Some Thoughts on the Filibuster

Some Senate Democrats want to eliminate the filibuster. I offer here some of my thoughts on the filibuster, using the New York Times morning report as a prop. On 1/27/21, the Times posted this, which includes my annotates. My annotates are highlighted. The rest is the Times:

Status quo vs. change

If you examine the history of the filibuster — a Senate rule requiring a supermajority vote on many bills, rather than a straight majority — you will quickly notice something: It has benefited the political right much more than the left.

In the 1840s (before the term “filibuster” existed), Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina used the technique to protect slavery. Over the next century, Southern Democrats repeatedly used the filibuster to prevent Black Americans from voting and to defeat anti-lynching bills. From the 1950s through the 1990s, Senate Republicans, working with some conservative Democrats, blocked the passage of laws that would have helped labor unions organize workers. Over the past two decades, the filibuster has enabled Republicans to defeat a long list of progressive bills, on climate change, oil subsidies, campaign finance, Wall Street regulation, corporate offshoring, gun control, immigration, gender pay equality and Medicare expansion. [Note that the whole section involves rights-violating Democratic agendas. The first two paragraphs blocked freedom's advance. The second two paragraphs blocked the advance of largely anti-freedom, rights-violating “progressive” legislation. Put the four paragraphs together, and you can see the consistency of the Democratic Party's anti-liberty essence over time. The Times also fails to mention an elephant in the room, the Progressive project to legally segregate America, which was pushed through despite the existence of the filibuster.  [Notice also that the Times lumps together pro-slavery Democrats with Republican/conservative opposition to the rights-violating Progressive agenda. Slavery, black disenfrancisement, lynching are the political right? This is why the Right/Left paradigm must be abandoned by pro-liberty forces.]

The early days of Joe Biden’s presidency, with the Democrats narrowly controlling the Senate, have intensified a debate over whether the party should eliminate the filibuster. If Senate Democrats did, they could try to pass many bills — say, on climate change, voting rights, Medicare expansion and tax increases on the rich — with 51 votes, rather than 60.

As part of the debate, many observers have pointed out that both parties have used the filibuster, and both could suffer from its demise. Democrats, for example, filibustered some of President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees, as well as abortion restrictions and an estate-tax cut. A Senate without the current filibuster really would cause problems for Democrats at times.

On balance, however, there is no question about which party benefits more from the filibuster. Republicans do, and it’s not close. [And there is no doubt about which party is the bigger threat to liberty in America.]

The dictionary test

This makes sense, too. Consider the words conservative and progressive. A conservative tends to prefer the status quo, while a progressive often favors change. “The filibuster is a tool to preserve the status quo and makes it harder to make change,” Adam Jentleson, a former Democratic Senate aide and the author of “Kill Switch,” a new book on the filibuster, told me. (I’m reading the book now and recommend it.) [There is nothing inherently good about change. If liberty is to be "conserved"--read, secured] in America, it is the "progressives" [read, regressives] idea of change that must be blocked.]

Jentleson documents that the country’s founders did not intend for most legislation to require a supermajority and that the filibuster emerged only in the 1800s. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison both wrote passionate defenses of simple majority rule. They protected minority rights by creating a government — with a president, two legislative chambers and a judiciary — in which making a law even with simple majorities was onerous.

“What at first sight may seem a remedy,” Hamilton wrote, referring to supermajority rule, “is, in reality, a poison.” If a majority could not govern, he explained, it would lead to “tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.” [I have no strong opinion on the filibuster pro or con, although I lean toward keeping it if for no other reason than that it makes lawmaking more difficult and reigns in majority power. The filibuster can benefit or hurt either side at any given time. What I do know is that the fight over the filibuster is not the primary conflict. The primary fight is between individualism and collectivism, the resolution of which will decide the outcome of the conflict between liberty and tyranny. Fighting to fully restore our Constitution within our lawmaking capacity should be our goal. That would make the fight over the filibuster much less important.] Related Reading: Save the Filibuster Will Biden Acknowledge His Own Party’s ‘Central Role’ in Segregating America?