Democracy is a great thing. But it’s imperfect – everyone knows that. Some things are just not meant to be decided by popular vote. Things like basic human rights and justice, for example.
Someone I was talking to (who shall remain nameless but he knows who he is) said it well. What would the result be, he asked, if they called a vote in Quebec asking people whether the Jews should be charged more tax than everyone else?
Or, to put it another way, democracy doesn’t give three guys on a lifeboat with no food or water the right to kill and eat the fourth.
So when I see things like this, it really makes me squeamish:
Two federal Liberals are preparing a legal bid to have the Supreme Court butt out in favour of letting the “High Court of Parliament” settle the contentious issue of gay marriage. MP Roger Gallaway and Senator Anne Cools, both from Ontario, said Thursday they are asking the Supreme Court to allow them to appear as “interested parties” when, at the behest of the Chretien government, the court reviews the constitutionality of draft legislation redefining marriage as the “lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others.”
Gallaway and Cools oppose allowing homosexuals to marry and say they believe Canadian sentiment is running their way.
What if this were rewritten but replace “gays” with “Blacks” and “to marry” with “to vote”? Think about that for a minute.
Human rights should not be decided by opinion polls.
That is why the US (and Canadian, both drawing on the UK model) system was originally set up to try to head off “the tyranny of the majority”. Alas, since sometime early in the twentieth century, the safeguards have been under attack by the “democracy means one person = one vote” meme. An ideal, perhaps, but like Communism not really practical with humans – only something like computers, or perhaps Vulcans.
Why are you so squeemish about democracy? Are special interests so concerned that they cannot control the mob? I think that Churchill had it right.