SNIP
>
>But we went ahead and went to war anyways. This is what the leaders decided. It was a decision that had to be made, and it wasn't made by the general public. It was made by a leader we elected to make exactly these types of difficult decisions. And the result is, even though the public opposed it, we might have done a really good thing. If Baghdad is a great place to live in 2015 I think it would be pretty safe to say that masses were wrong and that their tyranny was avoided for the better. This is why our country works the way it does, thanks to the foresight of some of our forefathers.
>
>I'll I'm saying is that the bottom line is not the public opinion of the masses, as Harvey put it. The bottom line is about whether it is right or wrong to do what we do.

I think your Iraq war decision/action is not an apt example of "tyranny of the masses" (or not).
I don't think that tyranny of the masses applies to a specific "action" per-se, where a majority might or might not have been in favour.
Tyranny of the masses refers, I believe, to personal freedom to do what one chooses to do. For instance, whites always outnumbered blacks in the U.S., so in theory whites could have always out voted blacks (especially while making sure they can't vote) to keep the pre-1960 status-quo. But your Constitution says that ALL men are created equal. Therefore, "the masses", no matter how heavily they vote to control blacks, have no right to do so.

There's a movement in your country right now to give the people back the 'control' that the Court seems to have taken. But I think that a careful look at what the Court has ruled will show that they are issues where the majority might feel a certain way but that has no import because the plaintiff's own personal freedom is abridged by the (overturned) law(s).

cheers