The Tyranny of the Minority

“There is strength in numbers, but there is not truth.” Leon Wieseltier is right about that. Writing in the New Republic, he is complaining about the Supreme Court justices who, in oral argument about the Ten Commandments case, keep saying “we are a religious nation.” Wieseltier writes, “But what does the prevalence of a belief have to do with its veracity or with its legitimacy?” Little or nothing, one might agree. But the justices were making a more modest but not unimportant point—that a government must be aware of the kind of people it governs, in this case a characteristically religious people.

Wieseltier continues: “If every American but one were religious, we would still have to construct our moral and political order upon respect for that one.” Well, yes, respect. That is required by our commitment to rights, a commitment firmly grounded in, among other things, the religious beliefs of most Americans. But Wieseltier seems to be saying that “respect” means that the one dissenter would have veto power over how we construct our moral and political order. That would be the death of our republican form of democratic government. The Constitution’s “We the People” never pretended to be unanimous. Whatever else democracy means, it means majority rule, and our form of democracy also assiduously protects minority rights.

Wieseltier seems to think that democracy requires eliminating the concepts of majority and minority: “The proposition that ‘we are a religious nation’ is like the proposition that ‘we are a white nation’ or that ‘we are a Christian nation’ or that ‘we are a heterosexual nation,’ which is to say it is a prescription for the tyranny of a majority.” Not quite. The statement that “we are a white nation” is redolent of a long and tragic history of oppression, and anyone who employs it is rightly suspected of racism. As a social description, however, it is true that about 80 percent of the population is ordinarily designated as white, about the same percentage is Christian of one sort or another, and fully 97 percent is heterosexual. These are simply social facts, not prescriptions for how we are “to construct our moral and political order.”

Our moral and political order does not require that we forbid the public mention of social facts. It would be a very fragile moral and political order that depended upon pretended ignorance of social facts. Consider the proposition that “we are a capitalist nation” or “we are an English-speaking nation” or “we are a sports-loving nation.” In each instance, there is not just Wieseltier’s one dissenter. Add up the socialists, non-English speakers, and those indifferent to sports, and we’re talking about millions of dissenters. That in no way affects the truth of the above generalizations about the kind of nation we are. Wieseltier apparently does not fear that the acknowledgment of those generalizations is “a prescription for the tyranny of a majority.”He fears only the acknowledgment that we are a religious nation. One has to wonder why that should be.

Is the government forcing anyone to be religious or penalizing those who are not? If, as is the case, there is absolutely no evidence that the government is doing or will do that, is not Mr. Wieseltier’s fear simply irrational? It would seem that that irrational fear is combined with the curious view that democracy requires a studied indifference to majorities and minorities and a pretended ignorance of the nature of the society of which we are part.

“We are a religious nation.” It seems Mr. Wieseltier wishes that were not so. He certainly does not want the fact to be publicly recognized by government officials. On both scores, I am rather sure, he is in a distinct minority. That is a perfectly honorable and securely protected status. We should “construct our moral and political order” to protect his right to his opinion, and, as a matter of fact, that has been done. There is no reason why we should construct our moral and political order to conform to his opinion. To do so would be, if I may paraphrase Mr. Wieseltier, a sure prescription for the tyranny of the minority.