Forming a democratic government is never easy. Everybody understands the part about majority rule. Morsi mentioned it in his speech tonight--he was elected by the people in a fair and democratic election.
There are two more prerequisites, however. One is minority rights. The majority can’t decide a country’s religion or regulate its press, even if 99% would like to. Unfortunately, many people in this country don’t understand that either, but the Founding Fathers did. Some of those rights they wrote into the original Constitution (no bill of attainder, no ex post facto law), and the rest they agreed they would put into amendments, hence the Bill of Rights.
To defuse the majority tyranny that can result from concentrated power, they included a federal system and separation of powers. They may have gone overboard, creating deadlock that makes action almost impossible, but that’s a subject for another post.
The second prerequisite is to recognize that political opponents are not disloyal. The concept of the “loyal opposition” is difficult. The most important election in our history was in 1800. John Adams turned over the country to Thomas Jefferson, a man he loathed. Whether or not Morsi would have peacefully handed over Egypt to his opponents in a free election is speculation, but his attitude toward his opponents makes me doubt this.
We do need to cut Egypt some slack. After all, 150 years ago, the Battle of Gettysburg was raging. We haven’t been the best model of a democracy.
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