Does majority support for something that is wrong

[ulysses]

make it right or at least less wrong?

[catzies]

1. Not for me.

I know when I am against something that is popular yet still wrong, all I get is a feeling of alienation and self-doubt. But, underneath all that, there is still the knowing I am right.

Case in point: my boneheaded fellow Californians who elected the Gropinator Tuesday.

[Terwilliger]

2. Ask the Japanese-Americans

maybe they all agreed with being locked up for their own good :eyes:

[ulysses]

6. surely they must have.

Any good, majority-opinion American would have. I mean, only a soft-on-criminals extremist would have a problem with locking up people who aren't suspected of doing anything except being of a particular ethnic background.

(wrestles mightily with the spigot on the sarcasm hose...)

[KG]

12. i'm sure not guilty victims of capital punishment would disagree also.

oy.

[DUreader]

3. US used to have checks and balances to prevent "Tyranny of the Majority"

Now adays it is gitmo

[Mairead]

4. Nope, not from the standpoint of science. Socially, perhaps.

[arcane1]

5. like civil rights? Slavery?

nope, the 'tyranny of the majority' was one of the things our system of gov't was supposed to protect us from...

[niyad]

7. the majority of people used to believe that the earth was flat

and that did not make them any less wrong.

it doesn't matter how many people believe something-- if it is wrong, it is wrong.

ask the native americans, the japanese-americans (most of those in the camps, by the way, were citizens) ask the slaves, etc., etc.

[TrogL]

8. It's still wrong

many people doing a stupid thing does not stop it from being a stupid thing.

I'm old, so I remember the uproar over seat belts. Everybody hated seat belts. Now everybody wears them.

[RichM]

9. No, of course not. And even less so in a mass-media dominated

society, where "majority opinion" is so largely determined by TV & paid-off pundits.

[ulysses]

10. thanks, y'all.

A kick for the political expediency crowd.

[KG]

13. can't wait for the 'political expediency' crowd to show up.

watching their mental gymnastics as they try to defend the indefensible is facinating, kinda like rubber-necking the gruesome auto accident on the freeway... :puke:

[SOteric]

11. Majority support

makes a thing 'popular.' Wrong makes a thing 'wrong.'

Majority support for something which is wrong, makes it popular andwrong.

I do, however see some potential for grey area. Of course, I'm somewhat pathological that way. Bigotry and racism have been popular, but they're still wrong. The Japanese internment, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, still wrong. Barry Manilow was popularly regarded at one time as a musical force majeur and that's still just wrong.

While I was being frightened out of my mind by a cab driver in Luxor, Egypt, I became painfully aware of the lack of regard for stop lights in that country. “Is it legal to drive through stop lights here?” I ask. No, of course it isn‘t, I‘m informed. The laws on the books in Egyptian cities are not different with regard to stop lights than are laws in the U.S. However, here in the states, a majority of people stop at a stop light even if there’s no one around for miles. (Especially in places where there are traffic cameras). There, not-so-much. If the intersection is clear, reasonably clear, or the conjuction is easily gauged, drivers fly right through. Only if several people arrive at once do they use the stop light to determine the lucky lotto winner in the “Proceed at 2.99E8 m/s Derby.”

Do you know why the police in their cities don’t write them tickets for this? Because the culture, the citizens, the people do not think it’s wrong. (If you think about it, they may have a point) Yes, they know its illegal and laws are good things for the good of the people, but breezing through an intersection when there’s clearly no one around is not to them a wrong thing.

In the US we stop at stop lights, often, even when there‘s no one around. Do we do this because we think we’ll get caught? - Because we think it’s wrong? -Because it’s a culturally accepted behaviour? I don’t know and I don’t have the data to formulate a response to that.

You’re out to lunch with your dear old Aunt Minnie. She takes 4 or 5 of those little pink sugar packets out of the condiment caddy and stuffs them in her handbag for later. That’s stealing and it’s illegal. Do you wrestle her hands behind her back roughly and call the police? If police came to the scene would they arrest her? Probably not. In fact, only a real dick would call the authorities, and only a real dick would arrest her. The the greater portion of the population of the US would not think Aunt Minnie’s actions were particularly ‘wrong’ even if they were technically illegal. Even the owner of the restaurant is not likely to want to prosecute an elderly woman for absconding with a few sugar packets.

