smoke causes irritation and sickness to non-smokers. The Philip Morris, excuse me Altria, spokesman was here in the bay area last month. He said the parent company of RJ Reynolds has lobbied Congress against an in door smoking ban and FDA regulation. Its tobacco money, and their bought and paid for political lap dogs like Senator Hatch, that have prevented this Country from having a smoke free work place like Ireland and much of Europe. -Kurt
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