Word: majoritarian
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Politicians have quickly adopted the foolish language of the press, and the accompanying majoritarian mindset. "I intend to get down to business," House Speaker Dennis Hastert said last month at his swearing-in. "That means formulating, debating and voting on legislation that addresses the problems that the American people want solved." Politicians must walk a fine line between reminding us what we want and urging us to embrace some wants and abandon others. The fact that the Republicans anointed someone as apparently unvisionary as Hastert indicates the consequences of the run to the center in American politics: the desperate capitulation...
...meets-girl movie or detergent ad featuring a straight couple as a sinister reinforcement of the dominant culture of heterosexism aimed at marginalizing queers. Taken at face value, they're simply expressions of popular culture, where "popular" refers to dominance within the entire population. That many gays see the majoritarian forces that shape this culture as being hostile toward them is certainly interesting, but not necessarily justified, especially considering how popular culture is manufactured. I might as well complain as a Jew that the Christmas shopping season is perpetuated by the prejudice, ignorance and intolerance of Madison Avenue...
...think so. It's un-majoritarian, that's a different thing. I think this country would not have survived as a democracy had it been a purely majoritarian system, and nobody at the Constitutional Convention wanted a purely majoritarian system...I am a total believer in checks and balances, and one of the checks and balances is the Supreme Court...
...temper the excesses of American individualism with a strong assertion of the rights of the larger society. The social tension between the citizen and the community in democratic theory is at least as old as the 18th century differences between the rights-based philosophy of Locke and the majoritarian beliefs of Rousseau. But few voices in modern American intellectual life have challenged the primacy of the unfettered individual. To fill this void is the goal of the communitarians...
...there was one thing the Framers of 1787 feared most, it was strict majoritarian rule and "democratic" imposition of the majority's morality over all. If there is one kind of justice of which we don't need another on the Supreme Court, it is one such as Bork who confuses pluralism with relativism and a nation's tradition with its history...