The person of integrity then quietly attempts to influence Aunt Minnie not to take the sugar packets. Realistically, however, we do battle with cultural and generational differences in the perception of what is right and wrong and in the end are likely to encounter disapointment.

My Uncle Primo gropes women. He lives in Milan, Italy and no one in his culture thinks that's a bad thing. The people of Spain and Italy have almost no sense of the thing that we in the U.S. call 'personal space.' So, if the women Primo gropes are flattered and no one feels themself offended, intruded upon or violated, does that make his action inherently wrong? Or is it only wrong in differing cultures? - which is ultimately to say that what's locally popular determines what is wrong.

[ulysses]

14. jeez - try to rant and a real discussion breaks out.

:P

Points well taken, but I had more in mind things like the death penalty and the lack of due process for prisoners at Gitmo. Moral relativism is, in fact, fact. Blowing away a stoplight is not the same thing as the state execution of an innocent (or even a guilty) human being, whether accepted locally or not.

[SOteric]

16. Well then,

Disregard everything after the affirmation of my being pathologically addicted to finding shades of grey.

Popular is popular. Wrong and reprehensible is wrong and reprehensible. Popular and wrong is popular and wrong. Today's lesson was brought to you by the letters 'O' and 'Y.'

I'm keeping the statement about Barry Manilow, though. Some forms of cruelty are too horrific to allow continuation in our society. ;-)

[ulysses]

17. If I'm wrong, tell me.

My apologies if you think I'm trying to lay down the moral law, but *are* they the same thing? Is Egyptian disregard for traffic law on the same level as American support for the death penalty?

[SOteric]

21. I don't think you're wrong,

or at least, I do see your perspective and agree to a point. But I also have more and somewhat variant thoughts on the issue, which I'm going to have to relay a bit later in the day.

[SOteric]

25. Okay, I'm back

First, let's get the potential for drive-by sniping from those who haven't been following along at home out of the way: I am fully and completely against the death penalty, a card-carrying member of Amnesty International and a person of deep religious conviction.

Second, No I honestly don't think that the traffic laws in Luxor are on a par with putting people to death. However, the ways we decide the rightness or wrongness of the acts as a society are similar.

Lemme 'splain.

If we take God out of the equation; if we assume that the notions of right and wrong, good and evil, moral and immoral do not come from a source external to humanity, then we have to suggest they come from humanity itself.

These abstract concepts are very real ways that humanity, society has found make it possible for mankind to live together in community in relative amounts of peace. Time and experience have shown us that we get along better in if we don't steal one another's things, seduce each other's spouses, kill when the whim or the anger overtakes us, etc...

The more complex and involved the society and it's culture, the more complex and evolved its concept of right and wrong.

Most members of what we call the 'animal kingdom' don't suffer from the concept of right and wrong. If the puma feels hungry or threatened or pissed off, it likely will kill and feel no remorse.

If Hammurabi had chosen instead of patterning his code after the laws Anu to pattern them after the natural tendencies in the animal kingdom, societies and our concepts of what is right and wrong might have evolved very differently.

We can say that we're speaking to different things, but ultimately -we're not. It is a society's concept of right and wrong over time and through popular agreement, that shape that society's or any individual culture's concepts of right and wrong.

As abominable as we perceive slavery today, it was for centuries a part of the human landscape which was not believed wrong. Even the religions of this earth built parable regarding the treatment of slaves and never suggested the concept itself evil.

But time and a gradually growing population who found the practice shameful and wrong changed the belief in slavery's correctness. So, the bible and Q'ran say you can have slaves, but conscience now tells us it's wrong.

For centuries, premarital sex was considered a deeply wrong and immoral thing. Time and a predominant population who saw no harm has changed that concept. In much of contemporary western society, its not not only no longer a bad thing, -it's now a good thing. We congratulate one another on having acheived it.

Without god in the mix, without a moral absolute, time and popular opinion do and have changed the minds and hearts of societies with regard to what is right and wrong.

Even if it were true that more people believed in the correctness of the death penalty than believed it wrong, that would not necessarily make it correct, or wise, or objectively virtuous. But if for the next 200 years, a vastly larger portion of the population believed it correct and wise, it might grow to be like those traffic laws in Luxor, like the public perception of premarital sex. The world might lose track of the reasons why would should feel it wrong and shameful.

