I think this is one of the most nuanced and important discussions never had in civics class. The right of the majority to dictate through government vs the rights of the minority. Is our bill of rights beyond reach of government? If not then, are they still rights?
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If most of you wanted to become a Marxist or Islamist or Christian dominionist or whatever state, its hard to see how the bill of rights would stop that. America as a society would decide to change the basis of its government.
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Your bill of rights is only safe for as long as Americans generally value it. Imagine if you somehow became predominantly Sharia supporting Muslims overnight. What would make you respect the authority and history of that?
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Absolutely! That's where the ethics argument gets fun! What is majority rule weighted against the consent of the governed. My government (for the past few decades) doesn't value a lot of things regarding individual liberty, even when a majority do value them - is that tyranny?
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I'm not talking about ethics for a change. I'm talking about a much simpler reality that the rules of a country reflect the societal norms within it because society makes the rules.
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Does society actually make law? Our last election would have been decided (one way or the other) by ~45 Million, numerous eligible voters don't vote, nore are minors and other members of society. 60 Million Pastafarians could make Sagnarelli Law a reality.
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I am not talking about this. I am speaking on a much larger timescale in which yes, society changes and with it laws. Its not a coincidence that secular liberal democracies exist where the Enlightenment happened and Muslim theocracies exist where most people are Muslim.
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So to be clear, you are referring society (as it pertains to values) influencing government over a period generations (decades and centuries). As those moral values change over generations so then does the laws and governments.
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If a mob gets big enough, they’ll eat you, sure. Nothing’s bulletproof. But a society with a constrained government has greater resiliency to such things. If the majority in the US decides it wants to expel the Jews today in a fit of pique, it has no legal path to it.
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But the ways in which it is constrained changes with the culture. England used to be constrained by Catholicism, then Protestantism as well as various monarchs, then it was a Republic briefly, then it was a democracy with a token monarchy. The zeitgeist changes all the time.
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I don’t think we’re on the same page re: constraint. For one thing, religions did not constrain government, it gave them *license* (hence the need to separate the two). From your list it looks like you’re thinking of forms of government, anyhow.
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