Tyranny of the Majority?

Both Alexis De Tocqueville in Democracy in America and John Stuart Mill in On Liberty noted that the greatest challenge to democracies is defeating majority tyranny over minorities. Lest we over idealize America's history, let us not forget our genocidal takeover from the native inhabitants (the Indian wars) and institutionalization of slavery which even a brutal civil war could not fully overcome.

It is, thus, with foreboding that one reads that Shia militias in Iraq are already imprisoning and torturing Sunnis there -- by some reports in as many as nine secretive prisons and in at least two as disclosed in the following report:

Iraq Prison Raid Finds a New Case of Mistreatment
By EDWARD WONG
A raid of an Iraqi government detention center in Baghdad
turned up more than 600 prisoners packed into a cramped
space, 13 of them requiring hospital treatment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/international/middleeast/12iraq.html?th&emc=th

The upshot here is that George Bush's background studies in democracy as a cheerleader, frat president, and member of Skull and Bones at Yale -- plus Harvard Business School -- may not have filled him in on the fact that democracy is more than a matter of restoring to power the old boys elite in Iraq who will be free to do their free enterprise thing and to create general chaos as the minorities fight for their lives.

Boys of Baghdad College Vie for Prime Minister
By DEXTER FILKINS
The three front-runners for prime minister of Iraq, once
schoolmates, have very different visions for their
country's future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/international/middleeast/12family.html?th&emc=th

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Chalabi of this threesome of likely winners of control over there in the scheduled election is under indictment in Jordan for making off with several hundred million in a banking scheme dating back to 1993 and is the purveyor of the mos of the misinformation that got us into the Iraq war in the first place. I would not place much confidence in what such produce in the way of minority protections, if in fact placed in office.

And so it goes.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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