assignment autumn

The Majority Can Err

In short, the majority view is less than perfect. To assume that it is neces- sarily enlightened is a serious mistake. If 1 percent or 49 percent of the population can be shallow or prejudiced in their view of an issue, so can 51 or 99 percent. Majority ignorance is as common as majority wisdom.

At various times in history, the majority have supported outrageous deeds. In some ancient societies, the majority believed in and prac- ticed murdering female babies, abandoning handicapped infants to die, murdering young men and women as sacrifices to the gods or to serve a deceased monarch in the afterlife. The majority have supported reli- gious wars, child labor, even child prostitution. In Hitler’s Germany the majority gave at least silent assent to a program of genocide against the Jews. For centuries the standard treatment of the mentally ill, univer- sally accepted, bordered on torture. Until recently in the southern United States, racial intermarriage was not only morally condemned but legally prohibited as well.

If the majority view determines right and wrong, then slavery was not wrong when it was practiced in America. It was right as long as the majority accepted it and became wrong only when more than 50 percent of the people rejected it. If the majority’s moral perspective cannot err, then the religious persecutions that drove the early colonists to this con- tinent were not vices but virtues. Such a view, of course, is nonsense. Slavery and religious persecution would be no less immoral if every country in the world approved them. There must be more to right and wrong than a showing of hands.

To be sure, the majority view may be the only one a democratic soci- ety can follow in its procedures of representative government. Even in lawmaking, the majority view will rightly exert considerable influence on legislators (though an honest legislator will not hesitate to oppose the majority view when the common good is served in doing so). But we cannot afford to pretend that the majority counsel is necessarily the coun- sel of wisdom—there is too much room in it for irrationality and self- deception. We do well to remember that, just as we view certain practices of past centuries as morally indefensible, later generations may judge some of our practices similarly. Every age has its blindness, perhaps even its barbarism.

What then should be our reaction to the views of majorities? We should give them careful consideration but resist the temptation to accept them uncritically. Instead, we should examine each issue for ourselves and embrace the most reasonable view. In some cases, that will be the majority view; in others, it will not.