Comment Re:Tyranny of the majority (Score 1) 530
We currently have a Supreme Court justice who invoked Oliver Wendell Holmes in her confirmation hearings and recently lamented that the majority decision in Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District would lead to "heightened constitutional scrutiny" in other cases. Yes, the horror of constitutional scrutiny.
Not to mention President Obama who told a bunch of Ohio State graduates to pay no attention to people who warn about government tyranny- "You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted." You got that? As long as we have democracy, then no problem. Trust us.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to "trust" that the State and/or political majorities will not violate my rights. Indeed, the NSA is bluntly demonstrating that they cannot be trusted. History has also plainly demonstrated that unrestrained State power leads to corruption at best and human atrocity at worst.
We need to understand the extreme importance of written, respected, and enforced limits on State power. Democracy alone is not enough to save us. Unfortunately those limits become inconvenient for those who seek to wield power in pursuit of their own preconceived social outcomes or personal benefit.