<Begin Segment 27>

MM: Talk a little bit more about your dissertation, in terms of majority rule and why it contradicts democracy for certain segments of the population.

RK: I wouldn't say it contradicts democracy. I think it's a phase of democracy, but the question is, in my mind, what role does it play? Some people would give it a dominant role and say majority rule means democracy. And of course, then you draw the extremes -- this is a real extreme, but a cat walks into this elementary classroom and the kids play with it and someone says, "Is it a boy or a girl?" And someone says, "Let's vote." See, it's not susceptible to that sort of question. It's an extreme example, but sometimes we vote on things like that, I think. And, of course, we're always worried about, they talk about the tyranny of the minority, and they talk about minority rights. I hate, I don't like the term "minority rights." I think those rights belong to the majority as well. So we have to define those rights, like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, that under-gird democracy and majority rule. If you don't, if you're not, if the public, which, who has to decide, is not getting the facts, people call it true facts, but facts are things that are true. And they don't hear alternatives, meaningful alternatives, if they don't get this and they don't have a thorough discussion, the vote may not be an enlightened one. And what I think we look for is an enlightened vote. And by "enlightened" I mean, in many ways it's not all rational, but it takes in, we're emotional creatures, we'll take in emotional events as well. That's part of, that's part of life, matters of the heart as well as the mind, but it has to be a well-rounded discussion before you have a meaningful majority vote.

MM: You used the phrase "the tyranny of the minority." Would you also agree that at times --

RK: No, "tyranny of the majority."

MM: The tyranny -- that's what I was gonna ask then, that in fact the "tyranny of the majority" can easily occur if "majority rules" is the only doctrine that one follows?

RK: That's right. See, and in many ways, modern dictatorships depend on that. They said, Hitler says, "I got the majority vote." But if it's based on prejudice, if it's based on lack of information...

MM: It certainly, in static societies where the groups don't change and are not fluid --

RK: Yeah.

MM: -- I think it's a real problem.

RK: Some of these common scenes I think Mulfred Sibley used to say these things, too. In a democracy, in many ways, some people say, "Well, not everybody is smart enough to make a decision," or they think they, like Plato's Republic, maybe you gotta have the people of gold, the people who know, the intellectuals or whatever make the decisions. But all of us are impacted by the decisions made by our governments. And as the saying goes, "only the wearer of the shoe knows where it pinches," or knows whether the shoe fits or not. You can't do it for other people. And this involves the heart as well as the mind. So these are important elements that we have to consider. But there's always a danger as a people who are against majority rule, and then, because there's a tyranny of the majority. And we have examples in history where people act and said that most of the people think we ought to outlaw this or that. And it hurts the society in general in the long run.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2004 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.