"found" quotation: Democrcacy vs. Fundamentalism

"Fundamentalism, understood as an uncompromising stance, and democracy defined as a government by consensus and compromise, is by its very nature antithetical. . . . Insofar as democracy is understood as majority rule with minority rights guaranteed, there is no place for a minority, or even a majority for that matter, to let its own private writ run large."  Krishna K. Tummala in "Democracy vs. Fundamentalism: Religious Politics of the BJP in India" from religious Fundamentalism in the Contemporary World (2004)

This quotation from the fragment of this article included in the reading a student selected for my seminar, "One Nation; Many Religions."  We were meant to, and did, read the chapter on Islamophia and Western Media by Zohair Husain and David M. Rosenbaum.  Those authors include the observation that entertainment media, i.e. movies, present Islam and Muslims using the patterns conflict between cowboys and Indians in old western movies.  The odd juxtaposition of the assertion that consensus and  compromise are constitutive of democracy and this reminder of mythical power of conflicts in American culture was a bit jarring.  Of course this deep assumption that the powers of good and the powers of evil are engaged in competition, even armed conflict, is also characteristic of apocalyptic thought.  In a slightly altered way it is present in the patterns of personal religious conversion from sinner to saved believer and in the patters of social reform from corrupt systems to more ideal ones.

The question then arises, based on these sweeping generalizations,  if our deep cultural patterns of thought are fundamentalist in this sense of uncompromising competition between right and wrong, then how can we expect to operate a form of government that requires compromise?

Perhaps the definition of democracy posited here is inaccurate.  Perhaps majority rule is indeed a winner take all proposition.  And if so, are we suggesting that the power of numbers is what makes something right?  And is that so different from the power of force makes something right?

Back to the cowboys and the indians, back to Gast's painting:  there the popular view was that the might of guns, telegraph, and trains corresponded to another sort of right articulated as "Manifest Destiny."