Egypt vs John Stewart Mill

I am so excited for Egypt right now! Where others see a crisis or a wave of destruction and chaos, I see the natural progression of a nation moving on the right track to success for the first time since 1798.

To see why, let's recap Egypt's recent history from an Egyptian's point of view, shall we??

• July 1798 - Napoleon conquers us in an embarrassing military sweep, bringing with him superior science and culture. We lose sovereignty and self-respect, and dive deep into catatonia
• For the next 213 years we live in self-pity while Egypt is ruled by remote-controlled puppet dictators reporting to masters in Paris, Istanbul, London, Moscow, Washington, ...
• January 2011 we finally have had enough, so we get out on the streets and shout to the tip of our tongues that the status quo sucks and we want it demolished
• Then one night, it works! The system actually goes down
•  Then we dance and cheer on the ruins of the old system, and go to sleep that night dreaming of a wonderful nation that might grow to fill the suddenly inviting void    
• Then we wake up the next morning and start building... something
• Then we quickly realize that we don't all have the same vision of what to build - that all Egyptians are not made the same - that they envision completely different Egypts    
• Excited about this new 'democracy' thingy, we set out to elect one leader to help us build one thing instead of many. Now that the people are truly free to vote, something amazing and unprecedented happens:  the guy representing the majority group wins the election!
• Then we call for a new constitution - now of course since this is a 'democracy', the constitution gets written to reflect the aspirations of the majority group - and when it is scheduled to go for a referendum it is probably going to pass by popular vote
• But then the minorities (all of them) get out on the streets complaining and picking fights and causing trouble - we all get into a national boxing match played out on the streets, between the majority on one side against all the minorities combined. What started out as a promising wave of constructive change now looks like a gloomy tunnel with no end in sight

So where did we go wrong?

We didn't!!! That's all part of the natural healthy course of events. I am optimistic that what is happening in Egypt right now is all part of what it takes for a nation without any real experience with democracy to learn that:

The rule of the majority isn't enough! you can't build a stable nation on that pillar alone. You need something else: you need a platform that keeps the minorities happy too, because although none of those minorities is big enough, combined they're a big enough group to stand in the way of progress, and therefore catering to their aspirations is a must.

Democracy, it turns out, is not simply the rule of the people. It is a tricky balance between the rule of the majority and the protection of the rights of all minorities, even a minority of one, aka an individual. If you don't believe me, just ask John Stewart Mill!

In a true democracy, the majority gets to exercise limited power, and the limit is the set of constitutional rules that enforce rights and freedoms of individuals and minorities.

For this reason alone, even though law-making is the privilege of the leading majority group, constitution-writing cannot be so. You can't have the leading party write a constitution and a leading majority vote it into existence because if you did that in a free country:

1. The minorities, fearing for their own freedoms and rights, will revolt
2. Even if they didn't revolt, they're going to be upset and bitter, which cannot be healthy for the nation. Your options would be to suppress them, in which case whatever you have it isn't a free county, or let them be, in which case you have chaos like you see in Egypt right now
3. Eventually, society changes and a new group becomes a majority, and they in turn start demanding to rewrite the constitution. This keeps the nation locked in an endless cycle of riots and revolts, too busy second-guessing its foundational framework to make any real progress towards prosperity

Laws are made to be rewritten as societies change - constitutions are meant to last forever. Constitutions should not reflect public opinion - they should reflect the wisdom of a very small group of the smartest, most educated, most visionary people in town. People chosen to equally represent all main groups of a society, and set to write a framework of bare minimum rules that are generic enough to stand at an equal distance from every citizen X no matter which group citizen X belongs to.

For example, if the society is composed of 10 cats and 100 donkeys, the constitution might contain paragraphs like:

The right to eat is protected by the government

but not:

The right to eat hay is protected by the government

and:

Our country is a country of four legged animals

but not:

Our country is a country of hoofed animals

see the difference?

Now the law can be voted-in by the donkey majority, so something like the following can pass as law in this democracy:

Tax money will be used to provide 10 hay stations at convenient locations and also 1 cat food stop for our fellow cats

which is OK, because the cats can always change that law if they ever become more of a majority in the future. 

Notice that a slightly different law cannot pass:

Tax money will be used to provide 10 hay stations at convenient locations but no cat food stops

This cannot pass even with majority backing, because it would violate the constitutional rule that the right to eat is protected for everybody. No majority can ever pass a law that violates the constitution, and so if the constitution protects the rights of minorities we have a stable modern democracy.

Et voila!!!