The First Amendment is "freedom of religion". How does that protect minorities? IOW it does protect the population, in general, from government. But where, specifically, does the Constitution or Amendments protect minorities from the majority.

Oh, you mean other than and aside from the freedom to peaceably assemble, print whatever they like, say whatever they want, own arms for their protection, and the granting equal status under all law, how are they protected?

I don't know. Do they need some sort of protecting beyond that?

I don't know, either. But I can't help but think of the plight of Afro-Americans in the South as recently as the 60's. They often couldn't vote, were segregated into inadequate schools, etc. Most of the above rights in the Constitution were supposedly in force then, and much good they did.

That 'perspective' is the question. I don't regard that as protection only of minorities. I regard that as protection of all from government.

But again, is that what is being called 'protection of a minority from a majority'? If not, then I don't understand details behind this 'minority protection'; why our minorities are protected and other democratic minorities are not.

Implied is that government represents the majority. Well it may have been when elected. Does Musharraf of Pakistan represent the majority? Does Mugabe of Zimbabwe represent the majority? Under the American system of democracy, both the majority and minority would require protection from such governments. IOW I do not understand what protection protects the minority from the majority. I see protection of all from government.

Popular speech doesn't need protection; unpopular speech does. Popular groups don't worry about cops breaking up their meeting; only unpopular groups do. Constitutional rights protect the minority harder.

The majority can only do to minorities what is allowed under the law. The government is only involved with managing the law.

It's imperfect, because we are imperfect.

But again you assume government is 'owned' by the majority. Unpopular speech can come from the majority - Vietnam antiwar. And the majority needed protection from government. Currently government even suspended writ of Habeas Corpus from everyone - including the majority. So who need protection from whom? UT - you assume majority and government are same. They are not. We are discussing three different parties - the majority, minorities, and government.

The question is how minorities are protected from the majority; not how minorities (and majorities) are protected from government.

I have heard it said often - our democracy is setup to protect minorities from the majority. Well maybe in laws. But how do the Constitution and its amendments do that? Not protect everyone from government. How does it protect minorities from a majority? I do not understand what is meant by (the perspective of) that statement.

The point is that if a minority group says something that the majority don't like, the government will protect the minority because they are not strong enough to protect themselves from the majority. That's what it has to do with the government.

I will add again though, that just because you have a constitution in the US, doesn't mean it's very different, if at all in any other western country.

Its true, we have done a great job at protecting gays and blacks over the past two centuries...

Well, I don't think it works that way in practice necessarily, but from my understanding, that's the way it's supposed to work.

Yes, you can never fully protect a hated minority.

I suspected that is closer to what others really meant. It would not really be about protecting a minority from a majority. It would be protecting any persons from unjustified (illegal) attacks by any other persons.

No, we have not done a great job of protecting minorites (blacks, gays) from the majority. At least we have made some progress in laws and in prosecuting those laws. I don't see, for example, any Constitutional guarantees from discrimination based on gender, race, creed, color of skin, or sexual preferences. Those might be regarded as minority protection. The closest we have is, maybe, equal protection of the laws as provided by the 15th(?) amendment. But that is protection of any person from attacks by any other (or a government).

Tw, where those protections are found is in what is called the system of checks and balances -- the minority spoken of being the minority political view rather than anything demographical. The Founding Fathers rightly figured that a chief wellspring of armed strife and suchlike commotions and ructions would be political division. The Constitution is designed to arrange that such division would not produce civil war -- at least not at every second occasion.

And blacks were forbidden arms, sometimes de jure, more often de facto. It's difficult lynching anybody who can gutshoot you -- and remedially instructive in humanity if he does.

This is the kind of fun you can get if you are forbidden killing tools. None too civilized, is it? Are you listening, Spexxvet?

Complicity in this is still a stain upon the record of the Democratic Party. The Dixiecrats might not have had the prolonged and quite regrettable influence they had on American politics had the Republican black population retained arms in full measure. This would have brought balance and diversity to the electorate in the Southern states.

(N.B. for our British & Commonwealth readers: this Southern region of the US is those States from Tennessee south to the Gulf and east from Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas to the Atlantic, plus in some sense some of Missouri. Known between 1860-1865 as the Confederacy, it survived as a political entity only during those Civil War years, but remains as a distinct cultural region to this day. It's not been redesignated as "the Southeast" or anything like that. The state of West Virginia owes its origin to the Civil War, having previously been a separate corner of Virginia. West Virginia stayed Union, while Virginia went Confederate and contained the Confederacy's capital of Richmond. That DC and Richmond are about an hour and a half apart by modern highway explains a lot about the campaigns and battles of the American Civil War.)

For the record, we may have been part of the Confederacy, but nowadays most Texans resoundingly consider ourselves part of the Southwest culture (i.e. Arizona, New Mexico, sometimes Oklahoma and Southern California) rather than the South. The south is genteel, we are frontiersmen.

Wow. Now I get it. To have rights, one must have a gun. King, Ghandi, and Mandella all got it wrong!

As soon as I held a gun to my head, then suddenly everything Urbane Guerrilla posted makes complete sense. Silly me. Guns solve everything.