Combatting Tyranny of the Minority

"Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." - James Madison

After their experience under the rule of King George III, our founding fathers were right to be concerned about the tyranny of the majority. The countless checks and balances they placed into our Constitution ensure there are mechanisms in place to prevent minority populations from being relegated to serfdom on behalf of a political plurality.

It was a novel concept. It was a brilliant concept. It was a crucial concept. It was a concept that protects an individual's unalienable rights against the popular whims of the day.

Unfortunately, the rise of social media and the so-called "social justice" movement has produced a new tyranny of "an interested and overbearing" minority. While these woke oppressors don't wield political power in the traditional sense, their ability to manipulate culture through silencing voices, ending careers, and removing cultural narratives from mainstream society has often resulted in de-facto political outcomes.

As stated in a recent op-ed in the New York Post: "Only a tiny minority of consumers care about Mr. Potato Head’s toxic masculinity, about “Aunt Jemima” as a brand or about the #MeToo aggressions of Pepé Le Pew. Yet corporations, universities and governments rush to placate that minuscule slice of the population, trashing large chunks of our culture in the process. It’s happening not because anybody voted for it, but because a small but determined and vicious minority is bullying people to go along, relying on cowardice and groupthink to achieve ends that could never happen via majority vote."

No person, group, or institution is safe from the wrath of this small, but vocal mob — not even racial minorities. Take the usage of a "new," gender-neutral, label for America's Hispanic population — Latinx. The term enjoys widespread usage across Democratic politicians, academics, elites, and the mainstream press, while less than 23% of Hispanics have heard the term and only 3% use it.

And while whether the Hispanic community is referred to as Latino or Latinx may not amount to a usurpation of rights, it is a poignant example of how a very, very small and vocal minority is able to shift the national dialogue — and language — in a short amount of time.

Public policy and cultural norms are increasingly being decided by the fringes who scream the loudest on social media platforms with an emphasis on Twitter. Since only one-in-five Americans are active on the platform, and less than 10% of users account for 80% of Tweets, this means a minuscule portion of our population is making an outsized impact on the direction of our country.

Too many politicians over-value the likes, comments, and shares that appear in their online echo-chamber and support policies that are wildly out of step with the public at large. They forget that Twitter is not real life, and most working people aren't able to dedicate significant time towards being a keyboard warrior.

Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren learned this first hand in the so-called Democrat "Twitter" Primary, where they bounced issue-to-issue chasing the latest outrage du jour online instead of trusting their polling and staying on message. At the time, Vanity Fair remarked: "[Biden] continues to dominate in early polls, suggesting that what is disqualifying on Twitter isn’t having as much impact offline." A prediction that has since proven to be true.

If we are ever going to get past the toxic us-against-them fringe politics that dominates modern American culture, we have got to start viewing online commentary for what it is. Twitter is not representative of anything but the opinions of the users themselves, and it is certainly not representative of the concerns of the vast majority of Americans.

The feedback loops created by social media lead to madness and insecurity. The outrage mob only enjoys power because we allow them to, and they will continue to wield that power until we take it back. It is time for each of us to view social media commentary with perspective and eliminate its use in popular culture as a barometer of public opinion.