On the Tyranny of the Majority

Sharon Nichols testified in District Court in opposition to the Monument to American Theocracy that has been placed on the courthouse lawn in Haskell County Oklahoma. Her opposition to that monument has made life difficult for her in that small community.

Last week the Oklahoma Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State gave her our "Constitutional Heritage Award" for the courage and conviction she has demonstrated in efforts to preserve the First Amendment.

When she received the award she gave an electrifying acceptance speech on the "Tyranny of the Majority." Here's a quote:

We should have learned the lessons long ago that in the absence of religious freedom, the other "freedoms" (free speech, free press, right to assemble, etc.) won't matter a whit, because to be a heretic to the established religion is to face prejudice, discrimination, oppression, persecution, and genocide. This is why the Founding Fathers placed the Separation Clause at the very beginning of the very First Amendment. It's that important. They knew that to secure the rights of all, they had to secure the rights of even the loneliest minority from the tyranny of the majority. To allow any erosion of the wall of separation's guarantee of religious liberty invites, indeed, virtually guarantees that very tyranny. Such tyranny, if allowed to flourish with government sanction and support, is the most insidious tyranny of all -- and leads to the worst oppression. It gives a sickeningly insidious "green light" to the ethnocentric, self-serving tendency to believe that only we are right and that those who do not agree with us deserve neither rights, nor consideration. It is this very tendency toward tyranny, which leads quite ordinary people to willingly participate in individual and state-sponsored oppression -- even unto pogroms, concentration camps, and genocide. The only inoculation against this tyranny is to follow Thomas Paine's injunction that "We must protect even our enemy from oppression, for failure to do so will assure that such oppression reaches even unto ourselves."