Can I comment on a couple of points in Mary Schweitzer's next to last posting? She said: >And, yes, there are some cases where you are in the >minority, and you lose the vote. THEORETICALLY at least, >you agree to that by agreeing to be part of the body >politic of the United States This is a concept of a social contract, isn't it? Hume and others dealt with that long ago - people didn't 'agree' to be part of the body politic, because there wasn't an option. We are all born into a society (emigration is a bit more complicated, but most people haven't emigrated). She also distinguished cases where the government goes 'against the common will'. What is a 'common will'? This takes us into deep waters. I don't know what a common will is, but I will just comment that one reading of Arrow's (im)possibility theorem is that there may be no voting procedure that meets even minimal rquirements of something that you might call a common will. Anyway, what is clear is that these are big issues of political philosophy, which have been discussed in that field for centuries. Tony Brewer, Bristol