The sin of our fathers was the ratification of the 17th Amendment that allowed the popular election of our senators. Before then, the senate was elected by the various state legislatures which gave that government body a bit of a buffer from the political fad of the moment. Without the filibuster, the Senate basically becomes another House-- and it was never intended to be that for very good reasons.
Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
Anything that makes it harder for the majority party to do whatever they want is a good thing. Blocking legislation isn't abuse. Gridlock isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yes it sucks when the party you like is in power, but it's a life saver when they aren't. Eliminating it would be a grave mistake imho.
What if the majority party is trying to do something that is in the best interest of our country? Why not weigh the issue instead of who is presenting it? You show your colors more and more frequently.
What if the majority party thinks gun control is in the best interests of the country? Is their "best interests" more important than my 2nd Amendment rights? No. They better feel it is VERY important, like important enough to get 60 votes.
Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
It will be interesting to see what is written about filibusters in 2 or 6 or whatever years. You know when the other party has the power. Everybody against it now will be for it then.
Apparently free thought is punished, and conformity is required, while peckerless cowards run the show.
Anybody who actually read what I said about filibuster should not
conclude that I am against the existence of it, just the abuse of it. As
I said in the beginning, it depends upon whose ox is being gored,
whether anybody loves it or hates it, and I think I made that clear
enough. I compared it to the electoral college, which I have staunchly
defended here, dozens of times. You chose to intentionally misunderstand
what I said, so you could spin it to fit the argument you wanted to
make. My attempt to be objective simply provided you with the opportunity to distort my intent.
Your defense of minority rule completely
ignores the question of how to actually solve the problems it causes.
"Tyranny of the majority" is what the electoral college was intended to counter, but it has become the popular left-wing catch-phrase to promote social justice causes, and
distorts its actual meaning, at will, to avoid having to suggest a workable
alternative to majority rule, or actual Constitutional justice.
I do not have a problem with people disagreeing with me. What I have a problem with is the exploitation of the facts to convince people who have neither the time nor inclination to dig out the truth for themselves. Yes, my arguments are usually slanted towards conservative and libertarian causes, because I consider them to be American causes, in direct opposition to what I perceive the left of center causes to be. The only reason I keep coming back to the political forums is to rebut what I consider to be erroneous or intentionally distorted information. I am not having any fun doing it, but I can't let it go, without trying to argue for what I think is right, and against what I think is wrong.
If you think this is a personal attack on you, I'm sorry, because you have behaved as a friend toward me. But I rarely agree, politically, with many of my friends, and they all know that I will speak my mind.
Anything that makes it harder for the majority party to do whatever they want is a good thing. Blocking legislation isn't abuse. Gridlock isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yes it sucks when the party you like is in power, but it's a life saver when they aren't. Eliminating it would be a grave mistake imho.
What if the majority party is trying to do something that is in the best interest of our country? Why not weigh the issue instead of who is presenting it? You show your colors more and more frequently.
hating the quote feature again
If it really is in the best interest of the country, then a filibuster can be overridden.
It's boring, and your lack of creativity knows no bounds.
As a gun owner, I have to concern myself with the rights of the minority, because - like it or not - gun owners are a minority. We're all entitled to our opinions, but alternative facts will get us nowhere... we're a minority. In fact, if you further subdivide gun owners into those who care greatly about gun rights and those who care very little, folks like us are a much smaller minority. Again... fact. This is why things like bans have to be vociferously opposed, no matter how stupid or useless a bump stocks or suppressors are to me personally. The same goes for the senatorial filibuster. Yes, it is not only likely, but almost certain that it will be used to protect something that I would PERSONALLY rather it didn't... but, at some point, I'm going to want that filibuster option for something I feel strongly positive about. Dropping the hammer on the filibuster now will give me the warm n fuzzies... for about five minutes. After that, not so much.
"Bipartisan" usually means that a bigger than normal deception is happening.
George Carlin
The "real problem" - as I see it - is that EVERYBODY is a minority in one regard or another - and a Majority in others. We are being divided into smaller and smaller groups, all against one another, until we're at war with disagreements in ourselves as individuals. Its called "The war of All against All" for the philosophically inclined.
-Zorba, "The Veiled Male"
"If you get it and didn't work for it, someone else worked for it and didn't get it..."
You are my friend. One of the difficulties of communicating on this medium is trying to understand the tone of the conversations.
I am kind of busy at the moment but will give you a reply this weekend when I can take the time to give this the time it deserves.
Everyone else--
I am glad to see everyone chipping in on the discussion. I would love to see the vibrant community of 2A activists engaged in passionate discussions once again.
Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
The minority can't pass legislation, they can only block it. Want to pass legislation, write something that really is in the best interest of the vast majority of the country and not just one side of our polarized political landscape.
The mechanisms that have made our representative form of democracy work well enough to survive are the elections we have every two, four or six years and the system of checks and balances between the three branches of power. The individual voters, made up almost entirely of minorities (whether ethnic or philosophical), form coalitions that make up the political parties. Their voting blocks decide who will be the majority and the minority, with the minority quite simply being the party that lost the last election.
That simply means that the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the President take turns being 'the majority,' and that they can use their temporary majority status to ameliorate some of the 'damage' done to their preferred governmental policies, while they were in the minority, and were unable defeat the policies they disliked. An uneventful transition of power when the incumbent majority hands the
reins of power over to the minority is proof that our government is
working properly. Normally, the sanctity and the frequency of our elections deliver a workable compromise, over time, but even if it doesn't, what other system will be more fair?
The electoral college and the filibuster are afterthoughts to the original framework of representative government. They are intended to help insure that minority opinions are not vanquished, altogether, while the current minority is out of power. The electoral college has been a 'permanent' feature of presidential elections, because its validity has been proven over time to protect what is by definition, a permanent minority (the more rural states).
But, the filibuster is nothing more than a right to protest publicly against majority legislation that is being rammed through Congress over the protest of the minority party. It is intended to buy time to eventually win the vote, by blocking passage of it for as long as possible. It works very well, to prevent the majority party from 'sneaking through' a vote, quickly or in the dead of night, on an issue that the public has had no time with which to digest its ramifications.
However, once filibuster has become a standard practice, rather than a stop-gap measure, it just insures that there will be no compromise. Without sensible compromise, government quickly becomes dysfunctional. Then, filibuster becomes a desperate measure that is only taken when the differences between political factions are irreconcilable...and that is just a whisker away from revolution.
Right now, the differences between the proponents of social justice and the proponents of constitutional justice are irreconcilable, because the inevitable conclusion of social justice is permanent chaos. That isn't a racially motivated comment...it's just a logical certainty.
Well it looks like I missed this one, Kamala's running out of money and her staff seems to be falling apart. The latest poll I saw had mayor Pete in the lead in Iowa, I didn't see that coming.
Replies
What if the majority party is trying to do something that is in the best interest of our country? Why not weigh the issue instead of who is presenting it? You show your colors more and more frequently.
ECHO...ECHO....echo...
Ah......One savors the hypocrisy!
Karma.........It’s a bitch.
George Carlin
ECHO...ECHO....echo...
Ah......One savors the hypocrisy!
Karma.........It’s a bitch.