The tyranny of the minority

Radwell is the author of “American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing Our Nation” and serves on the Business Council at Business for America. This is the fourth entry in a 10-part series on the American schism.

Last week I wrote about the misguided approach of the “woke” movement. This week, I want to focus on another major component of the American schism in 2024: the tyranny of the minority.

One of the most important aspects of our constitutional framework bequeathed by our founders was the concept of minority protections. As they gathered at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the founders were very cognizant of the abysmal track record of various social contracts over the course of recorded history with respect to protecting the rights of minority groups, be they religious, ethnic or other.

In France alone, persecutions of Cathars in medieval times, and then Huguenots and Jews in more recent centuries were quite commonplace. Additionally, many of the earliest colonial settlers in the United States were Puritans seeking a safe haven outside of Britain for what were often minority beliefs and practices. Thus, ensuring the basic inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was a foundational part of the American creed and its constitutional blueprint.

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Of course, the idea of protecting minority rights as envisioned by the founders was far from complete. On one hand, they were sagacious in understanding that when majority opinion rules the day, a just social contract needs to protect the rights of not some but all of its citizens. On the other hand, that these same founders did not extend this concept to slaves brought to the continent from Africa or Native Americans remains one of the greatest enigmatic paradoxes of the modern era.

So how exactly did the founders delineate these minority rights in our Constitution? In a holistic sense, the federalist structure of the union itself ensured that no central power nor individual state or group of states could have majority control of each sovereign state territory. But even more specifically, the Bill of Rights is perhaps the clearest embodiment of minority protections, directly intended to shield the minority from oppression by the majority. While the Bill of Rights guaranteeing free speech, freedom of religion and freedom of petition applies to all U.S. citizens, its protections have been applied to minority groups sometimes grudgingly over the course of the centuries.

However, we must not confuse the concept of protecting minority rights and viewpoints with an entirely different set of consequences from the use of these structural safeguards. Specifically, if the minority avails itself of these vehicles to routinely block legal measures or advancements put forth by the majority, one could characterize such as a misuse of said protections.

According to Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, in their book "Tyranny of the Minority,” this is precisely the situation we find ourselves in today. The U.S. Constitution is the oldest written constitution in the world and has infrequently been amended (compared to our democratic peers). The authors explain how reactionary forces in the Republican Party today use outdated political institutions to systematically obstruct or even overrule majorities. Further, the authors call for constitutional reform to protect American democracy from further erosion.

As Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter discuss in "The Politics Industry,” these developments also stifle innovation in the political realm and solidify veto power for a minority to impede the majority will. These minority protections take different forms. Some are based on structural constitutional elements like the Electoral College and the Senate itself; others are maintained by arcane rules like the filibuster In the Senate, and common practices like gerrymandering districts at both the federal and state levels.

A peculiar and perplexing consequence of this mishmash of structures and practices has protected the Republican Party and allowed it to move ever further to the right – even though, with one exception, it has failed to win a majority of the popular vote in any of the last eight presidential elections.

To preserve democracy, political reforms are urgently needed to reconcile the need for majority rule with the need to defend minorities rights, as well as a citizens' movement to put enough pressure on politicians to act. Today, an expansive group of nonprofit organizations are working diligently to target and correct the misuse of many of these rules and practices. Much of this work, such as the drives for open primaries and nonpartisan redistricting occur at the state and local level.

However, some of these barriers are constitutional and will require more systemic change. While it certainly appears that today’s hyper-polarized environment is not conducive to constitutional amendments, it is vital to remember that the drafters of the Constitution did not believe that any framework could be set in stone. On the contrary, they made the malleable and expected revisions to occur in every generation.