{"id":1541263,"date":"2022-07-06T10:49:18","date_gmt":"2022-07-06T14:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1541263"},"modified":"2022-07-06T10:49:38","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T14:49:38","slug":"its-not-minority-rule-its-the-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/its-not-minority-rule-its-the-point\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Not \u2018Minority Rule,\u2019 It\u2019s The Point"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fits-not-minority-rule-its-the-point%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1541263&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Constitution.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>One of the more popular grievances from the contemporary left revolves around the notion that our nation has been subverted by \u201cminority rule.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NateSilver538\/status\/1543243753984753664\">Here is<\/a> the pollster Nate Silver:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>\u201cDespite the various, very serious threats to American democracy, things would *mostly* be fine if the balance of elected power more closely reflected the popular will (e.g. Senate seats proportional to population, no Electoral College, less gerrymandering).\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Silver is confusing the inability to coerce others with minoritarianism. It is not a serious threat to American democracy that New Yorkers are unable to dictate Oklahoma\u2019s abortion laws. Nor that Texans can\u2019t compel Rhode Islanders to adopt their gun laws. It\u2019s the point. <\/p>\n<p>Elites like to mock the proles when they point out that we don\u2019t live in a democracy. But the system Silver believes problematic <em>tempers<\/em> divisions. It is the core idea of American governance. If the United States is more divided than it ever has been in modern times, as a New York Times reporter recently <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EricLiptonNYT\/status\/1540342183840063488\">claimed<\/a>, we have even less reason to dispense with the mechanisms and institutions that diffuse power and constrain one side of the divide from lording over the other.<\/p>\n<p>The anti-constitutionalist\u2019s argument usually has two strands that (illogically) intersect. The first is to assert that the Constitution is a work of slave-owning white men who used antiquated and counterproductive ideas that undermine modernity and \u201cdemocracy.\u201d The second is to argue that we have absolutely no idea what the founders intended, anyway.<\/p>\n<p>When conservative-turned-progressive Max Boot \u2014 the gulf between technocrat interventionist and Constitution-averse leftist isn\u2019t as wide as you imagine \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2022\/07\/03\/dont-venerate-vilify-founders-constitution-july-fourth\/\">says<\/a> that \u201cAmerican democracy is broken,\u201d his plan to fix it is to effectively dispense with states. \u201cThe Founders,\u201d notes Boot, \u201cnever envisioned such an imbalance between power and population. It undermines any pretense that we are still a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Boot\u2019s contention only makes sense if a person is ignorant of the founding bargain between states. As many people have already pointed out, the first American <a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/research\/census\/1790\">census<\/a> in 1790 found that Virginia, then the most populous state, was home to around 20 percent of the population. Today, California, our largest state, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.infoplease.com\/us\/states\/state-population-by-rank\">makes up<\/a> around 12 percent of the nation\u2019s population. No one complained about the disparity of the Senate in 1790 \u2014 or, as far as I know, 1890 or 1990, for that matter \u2014 because the \u201cimbalance\u201d was literally codified in the founding document (which, incidentally, mentions \u201cdemocracy\u201d zero times).<\/p>\n<p>We know that the framers \u201cenvisioned\u201d small states having an equal say because in Federalist 62, James Madison grapples with the undemocratic nature of the Senate but comes to the conclusion that it is an \u201cadvantage\u201d that, \u201cNo law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, <em>and then, of a majority of the States<\/em>\u201d(emphasis mine). The Senate works exactly as it was envisioned.<\/p>\n<p>Well, OK, not <em>exactly<\/em>. Senators have abdicated their constitutional and institutional responsibilities, and become partisan cheerleaders for executive abuses, whining when courts hand them back the responsibility of governing, as it did with <em>West Virginia v.\u00a0EPA<\/em> (bad \u201cdemocracy\u201d). One doubts Madison envisioned Chuck Schumer, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2021\/01\/chuck-schumer-begs-joe-biden-to-take-power-from-congress\/\">implores<\/a> the president to circumvent Congress and shows greater loyalty to the Democratic Party than he does the Constitution. Overturning the 17th Amendment was a big mistake. We need less direct democracy, not more.