[stavros]

> The election was fairly close.

Yeah but "the totalitarian Neonazis who wanted to deploy secret police were only a slight majority" is really faint praise.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

No, my point was that in a close election that depended on a party building coalitions between heterogenous groups of voters, the people in favor of any particular action taken by the elected government may be a minority of the population, not even a slight majority.

[stavros]

Sure, but in a healthy society, such extreme opinions should never even be close enough to a minority large enough to be elected into power. Hopefully, anyway.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

Blame it on first-past-the-post. It’s just one of the many ways the Founding Fathers sowed the seeds of a politically unhealthy society.