On my morning walk today my groggy mind became fascinated by the curious tension between “majority rules” and “minority rights.” It’s not like I’ve never considered this contrast before, but it never seemed as absurd to me before as it did to me this morning.

We have democracy, where if a majority of Americans agree on something it can become law. Then we have the Constitution, which protects the rights of the minorities. If a majority of voters decided that only beer drinkers could be citizens, the Constitution would protect non-beer-drinkers. At least, they’d be protected until said majority changed the Constitution to explicitly deny citizenship to non-beer-drinkers.

l suppose this is what captured my attention this morning: how one’s rights last only as long as the Constitution does before the majority strips it away. That huge gap between the two must be how some once conveniently considered black people and women to be non-citizens, and how other minorities are still in danger of the same treatment.

Winston Churchill said “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.” I can see the man’s point.