The American Majority Can No Longer Depend on Constitutional Protection

China, India, USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan. ~~~~~ What's the common thread in this list of countries? -- Wealth? Armies? Air quality? Energy use? None of these. They are the world's ten largest countries ranked by population. The giants are China and India with 35% of the world's people. The USA in third place has only 4.4%, twice as many people as fourth place Indonesia. Bangladesh is one of the world's poorest countries. Nigeria, Russia and Bangladesh are among the most corrupt. Japan has one of the world's most homogeneous populations. China is totalitarian. Three are Moslem (Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh ), one is divided between Moslems and Christians (Nigeria), and three are Christian (USA, Brazil, Russia). Four are working democracies (India, USA, Brazil, Japan). The common thread - all except Japan have serious levels of social/political unrest. ~~~~~ This leads us to reflect on political stability as a function of culture and homogeneity. Homogeneity, as in Japan and Moslem countries, is often seen as reducing competition and economic change. ~~~~~ What do experts name as the elements that most often destabilize countries? Aristotle believed political instability results when the distribution of wealth fails to correspond with the distribution of political power, and concluded that the most stable political system is one based on a large middle class. Others regard the governing elites and their composition as critical, seeing the alienation of the elites from the mass as the major cause of revolutions and other violent political change. Other analysts focus on economic crises -- with pressures from product scarcity and deprivation, threats to individual social position, feelings of insecurity and uncertainty about the future, and aggravation of the relationships among social classes -- all create political instability because the competence of the existing leadership and regime are blamed. Many experts say political systems can undergo violent breakdown when channels of communication fail to function, when institutional structures and processes fail to resolve conflicts among the persistent demands of different citizen groups by implementing acceptable policies, and when the system ceases to be viewed as responsive by individuals and groups making demands on it, leading to revolution and other forms of violent collapse at the end of a process that usually climaxes when the system is most vulnerable - for example, during war or severe economic distress. But, political scientists often suggest that the presence in the population of widely shared attitudes toward the government and the existence of basic agreement on the legitimacy of state authority prevent collapse, even in severe crises. ~~~~~ Dear readers, that should remind Americans that their Constitution has been regarded for 220 years as history's finest example of a governmental system that remains true to its fundamental political and social principles while being flexible enough to accommodate social and political change. But, in the US, the culturally homogeneous majority is being forced to abandon, or repress, its social compact -- a compact made by its Christian democratic Founders -- because various minorities are banding together to destabilize and replace America's cultural majority. These minorities do not represent a "new majority" -- African-Americans, Moslems, atheists, LGBTs, abortionists, anti-free speechers, pro-welfare state partisans and Christian-baiters are not a homogeneous entity. Their agendas differ widely. They are not culturally related to those who drafted the US Constitution, or nourished it for 150 years. But, they are using the Constitution to turn America into a society whose majority can no longer rely on constitutional protection. It's time for the American cultural, economic majority to address these issues and perhaps call a Constitutional Convention to clarify their view of the constitutional boundaries that minorities must respect. The alternative could be social upheaval.