<\/p>\n<p>Another popular way to claim we live under minority rule is to attack the Supreme Court for handing back issues unmentioned in the Constitution to voters. <\/p>\n<p>In a piece <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2022\/07\/04\/july-4-declare-independence-founding-fathers\/\">headlined<\/a> \u201cThis July 4, let\u2019s declare our independence from the Founding Fathers,\u201d The Washington Post\u2019s Paul Waldman offered a slew of collegiate-level gripes about the Constitution\u2019s alleged limitations. Tucked into the piece, Waldman claims that the right believes the \u201cFounders were essentially perfect, and only we conservatives are capable of interpreting their will.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>A person would have to aggressively avoid reading anything from or about actual textualists to type that sentence. Even during this term, even last week, \u201cconservative\u201d justices on the Supreme Court were disagreeing on what the Constitution means. It is not only that conservatives are capable of interpreting the will of the founders, it is that they\u2019re the only ones willing to try.<\/p>\n<p>At some point, though, the judicial branch is required to look at the Constitution as written. Otherwise, we\u2019re left with a banana republic where capricious politicians held hostage to the vagaries of the moment abuse state power and invent \u201crights\u201d on the fly, which is, of course, what Waldman wants. <\/p>\n<p>Boot also claims that conservatives see the founders \u201cas demigods.\u201d The Supreme Court, he writes, \u201chas just upheld abortion restrictions and struck down gun restrictions based on the dubious claim to be channeling the Constitution\u2019s drafters.\u201d\u00a0The court didn\u2019t \u201cuphold abortion restrictions\u201d or \u201cstrike down gun restrictions,\u201d it adjudicated the constitutionality of laws. In <em>Dobbs<\/em>, the court, after 50 years of judicial decree, handed the abortion issue back to voters (also bad \u201cdemocracy\u201d). And in New York, the court found that \u201cbearing\u201d arms outside the home was a constitutional right \u2014 no court, incidentally, has ever found otherwise \u2014 and thus, New York bureaucrats are no longer allowed to arbitrarily stop citizens from practicing a right.<\/p>\n<p>You might believe the Constitution has it wrong, but there\u2019s nothing remotely \u201cdubious\u201d about justices ruling that the Constitution doesn\u2019t concern itself with the issue of abortion, even tangentially, but clearly states that we have a right to \u201cbear arms.\u201d There is no confusion, either, on what the founders had to say about the Senate or the Electoral College. Now, though I do not consider anyone a demigod, I most definitely consider Madison and Alexander Hamilton\u2019s views on stable governance more meaningful and enduring than the impulses of a shapeshifting pundit who would <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jamestaranto\/status\/969301798489124869\">rather<\/a> be ruled by Stalin than a constitutionally constrained, duly elected president. I\u2019m a patriot like that.<\/p>\n<p>The chances of amending the Constitution to create a proportional Senate or to rid it of the Electoral College are infinitesimal. But the normalization of these ideas \u2014 furthered by people unable to deal with the existence of a multiparty state \u2014 delegitimizes institutions and corrodes the rule of law. It\u2019s working, because leftists seem to be increasingly convinced that obtaining a majority in the imaginary race for the popular vote (which no candidate has ever won because none has ever run for the title) gives them license to ignore process and rights. <\/p>\n<p>The diffusing of the federal government\u2019s power over states and the state\u2019s power over individuals isn\u2019t \u201cminority rule.\u201d It\u2019s one of the most indispensable, if imperfect, ways to ensure that a diverse people can rule themselves.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books\u2014the most recent, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Eurotrash-America-Reject-Failed-Continent\/dp\/0063066017\/\">Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent<\/a>. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post, and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davidharsanyi\/\">@davidharsanyi<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the more popular grievances from the contemporary left revolves around the notion that our nation has been subverted by \u201cminority rule.\u201d Here is the pollster Nate Silver: \u201cDespite<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":831,"featured_media":1898230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1541263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1541263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1898230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1541263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1541263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1541263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}