[Mojave]

My argument centers on the individual being the highest authority.

"And where else will this degenerate son of science [Hume], this traitor to his fellow men, find the origin of just powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority?" --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.

[Zon]

If Jefferson and the founders sought to tyranny of the majority they would have created a democracy rather than a constitutional representative republic.

The last few sentences of Jefferson's letter to Cartwright are also noteworthy:

"We had never been permitted to exercise self-government. When forced to assume it, we were novices in its science. Its principles and forms had entered little into our former education. We established some, although not all its important principles."