Individual rights vs majority rights.

Which do you think the Constitution of the United States supports more? Individual rights? Or Majority rights? Why?

Kal'Stang said:

Which do you think the Constitution of the United States supports more? Individual rights? Or Majority rights? Why?

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Individual rights. The only reasoning is that they were written that way and the founding writings spoke to as much. The Fedalist Papers, The Anti-Federalist Papers, Jefferson's writings, as well as Franklin et. al. all stated that rights were individual as well as inaliable and a large government(a.k.a. majority rule) was not the desired instrument to protect them.

Kal'Stang said:

Which do you think the Constitution of the United States supports more? Individual rights? Or Majority rights? Why?

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Individual rights. The U.S. supports majority rule but minority protections provided for by the Constitution.

LaMidRighter said:

Individual rights. The only reasoning is that they were written that way and the founding writings spoke to as much. The Fedalist Papers, The Anti-Federalist Papers, Jefferson's writings, as well as Franklin et. al. all stated that rights were individual as well as inaliable and a large government(a.k.a. majority rule) was not the desired instrument to protect them.

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Large government =/= majority rule. Sometimes it takes a large government to protect all the rights of a people in a nation, such as when the federal government helped end desegregation in the South.

samsmart said:

Individual rights. The U.S. supports majority rule but minority protections provided for by the Constitution.

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I think generations that followed dropped the ball on that particular issue. Majority rule is gonna happen, let's not kid ourselves, hower the protections you mentioned are being circumvented or outright ignored by the Washington representation. The idea behind allowing the constitution to be amendable was very brilliant, it should only have happened when a majority of states deferred powers granted constitutionally to them to the federal, the brilliance is that it becomes nearly impossible to get a union of 50 states to sign off a majority opinion unless a situation is critical or an idea is terrific, the big problem was the misinterpretation of the ninth and tenth amendments in the earlier part of the twentieth century and the encroachments that followed.

Large government =/= majority rule. Sometimes it takes a large government to protect all the rights of a people in a nation, such as when the federal government helped end desegregation in the South.

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To be fair, when I say large government I do not equate that with a scale of power. I firmly believe that the federal was given ultimate authority to uphold the individual rights of the people of a state, which is more than appropriate use of power, segregation, the end of slavery(not the cause of the civil war BTW), copywrite/intellectual property(patent) law, etc. are all fully within the federal's right to protect. When I speak of a large government, I really mean they have assumed powers, authorities, and programs that are beyond the power granted to the federal government and have done so in a less than appropriate way.
In a way, I both agree and disagree with you on this particular point.

What is a majority right?

I don't even believe in the concept of "collective rights". A social collective cannot have rights because it doesn't actually exist, it isn't a tangible entity, rather, it's just an abstract concept. Individuals, however, are real and tangible and can have rights.

Voluntary said:

What is a majority right?

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I think this is the key question. The Constitution says a lot about what the majority may not do to the individual, but it doesn't speak to "majority rights" at all.

I think its obvious that its intentions are to support individuals.

A collective is only a number of individuals; individuals rights my friends.

This thread went pretty much how I thought it would. And I am glad to see it. The reason that I asked such an obviously answerable question is because of gay marriage.

We've had SOOO many individuals here state unequivocally that the majority of people voted against gay marriage and basically said that is the way that it should be. Because the majority voted to not allow it. It started making me wonder if people actually thought that is how the Constitution worked. Through majority rule.

My next thread in this section will be asking the next obvious question.

Kal'Stang said:

This thread went pretty much how I thought it would. And I am glad to see it. The reason that I asked such an obviously answerable question is because of gay marriage.

We've had SOOO many individuals here state unequivocally that the majority of people voted against gay marriage and basically said that is the way that it should be. Because the majority voted to not allow it. It started making me wonder if people actually thought that is how the Constitution worked. Through majority rule.

My next thread in this section will be asking the next obvious question.

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Obviously, the answer is Individual rights.

In the case of the "gay marriage or no gay marriage" question, I am one of those persons who think the proper route would be to eliminate marriage as a legal process, replacing it with civil unions. Leave the decision of who can marry who to the various religions.
As always throughout history (as far as I am aware), mixing religion and civil issues has caused problems in the long run.