On 13 Oct 2011 21:49:41 GMT, Han wrote:

" wrote in
:

The US is not a democracy (thankfully). If 51% of the people decided
to kill everyone with Dutch ancestry, are you OK with that?

Modern democracies and republics are supposed to have checks and balances
against such ridiculous ideas.

Yes, in the US it's called the Constitution. The point being, that just
because 51% of the people are "for" something, doesn't mean it should be. The
tyranny of the majority is still tyranny.

Our congress is supposed to not let a mob
majority call the shots, although it sometimes seems that both right and
left want to resort to that. Not my idea of an effective and prospering
society. But sometimes it is very difficult to get a consensus among
people with disparate ideas and philosophies, and things go awry as they
seem to be doing now, unfortunately.

You confuse "consensus" with "right".