What You Mean “WE” Pale-face?

Did you ever question ‘The majority rules?’
Why not?
It’s the most famous example of what we can call for convenience, ‘The Collective Fallacy.’ With the help of it’s more subliminal offspring, this fallacy has twisted Western cultures into tormented shapes inimical to life and human nature.
In the case of ‘The majority rules,’ even the U. S. founders were aware of the dangers – – –
‘Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.’ -U. S. ‘Founding Father’ John Adams
‘An elective despotism was not the government we fought for’ -Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q. XIII, 1782. ME 2:163
A modern example: Imagine ‘we’ – that is all ~317 million Americans – went to Baskin & Robins (or Ben and Jerry’s) but collectively we – even the folks who didn’t vote – or even eat – all had to buy and pay for the winning flavor. Even when less than half voted for it.
Clearly ‘The majority rules’ is a meme we should avoid.
And such winner-take-all situations are only one of the most obvious problems created by The Collective Fallacy.
Strangely enough, ‘The majority rules’ is just an artifact of what might be called ‘lazy languages.’ And, there’s a cure.
The bed-rock foundation of The Majority Rules is the deceptively harmless word, ‘we’ – and the variant pronouns, ‘us’ and ‘our.’
The problem with ‘we’ and family?

This post was published at Lew Rockwell on January 16, 2016.