Suppressing One Idea of Minority Rights

Wikipedia is not inaccurate in its two-fold definition of minority rights: (First sense): “Minority rights are the normal individual rights as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or gender and sexual minorities; and also the collective rights accorded to minority groups.” (Second sense): “Minority rights may also apply simply to individual rights of anyone who is not part of a majority decision.”

Note that the minority that loses out in a majority decision is almost an after-thought in this passage. The term “may also apply” indicates an infirm and secondary status.

The term does apply, but that application has been suppressed.

The champions of minority rights in the first sense of the definition (racial, ethnic, etc.) are NOT simultaneously champions of minority rights in the second sense. They champion democracy and even regard democracy as entailing the existence of minority rights. A threat to minority rights in the first sense is said to be anti-democratic and a threat to “our democracy”. To them democracy means equality and equal rights. They conveniently suppress the idea that democracy is a coercive government system that invades minority rights of any group or person on the losing end of a vote, not people thought of by color, sex, ethnicity, etc., but people of ANY kind.

But democracy constantly uses government force to enforce decisions reached by majority rule, and minority rights in the second sense are overruled, overridden and suppressed. The losers lose and they are instructed to nurse their wounds and try again some other time.

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2:14 pm on July 20, 2019