Public Opinion as Law

In a big country dreams stay with you
Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive
--Big Country

Courtesy of Amity Shlaes, count James Fenimore Cooper among early American writers who understood the dangers of democracy.

James Fenimore Cooper on democracies and their limits. "It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute publick opinion for law." pic.twitter.com/aA72w2Hktz

— Amity Shlaes (@AmityShlaes) October 22, 2018

As Cooper observes, democracies tend to substitute public opinion for law. "No tyranny of one, nor any tyranny of the few, is worse than this." This is discretionary rule.

Whether exercised by the many or the few, tyranny is tyranny.