The idea that consensus is necessary in a democracy has nothing to do with and mostly opposes democracy. Real democratic action disappears where the demands for consensus are imposed with the weight of dogma. The kind of consensus that societal norms demand in these United States is often the kind mandated by totalitarian societies, and do not imagine that what happens in totalitarian societies has not already happened here through government manipulation, media manipulation, systematic under-education and an evaluation of literacy that amounts to alphabetics being the highest form of reading and writing we do en-masse.
Consensus is the key to this nonsensus.
The Falling Leaf Review 