“If a minority, losing an election, can break up the government rather than accept the results of the election, free government is impossible. If the only alternatives to rule by a Constitutional majority, I say, Constitutional majority, a majority formed under the rules of the Constitution with minority rights secured. There were no examples of the Republicans doing anything to prevent the opposition from having freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of association. There was a great deal of interference with those rights in the Southern states. But they lost the election according to their own rights. And Lincoln said that if people can break up the government rather than accept the results of a fairly conducted election, then the only alternatives are anarchy or tyranny. What is to prevent, he said, anyone of the states seceding from any future union?”

— Harry V. Jaffa

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

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Harry V. Jaffa 171

American historian and collegiate professor 1918–2015

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“But once we have reached this agreement and we then elect a government and that government functions—and the election for that government is one in which there’s freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, so that it is a legitimate government—then that government commands our obedience. We have no right to reject our duty to obey because we don’t like the result of the election—provided the election is conducted fairly and Constitutional rights are observed.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A

“By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. It is a right to be exercised in subordination to the Constitution and in conformity to it. One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights.”

James K. Polk (1795–1849) American politician, 11th President of the United States (in office from 1845 to 1849)

Inaugural Address (4 March 1845)
Context: By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. It is a right to be exercised in subordination to the Constitution and in conformity to it. One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights. Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression.

“So that was the basic issue. Once the ballots had been decided, Lincoln said the only recourse must be through future elections in which the minority can try to become the majority; but there can be no right to reject the results of an election conducted under the rules of the Constitution.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

“By the principles of the Declaration of Independence, majority rule in a free society is not an end in itself, nor is it a source of the purposes served by free government. Majority rule exists to secure the rights with which all human persons are "endowed by their Creator." The recognition of the origin of these rights, in God and nature, comes before any action of any majority. Only as we all recognize that "the just powers of government" exist to secure the equal rights possessed by every human being, whether in the majority or minority, can tyranny be prevented.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Bush's Lincolnian Challenge (2002)

“According to many of our political and intellectual elites, both liberal and conservative, the minority in a democracy enjoys only such rights as the majority chooses to bestow upon them. The Bill of Rights in the American Constitution—and similar bills in state Constitutions—are regarded as gifts from the majority to the minority. But the American Constitution, and the state constitutions subordinate to it have, at one time or another, sanctioned both slavery and Jim Crow, by which the bills of rights applied to white Americans were denied to black Americans. But according to the elites, it is not undemocratic for the minority to lose. From this perspective, both slavery and Jim Crow were exercises of democratic majority rule. This is precisely the view of democracy by the Sunnis in Iraq, and is the reason they are fighting the United States.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Central Idea (2006)

“Now, the issue of the Civil War as Lincoln presented it, in both his inaugural address on March 4th, and in the message to Congress in Special Session on July 4th, four months later, was in essence this. In ratifying the Constitution, each state had committed itself to accepting the results of elections conducted under the rules of the Constitution. The election of 1860 had been conducted under the rules of the Constitution. If there were any violations of those rules, it was by the Southern states in refusing to allow Republican electors on the ballot. But there was nothing that the Republican Party had done. There was nothing in the electoral procedures of the free states, or, for that matter, of the slave states with this exception which justified anyone in saying that the results of this election were not Constitutional results.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

“I think I have been perfectly clear in saying that I hope Canadians do elect a majority government. I think this cycle of election after election, minority after minority is beginning to put some of the country's interests in serious jeopardy.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

2011 English Language Leaders' Debate, April 12, 2011, http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20110413/main-election-110413/20110413?s_name=election2011.
2011

“The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. xxiv

“With government money comes government control” is an axiom in any country. But the situation in India is unique with regard to minority religions. Under Article 30 of the constitution, “minority” religions are allowed to run educational institutions free from government control, but remain equally eligible for government funding as are institutions run by members of the “majority” religion. For the purposes of the constitution, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs are considered “Hindus” and hence part of the majority religion. Effectively the provision applies only to Muslims, Christians, and anyone who can get themselves declared a minority religion. One strange consequence of this is that the Vira Saivites of South India successfully argued earlier this century for minority status…”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Ramakrishna Mission. (1986). Ramakrishna Mission: In search of a new identity.

“That moral order, we know, encompasses, beside the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, many other rights, as for example the right to the free exercise of religion, to freedom of speech and of the press, and to freedom of association. These are rights antecedent to the political process-rights that do not depend upon majority will-rights that majorities may not violate. They are all features of the moral "laws of nature and of nature's God." Clearly, the implications of the President's endorsement of the idea of a moral order, antecedent to all positive law, including the law of the Constitution, go far beyond the debate over abortion.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Bush's Lincolnian Challenge (2002)

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