There is an army (but no navy...) of barely educated people of all social classes out there right now, on the Internet and in cafes, at parties and round the lunch table, arguing that if the expulsion of immigrants is what the majority wants, then the expulsion of immigrants is what we should get.

When I and others try to explain that what the majority wants in certain situations, this being one of them, is irrelevant, we are pounced upon by members of this army, one of whom compared this assertion to Alfred Sant ignoring the EU referendum result in 2003.

The depth of that sort of ignorance is so great that one must give up, but it does expose the huge gap in formal primary and secondary schooling, and the reluctance to learn anything after that. The Internet is no place to begin from scratch a person’s entire education in democracy and human rights, in civic systems and the thinking that has underpinned European development since the Enlightenment.

But there shouldn’t even be a need to go into the history and background of it all, though that certainly helps. The deployment of even the most basic reasoning skills, intelligence and rationality should allow one to reach the conclusion, even without any background education in the subject, that there are situations in which majority decisions cannot apply because they would lead to the undermining, erosion and eventual destruction of the civilisation we cherish, of democracy itself. The majority, left to its own devices, is a form of anarchic mob rule. We would have majority decisions on paying no tax (look what happened when the Labour Party put VAT to the vote in 1996 – it was catastrophic), majority decisions on butchering paedophiles and castrating rapists, on banning all religions except Catholicism, on appropriating public land for private use, on whether certain bird species should be protected and not blown out of the sky, on whether black people should be allowed to live in certain streets or even enter the country except as tourists...you get the picture. 

We will, in simple terms, be right back in the 18th century, but with much uglier twists. It might seem an inherent contradiction to some, but the simple fact is that democracy cannot co-exist with majority rule, because majority rule does not safeguard the rights of individuals or of minority groups. It does not guarantee or safeguard the hallmarks of a sophisticated civilisation. And that is why majority rule comes into play only when choosing a government, when our legislators – in Parliament – vote on bills and other such matters, and when, exceptionally, electors are asked to vote on a single issue in a referendum, like EU membership. The issue of divorce should never have been the subject of a referendum. Yes, Italy did it and Ireland did it, but the world has moved on since then. We now understand the principle, or should do, that you cannot deny a small minority of people access to divorce legislation just because other people, who have nothing to do with it and no involvement in the matter, don’t want them to have that access, more so when those who can get divorced overseas are free to do so.

It is tragic that these basic matters are not a mandatory part of a child’s formal education, or are merely glossed over in passing or poorly explained at all. How else do you explain this great wash of ignorance? I learned none of that at school in the 1970s, and going by the way many of my contemporaries argue, and by what they so confidently assert, they are stuck right there and have learned little or nothing since. Clearly, given the number of parents and grandparents arguing in public, and in small groups in private, that majority rule trumps human rights, that majority rule is sacrosanct, means that many children are not going to get this education at home even today – that they are, in fact, going to be taught precisely the wrong things. It is really disturbing to see that the current generation of 20-somethings are as racist and as unaware of the underpinnings of real democracy as their parents and grandparents are. Instead of being out there railing against the ignorance of the older generation, fighting against racism and human rights abuses, they sit and repeat their parents’ hoary old chestnuts, this time with the aid of social media.

It seems to me inconceivable that I and others have found ourselves explaining basic concepts like (inalienable) fundamental human rights to fellow Maltese adults who are well advanced in age, though those in their 20s and 30s have less excuse for failing to have a grasp on these matters because their education is supposed to have been better. But was it?

It should be beyond belief that something as basic as not subjecting vulnerable minorities to the will of the majority – that this, and not its reverse, is in fact the truest test of a civilised country and a proper democracy – is not immediately obvious to great swathes of the Maltese population.

Should it really have to be explained that if the majority can will the expulsion of immigrants then by the same token the majority can also will the ghettoisation of gay men or ban the practice of Islam, or any other religion that it finds annoying/threatening? Do they not know enough of history to understand that this is exactly the sort of thinking that underpinned pre-Enlightenment European society, and that where we are now is the result of centuries of painful self-examination, revolutions, ruptures, wars, treaties, campaigns, and countless people dying so that we would not have to live the way they did.

Here is Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation on ‘the tyranny of the majority’ in his Democracy in America, as late (or as early, depending on which way you look at it) as 1835:

“If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them.”