I like to hope, instead that we'll give up killing people in favour of treating the insanities, and teaching. I like to hope we'll change our perspectives on the acceptabilities of polluting the environment and treating education and educators with less regard and pay than we treat rubbish collection.

I wonder how to reconcile a moral absolute like 'a wrong thing is always wrong.' With moral relativism like 'a groping is worse than a theft,' - except in Italy, of course.

Anytime death is involved it holds a moral trump on that relativism, but the progressive in me acknowledges that not all people see it from my perspective. Many countries and many cultures feel there is merit in putting to death those who live outside certain of their laws. I don't agree. We allow people to have abortions in this country, some here and in many cultures find that horrific. I don't agree. And the more I think about the fierce passions of people's belief that which is right and that which is wrong the more relative the perceived correctness of a thing becomes.

[ulysses]

28. heh

Without god in the mix, without a moral absolute, time and popular opinion do and have changed the minds and hearts of societies with regard to what is right and wrong.

Doesn't that happen even with god in the mix?

I wonder how to reconcile a moral absolute like 'a wrong thing is always wrong.' With moral relativism like 'a groping is worse than a theft,' - except in Italy, of course.

You're right, of course. I was being simplistic.

As to "a wrong thing is always wrong", it may be unfair that hindsight is 20/20, but I think we have to start from that and look forward. It doesn't do anyone any good to condemn ancient cultures for their attitudes on slavery, yet we *do* know *now* that slavery is a great wrong and that it was wrong then.

Maybe it's that we in America seem to be at a point of ethical crisis regarding things like the death penalty. We're alone among the world's developed nations in its use, so it's not as if "everybody's doing it" still. (I recognize the risk of cultural chauvinism in that, but I think it's valid.) The recognition that the death penalty is a wrong *is* out there, and we're lagging behind it.

Here's a sleepy thought - my initial post is very much predicated on a fairly specific idea of progress. Social movement away from the acceptance of slavery and the death penalty, and towards the acceptance of human sexuality before marriage, is progress as I define it. Subjective, obviously, but in the end, I think we answer only to ourselves.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

15. Nope

Alexander Hamilton warned us of the tryanny of the majority...

Majority rule without a framework of individual rights and the rule of law would be horrific....

[Skittles]

18. F*** NO

NO NO NO NO NO

[DrGonzoLives]

19. None of the above

Sometimes, wrong is wrong.

[MuseRider]

20. NO! Never.

But then we get into morality issues and there you go. Who decides? I am with you. I have always had a deep mistrust of what is popular, it always makes me question.

[kodi]

22. so you admit to a higher power than democracy? well, so did hitler & lenin

popularly arrived at decisions which one feels are wrong can often undermine one's faith in the democratic process for arriving at a proper decision of public concern.

which is what hitler and lenin thought and both believed that the masses were wrong and each was smarter than collective wisdom.

of course, here one is not equating with hitler or lenin their own opinions which run contrary to decisions made democratically, but the attitude that decisions made democratically can be wrong and that there is a higher power working than the law results in an attitude that a democracy can not be trusted entirely to promote its citizens own good and must be subordinated from time to time by an elite who know better than the people.

but then......."Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

each time one agrees not to take up arms against the popular will, one is sacrificing to the alter of the God Demos and holds to the same hope a little jewish girl held 60 years ago.

"I still believe in spite of everything that people are really good at heart."
Anne Frank

[ulysses]

23. yes. Sometimes I forget

that the idea that the majority isn't always right makes me Hitler.

Hitler was democratically elected and had majority support throughout the reign of the Third Reich.

[kodi]

24. he was not elected "chancellor" he was appointed by hindenburg

and the national socialist workers party did not gain a majority of the votes in the 1932 elections.

the nazis held only 3 of 11 key cabinet seats in the goverment when Hitler took power on 1/30/33.

[Mairead]

29. I think Uly's main point is that Hitler gained power through real legality

von H. had the power to appoint the Kanzler. The position didn't require to be filled by a member of the strongest party. Alea iacta est.

