Under a democracy, 51 percent of the people can vote to pee in the cornflakes of 49 percent of the people (slave-holding states were ruled by tyrannical majorities, after all).

Yep. Known, I believe, as "tyranny of the majority".

Or, rather, two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

Indeed, in America it is not the ballot box but the judicial branch \ufffd the only non-democratic institution we have \ufffd which preserves our liberties.

How? If the executive branch didn't enforce the laws, the judicial branch would never see any cases.

And it was in the United Kingdom that individual rights were born \ufffd out of monarchy and an unwritten constitution.

Is that a reference to the Magna Carta? Possibly.

For most people in the world, being able to vote is a secondary, if not trivial consideration when contrasted with the freedom to work and own property, to speak, to travel, and to worship freely and to be immune to the arbitrary intrusions of the state.

Yet, strangely enough, those rights seldom exist without a democracy or republic also existing.

And then, only for those with the right to vote.

In other words, if you're a normal person with normal ambitions, living in a dictatorship isn't necessarily all that bad.

Pay attention to the use of the word "normal".

If I were black, I'd certainly rather live in 1980s Chile than 1850s Alabama....

Yet being black would not be considered "normal" in 1850's Alabama. "Normal" people were white.

...and, as a Jew, there were lots of "tyrannical" places I'd rather have lived than democratic Germany in the 1930s.

Again, "normal" people weren't Jewish.

So, his point should read, "if you're an oppressed minority, who is doing the oppressing doesn't much matter and certain places will actually oppress you less than others".

But that's a bit too complex.

In short, I think the rule of law is more important than democracy by a long shot.

The problem is finding a totalitarian society that is also bound by laws instead of the whim of the rulers.

As we have seen with our civil liberties being shredded here.

People who place democracy on a higher pedestal than the rule of law exalt the self-esteem and ambition of the mob over all else.

Fairly accurate. Democracy (like Capitalism) must be bound by laws to protect the minorities from the tyranny of the majority.

But the funny hitch is that democracy is, to date, the best (or least worst, as Churchill might say) system we have for protecting the rule of law.

Such was my point.

Any mob of crypto-Nazis or Islamic radicals can pull a lever and declare their views to be "democratic" (it's happened before).

Actually, that is "democratic". As long as said "crypto-Nazis" are the majority.

Again, that is why "democracy" is subject to similar excesses as "capitalism" and why BOTH need to be ruled by laws to protect the less fortunate.

Yeah, intellectually, many liberals agree with the court. And many conservatives are content to concede that this decision is at least consistent with legal precedents (even if, to paraphrase Dickens, the precedents are an ass).

Again, democracy must be bound by laws to protect the minority from oppression by the majority. One of these laws is the separation of Church and State.

But emotionally, instinctively, most people think this was an idiotic decision at minimum and a dangerous one at worst.

"a dangerous one"? What "danger" is there in removing a phrase that was added only 50 years ago?

The instantaneous 99-0 vote in the Senate, the little-noticed fact that evangelical secularist Barry Lynn and the plaintiff are pretty much the only two people willing to defend this decision on TV, the general mockery from late-night comics \ufffd all point to the fact that most Americans don't care whether the constitutional reasoning is solid.

Tyranny of the majority. What "most Americans" think could also be said about slavery in the past and women's right to vote. The majority has been wrong before and we are a better nation because we saw that.

Whatever the Constitution says, we're Americans; we're one nation, under God, for the most part, indivisible, when it matters, with liberty and justice for all \ufffd whenever possible.

And that statement reflects all that is wrong with this country. That we would sacrifice the ideals we have for expediency.