Jimmy Wales wrote:
O.k., then we're likely so far apart in political opinions that we'll have a hard time agreeing on very much. If 90% of a population is white, and votes in fair and open democratic elections to impose rights violations ("separate but equal" or worse) on the 10% that is black, you'd consider that a morally appropriate outcome? I don't think so, but that's what I mean when I say that majority rule is morally repugnant.
I agree, that would be morally repugnant, but no serious proponent of majority rule advocates that sort of thing. The standard formulation is that the "majority rules, but the minority has rights." The question of how to define the boundary between majority rulership and minority rights has always been difficult to define, but that fundamental problem doesn't get any better if you resort to the only viable alternative to majority rule, which is one-man dictatorship or rule by a minority elite.
I'm a little reluctant even to post this comment, because I don't think we want to launch into an open-ended debate here about political worldviews. Suffice it to say that the areas on which I think we all agree are:
(1) Violation of the rights of a minority is morally repugnant, even if it takes place under a system of majority rule; and
(2) Wikipedia's current informal system of self-governance has worked pretty well thus far.