In a message dated Tue, 6 Jun 2000 4:42:38 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "M A Jones"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
<< Justin, you have a way of telling me things I already know while not
answering the real point, which is about your strange affection for the
glorious 'C' especially the notably undemocratic bits of it. Is it
professional amour propre that disposes you thus, or what?
Probbaly it is. I presume by the "notably undemocratic bits of it" you mean judicial
review and constitutional protection for individual rights. But I do nota gree that
these are undemocratic. I do not identify democracy with majority rule, but with
popular rule. And popular rule can be impeded by majoritarian interference with the
conditions for democratic decisionmaking, as it was during Jim Crow, where Southern
Blacks were prevented from voting by the white majority. That is why enforcement of
the 15th and other Reconstruction Amendments against the majority promotes democracy.
The most particularly undemocratic feature of the Constitution I dislike most is the
Senate, which gives Wyoming and Rhode Island equal influence in the upper house of the
legislature to California or New York. That is a feature I would get rid of. I am
also not keen on federalism, as it is now called (states rights), but that is because
I think it cuts against policies I like rather than, necessarily, because it
undemocratic.
--jks
