The Will of the Majority

Although here I will assert two very general statements, they are brought about by pondering about a specific issue. Many people claim that a vast majority of Americans wants to withdraw from Iraq and that therefore we should withdraw. There are many good reasons to withdraw from Iraq, but that is not one of them. First of all, strictly speaking it's a logical fallacy. What a person or group believes is the correct course of action is not a reason for the course of action because the group must have its own reasons in the first place. But, of course, the counterargument is that what this situation demonstrates is that the government is out of touch and doesn't listen to the people, not the correctness of the approach (which in any case won't be decided for decades, if ever).

But that is also not true. The government does not have to, nor should it, listen to the majority. In my high school days, I came across a very interesting list in my government textbook. It was a list that a majority of Americans believed should be allowed or not allowed by the government. The list included some things I would have liked to have (getting rid of the electoral college), and it had some things I wouldn't have liked (allowing prayer in public schools). Personally, I would've rather had none of those things than all of them. Now, although I can't say this with certainty, it struck me that most people would probably rather have none of those things than all of them. So, this leads to my first statement. There is no such thing as a majority. By this I don't mean that on an issue it's impossible to have more than 50% of people agreeing. By this I mean that there is no majority voting block that votes the same way all the time (that is the same 50% of people always vote together). This means that if the government actually listened to the majority, it would end up pissing the majority of people off. So, this is why the government does not have to, nor should it, listen to the majority.

Moreover, a place in which such a majority bloc does exist (The same 50% of people always voting together) a democracy cannot exist. This is simply because the minority in this case will have no reason to even vote. The majority always gets their way, and there's nothing to be done about it. The minority either becomes disenfranchised and oppressed, or secedes to form their own country. In order for a democracy to exist, the government has to sometimes ignore the will of the majority.