“Assuming libertarianism”

Trivial Pursuits has a fine post on the Curmudgeonly Clerk’s and my posts from yesterday. “I disagree,” writes TP, “that the proper derivation of first principles should arise wholly out of the will of the majority.” I’ll only add that the founders also disagreed with that. It was first principles that gave rise to the (limited) authority of the majority, not, as the Clerk and other conservatives would have it, the other way around. Writes Madison,

Whatever be the hypothesis of the origin of the lex majoris parties, it is evident that it operates as a plenary substitute of the will of the majority of the society for the will of the whole society; and that the sovereignty of the society as vested in & exercisable by the majority, may do anything that could be rightfully done by the unanimous concurrence of the members; the reserved rights of individuals (of conscience for example) in becoming parties to the original compact being beyond the legitimate reach of sovereignty, whenever vested or however viewed.

(emphasis original). Or, as Jefferson said, “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.” (Oops, there I go with my selective quotations again.)