17 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2025
  2. Aug 2024
  3. Nov 2023
  4. Oct 2022
    1. Mosca backs up histhesis with this assertion: It's the power of organization thatenables the minority always to rule. There are organizedminorities and they run things and men. There are unorganizedmajorities and they are run.

      In a democracy, is it not just rule by majority, but rule by the most organized that ends up dominating the society?

      Perhaps C. Wright Mills' work on the elite has some answers?

      The Republican party's use of organization to create gerrymandering is a clear example of using extreme organization to create minority rule. Cross reference: Slay the Dragon in which this issue is laid out with the mention of using a tiny amount of money to careful gerrymander maps to provide outsized influences and then top-down outlines to imprint broad ideas from a central location onto smaller individual constituencies (state and local).

  5. Sep 2022
  6. Jun 2022
    1. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/patrick-henry-virginia-ratifying-convention-va/

      While gerrymandering isn't brought up explicitly here, the underlying principles are railed against heavily.

      Some interesting things applicable to the rise of Donald J. Trump hiding in here.

      Interesting to read this in its historical context versus our present context. So much can be read into his words from our current context, while others can extract dramatically different views--particularly by Constitutional originalists.

    2. A bare majority in these four small states may hinder the adoption of amendments; so that we may fairly and justly conclude that one twentieth part of the American people may prevent the removal of the most grievous inconveniences and oppression, by refusing to accede to amendments. A trifling minority may reject the most salutary amendments. Is this an easy mode of securing the public liberty It is, sir, a most fearful situation, when the most contemptible minority can prevent the alteration of the most oppressive government; for it may, in many respects, prove to be such. Is this the spirit of republicanism?

      Patrick Henry railed against the idea that small minorities could hold the country hostage and subject us to "the most oppressive government".

      Little did he anticipate that gerrymandering and chicanery of just such a nature would come to pass in American History.

  7. Jan 2022
  8. May 2021
  9. Feb 2021
  10. Nov 2020
    1. Here’s the grim kicker: The conditions that made Trump and this Republican Party possible are set to worsen. Republicans retained control of enough statehouses to drive the next redistricting effort, too, and their 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court will unleash their map-drawers more fully. The elections analyst G. Elliott Morris estimates that the gap between the popular vote margin and the tipping point-state in the Electoral College will be 4-5 percentage points, and that the GOP’s control of the redistricting process could push it to 6-7 points next time.
  11. Jan 2014