But many working-class Protestant boys now feel disenfranchised, as recent violence in east Belfast suggests.
What about the 3 million or so who will now feel disenfranchised?
Politically, the Scots are now so disenfranchised from Westminster that they will hand Labour the biggest whipping of its life next month.
Most important, his candidacy offers the healthy prospect that millions of voters who now feel disenfranchised will become active, interested and involved citizens.
And analysts say that a leadership that once drew its members from the countryside and saw one of its constituencies as the poor and disenfranchised now suffers from the myopia of living in Damascus and Aleppo, the two largest cities.
"There's so many disenfranchised people now," he says.
The problem is that now these young and disenfranchised people have largely turned away from the revolution, too.
Though Germany's trade unions originally organized in order to protect the disenfranchised, they now only protect themselves.
"There is no one on the East Hampton Town Board from Montauk now, and residents feel disenfranchised.
The much discussed rise in the minority share of the electorate testifies to the decisive electoral power that previously disenfranchised communities now possess.