[kodi]

32. no, he attempted to negate the fact that hitler had similar thoughts

vis-a-vis that majority decisions made via a democratic process could be wrong, immoral or bad and that higher powers than the democractic process are available to correct these things.

nowhere did the discussion turn on the whether or not dictators arise from legal means.

the discussion was whether or not the masses acting thru democracy were utimately right or not in their decisions. dismissing democracy because the one does not like the results of the democratic process is not unlike dismissing the second law of thermodynamics because localized order or negative entropy can be found in living matter. it is important that the process itself be looked at in total and not rejected because of a local or episodic event.

it is tenuous at best to cite hitler's rise as a result of the democratic process because he was made chancellor by an autocratic, not a democratic method.

as to who hindenburg would have appointed chancellor, who else was there after schleicher could not get strasser to join in a new rheichstag coalition and papen and the military had already thrown in with the nazis?

and i do not consider democracy a crap shoot.

[Mairead]

33. well, you managed to derail me, too

Your original post was a strawman. Uly did not try to assert there's a 'higher authority than democracy', as you claimed. In fact, Uly's basenote to which you responded didn't try to assert anything, it asked a question. The question was, in effect, whether the majority is always right.

Of course, we can come up with lots of test cases in which the majority is 'right' in one domain of discourse, but 'wrong' in another. Hitler gaining power is one case where the 'right' (legal, supported) process had the 'wrong' (ultimately fatal to millions of innocents) result. Trying to draw a parallel with physical law doesn't work, because physical law isn't multivalued in the way social things are.

[kodi]

34. he sure did imply a higher authority, by invoking right/wrong or good/bad

democracy is not good because the majority rules, but because much that is considered good comes from democracy. this explicitly means that right/wrong and good/bad are supra of being defined from democracy.

democracy is only a "localized" good in a higher value system in the same way complex molecules are "localized" order in a chaotic universe.

as soon as a moral or ethical factor is placed into the evaluation of democractically arrived at decisions, the holy mantra of "majority rules" is superceded by valuations beyond those of democratically held principles.


he stated clearly the idea that the majority can be wrong and that a priori insists that there is a higher valuation involved than that the "majority rules."

the question then moves from one of acceptance of the decisions of the majority which one considers are non-moral, non-good, or non-right or what one is inclined to do about it.

i dont think my original post was a strawman argument. it showed that thinking the decisions made democratically are wrong can lead to thinking that democracy itself is wrong.

actually its fairly normal for anyone to think like this when they dont get their way in a democracy. hitler happened to do somethng about it, so did lenin.

[Mairead]

35. Nice try, but you're using the wrong word.

'Right' and 'wrong' are never 'authorities' (same root as 'author'), they're value judgements in the social sphere or statements about predictive value in the physical sphere. The people who make those judgements are the 'authorities'.

And democracy is merely the notion that decisions taken should be those supported, or at least accepted, by most of the people who will be affected. Decisions taken democratically are not ipso facto 'right' because 'right' is a judgement made by individuals (or nature), not groups.

[MrPrax]

26. Of course no!!!

A majority can't override a minorities legal and constitutional rights...moreover it is understood that human rights are not revokeable by a majority...for obvious reasons
They wouldn't be rights if they could be taken by simple consensus

[Cat Atomic]

27. Certainly not. And you don't have to look far for examples.

Slavery, concentration camps, Japanese internment camps...

[LWolf]

30. Absolutely not.

Of course, I'm the stubborn, defiant idealist.

This is why we have to work so hard to change things. In a democracy, we don't sit back and make pronouncements; we have to educate the masses about why we believe something is wrong. And change doesn't happen overnight. Still, I think the very process of discussion, pondering all the viewpoints and available info, more discussion...it is invaluable. It would work better if our major information/media sources were neutral and had some integrity.

[IndianaGreen]

31. Our republican style of government prevented this from happening

The Bill of Rights was designed to prevent majoritarian passions from infringing the inalienable rights of the minority.

The PATRIOT Act, together with the undemining of Posse Comitatus, has done away with many of the Constitutional safeguards that protected people from tyranny, including the tyranny of the majority.

[ScreamingMeemie]

36. In my opinion, it makes it more wrong.

Supporting something that one realizes is wrong goes against any sense of morality one had previously thought one possessed. This is why I always label myself a hypocrite to some extent. Why? Because I have been guilty of this.

[Bandit]

37. Ever here of Tyranny of the Majority

Just because a majority believes one way or another does not make it right. In fact some of the most heinous acts in history have been done by majority.