Assuming I believe a sufficiently robust constitution will somehow prevent a simple majority from voting itself into the middle ages (and I've too much concrete evidence in front of me these days that would seem to argue that the contrary is true), I'm still not seeing how bill riders would prevent that from happening in a manner that was to the detriment of holders of the minority opinion.

The closest I can come to seeing how bill riders give more power to a minority opinion would be, for instance, if 49 voters believe the other 51 should be anally raped. "Damn," say the 49, "How are we ever going to get our anal raping bill pushed through?"

"I know," says one of the 49, "There are two guys among the 51 who are deeply, passionately committed to saving the spotted owl, which none of us care about and neither do most of the others. I bet we can get those two to vote with us in favour of anally raping the other guys, if we give them a rider that does something nice for spotted owls!"

And voila: what was a minority of 49 is now a tyrannical majority of 51, and the minority of 2 gets something it wanted as well: something nice for spotted owls, rolled into the bill about anally raping the now-minority. Who's been protected from sneaky shit *or* tyranny here, and what about this scenario seems so much more enlightened than voting oneself back to the middle ages?