Tension Between Majority Rule and Minority Rights Throughout History

Essay by EffigyUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, December 1996

download word file, 4 pages 4.5

Downloaded 74 times

Tensions between Minority Rights and Majority Rule Throughout the history of the

United States of America

Throughout history, there has been an understanding between the government of

state and it's constituents. From the times where such philosophers as Thomas Hobbes

and John Locke put forth their respective theories of a state of nature and social contract,

mankind has been enthralled with the separation of government and the population it

controlled. John Locke proposed that there has always been a need for a "social

contract"-that is an understanding between the government and the people for the sole

reason of protection and organization. Even in the early days of the roughly adhesive

Babylonian governments, the people strove for organization and protection of their

property. Before that, according to Hobbies, the people of the world existed in what he

called a "state of nature." This state of nature existed before the population of an area

realized the need for a structure and a steady way of life.

They may have been fed up

with the plundering of their land. Lock explains that the constituency gave up the rights

to rape, murder, and steal in order for protection of property. With this action, the people

put what they thought to be an equal balance of power into the government's hands. The

government, acting as a whole body, has seemed to, throughout time, take advantage of

the people that it represented. This paper will attempt to show how this feeling of

superiority that governments have perveyed through the history of the United States.

In 1894, there was a strike of Pullman Palace car factory workers outside of

Chicago. These workers belonged to the American Railway Union. The union decided to

refuse to move trains with the Pullman Cars thus shutting down virtually all railways in...