I have read and heard some people argue that elected officials should serve the entire community. In theory, this sounds admirable, but in practice it simply is not possible.
If one side of the aisle believes that more government is the solution while the other believes that less government is more efficient, where do you meet? If one side believes in saving the spotted owl while the other believes in saving jobs and economic prosperity, where do you meet? If one side believes there are only two genders while the other believes there are dozens and cannot clearly define what a man or a woman is, where do they meet?
The issue is not whether elected officials should serve “all” the people, because doing so is not possible given the drastic differences in ideology. The real question is which ideology represents the majority of the community that elected those officials. This is exactly why there are red and blue states, as well as red and blue cities, across the country. These differences explain why states and cities are governed differently and why their outcomes vary.
While it may sound appealing to hope for or wish for a governing body that serves “all” the people, the reality is that it cannot and should not function that way. This is how the Founding Fathers designed our system of government
This does not suggest that minority rights are irrelevant. Our constitutional framework limits majority power by protecting fundamental individual rights, even as policy decisions reflect the will of the majority.
The differences in governance are easy to see, from Oregon to Florida, and from Portland to Cape Coral. These contrasts are not the result of governing by trying to serve “all” people equally, but by governing according to the values of the majority within each community.
Just as individuals are different and should not all be the same, communities are different as well. Our form of government is a republic, by the people and for the people, and it is the majority within each community that ultimately determines how that community is governed and the outcomes it experiences.
