Democracy and Truth

A common mistake people make these days is to suppose if the majority supposes X, then X must be true. A more common mistake people make is that since the majority has supported various different things over the years, then there is no truth.
The first of these two mistaken positions is what some, including Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, have called "The Tyranny of the Majority." This is a complex issue that ought to be fleshed out to a certain extent. To begin with, there are times when the most vocal become the easiest to follow. Those who are not settled upon a position are the easiest to sway and often strong rhetoric and heavy appeal to the ethos of people helps win over favor. This is precisely how the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. Other times, the majority can be steered in a certain way. For example, in the last election, the majority of Americans were unhappy with the way politics had been decided two years ago. With a little crafty rhetoric, the Republican Party was able to win over Americans who two years ago had been won over by the rhetoric of the Democratic Party. Finally, the majority can be swayed to support something that honestly resonates with their emotions, but may not be completely right. Post World War I Germans were unhappy because of the terrible way in which the Wiemar Republic had handled the economic disaster, but their support for the National Socialist Party was very misplaced.
Because of this sociological phenomenon, repeated through history, the reigning voice of the majority cannot be viewed as fully true. Very few rationally-minded people today would support NAZIs, chattel slavery, female genital manipulation or witch hunts. Yet at some point in history, each of these had been the opinion of the majority, or at least, a certain stratus construed to be the majority.
It might be tempting to take an historical view and suggest that if these realities were morally true, morally right, options at the time, then perhaps all morality is is a relative function of the people. Thus, there is no "moral truth" or "moral rectitude." This is a very appealing approach and many contemporary philosophers and many more intellectually advanced persons have supported this notion. The problem is that in the most extreme form, this supports all manner of atrocities. If the moral laws we support are mere conventions, what is there to prevent me from killing people, or conning elderly ladies out of their money, or vandalizing property?
Let me quickly demonstrate an irony of this position. Many people, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins among them, support the claim of relativism. However, they both are quick to point the accusing finger at the Catholic Church for sexual abuse. While I myself support the claim that having sexual relations with small children is absolutely egregious, I could never consider myself relativist because of that. If it is egregious, on what grounds is it? The fact that we find it disgusting suggests either that we have been culturally conditioned to think this, or that it is objectively wrong. If we are conditioned, we cannot honestly say this is wrong. We say that cultures who practice cannibalism or clitoridectomies are in error, not because we think that our cultures are completely different, but because we think they share similar core values. If child sex abuse is objectively wrong, we cannot maintain a strictly relativistic standpoint.
Here is the point. As we become more enlightened (a word I am hesitant to use), we find more and more things to be objectively wrong. Genocide, sexual abuse, discrimination, torture and other acts we consider to be wrong. Yet our own culture has supported some of these, and some cultures still do. The fact is that we consider our views to be superior because of the long debates, philosophical treatises, theological teachings, and emotions to be correct. We still claim that bad things happen in our own culture, that we have more work to do and that there is still much we don't understand, but practically speaking, we don't support a relativist standpoint. Cultures evolve, and we hope, they evolve in such a way that they grow closer to the truth.
Consider the following: a hundred years ago, women were fighting for voting rights in the United States. Fifty years ago, African Americans were. Today, homosexual couples are fighting for the right to marry. Our culture is growing to a more perfect understanding of what it is to be human, and, we hope, growing into truth. Truth is not changing. Few would say that chattel slavery in early American history was morally upright. Few else would say that what the NAZIs did was permissible.
So we have to understand two things: One is that there is truth, and we're hopefully getting nearer and nearer to it. The second is that we must be careful to learn what truth is rather than necessarily supporting the voice of the majority. If we ignore the first principle, we cannot grow into a better society. If we ignore the second, we might be deceived into growing into a worse society.