The American People are...

[MineralMan]

7. Actually, your examples were a precise illustration of my point.

In reality, so is the "99%" thing. You can't get 99% of the people in America to agree on what foods taste good. There is no consensus of that sort on any subject. Sometimes, you can get a majority of people who bother to vote to agree with you on a candidate or proposition of some kind. But that's about the best result that can be obtained, and even that majority is not a majority of the people, since a majority does not even vote at all.

There is no "The American People." There are those who agree with your positions and those who do not. There are also those who don't really care about your priorities at all. There's no consensus for anything. "The American People" represents an almost perfect example of the Argumentum ad populum logical fallacy.

See this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum