Tyranny of the Majority free essay sample

After reading the memoir First They Killed My Father written by Loung Ung, I believe that majority rule is not an effective way of government and the majority of people should not be able to impose their views on all the citizens. Majority rule is not a good form of government because it oppresses the minority. This means that a group of people has power over another. The Khmer Rouge used scare tactics to become the majority. Even though people did not want to follow their cruel regime, they did so in fear of their lives. Pa referred to the Khmer Rouge soldiers as destroyers of things (Ung, pg. 6) and this was exactly what they were. They destroyed lives, families, and the Cambodian way of life. A majority rule type of government causes the minority to hate them, so how can this be an effective form of government? The water washes away the dirt, but it will never put out the fire of hate I have for the Khmer Rouge. We will write a custom essay sample on Tyranny of the Majority or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page (Ung, pg. 168) Loung Ung must follow the way of the Angkar, but she must not express how she truly feels in fear of her life. In Cambodia, she was not the only person who quietly conversed about the tyranny the Khmer Rouge represent. So after all of these negative examples we can conclude that majority rule is by far an ineffective way of government. People express themselves in many different ways. Whether its the way you dress or the way you act, these characteristics make up who you are as a person. Many people dislike rules, but imagine these rules consisted of technology being taken away or having to do hard labor day after day? These were the rules the Khmer Rouge implemented on the people of Cambodia. People should have the right to think, act, and dress how they like without any influence from others. In this village, we live by strict rules and regulations set for us by the Angkar. We expect you to follow every rule. One of our rules applies to how we dress. As you see, we wear the same clothes. Everyone wears his or her hair in the same style. By wearing the same thing, we rid ourselves of the corrupt Western creation of vanity. (Ung pg. 58) This was just one of many rules that the Khmer Rouge and thei r Angkar government made up. I believe that nobody has the right to tell someone how to dress so the majority should not possess the power to impose their views on the citizens. The crisis in Cambodia during the mid to late 1970s not only showed the negative effects of the majority rule, but how unsuccessful it really was. The Khmer Rouge justified their actions by saying that they were the people’s government and that the majority of people wanted the pure agrarian society that Pol Pot and the Angkar wished for. In the end we can conclude that the majority rule is an ineffective form of govern ent and nobody should have the right to impose their views over others.