all? Has the minority, even though a small and unpopular and
unfashionable minority, no right to respectful consideration?

I remember that excellent little high school text book, "Nordhoff's
Politics," where I first read of government, saying this sentence at the
beginning of its most important chapter: "The first duty of a minority
is to become a majority." This is a statement which has its underlying
truth, but it also has its dangerous falsehood; viz., any minority which
cannot become a majority is not worthy of any consideration. But suppose
that the out-voted minority is necessarily always a minority? Women,
for instance, can seldom expect to be a majority; artists must always be
the few; ability is always rare, and black folk in this land are but a
tenth. Yet to tyrannize over such minorities, to browbeat and insult
them, to call that government a democracy which makes majority votes an
excuse for crushing ideas and individuality and self-development, is
manifestly a peculiarly dangerous perversion of the real democratic
ideal. It is right here, in its method and not in its object, that
democracy in America and elsewhere has so often failed. We have
attempted to enthrone any chance majority and make it rule by divine
right. We have kicked and cursed minorities as upstarts and usurpers
when their sole offense lay in not having ideas or hair like ours.
Efficiency, ability, and genius found often no abiding place in such a
soil as this. Small wonder that revolt has come and high-handed methods
are rife, of pretending that policies which we favor or persons that we
like have the anointment of a purely imaginary majority vote.

Are the methods of such a revolt wise, howsoever great the provocation
and evil may be? If the absolute monarchy of majorities is galling and
inefficient, is it any more inefficient than the absolute monarchy of
individuals or privileged classes have been found to be in the past? Is
the appeal from a numerous-minded despot to a smaller, privileged group
or to one man likely to remedy matters permanently? Shall we step
backward a thousand years because our present problem is baffling?

Surely not and surely, too, the remedy for absolutism lies in calling
these same minorities to council. As the king-in-council succeeded the
king by the grace of God, so in future democracies the toleration and
encouragement of minorities and the willingness to consider as "men" the
crankiest, humblest and poores