Blame the user, not the tool
Andrés Martinez, a columnist for the L.A. Times, wrote a column yesterday entitled “Who’ll Apologize for the Filibuster? In it, he contends that rather than just apologizing for not passing anti-lynching bills, the Senate should have also apologized for using the filibuster to block passage of those bills. He goes on to claim that the filibuster is utterly worthless — even evil — and should be excised from the Senate’s toolbox, an argument that we’ve been hearing from Frist-supporters a lot lately.
This is utterly stupid. “I’m sorry I wrecked the furniture in a fit of anger, and I’m sorry I used a hammer to do it. If only we didn’t have hammers, everything would have been fine!” Martinez wants to blame the tools used for the actions of their users. According to his logic, guns should be illegal because they can be used to kill people — yet I’m sure he’s as big a supporter of the 2nd Amendment as any other Republican.
Martinez blames Democrats — specifically, Mary Landrieu, D-LA — for keeping “the f-word out of the resolution.” He thinks that the resolution as stated makes it sound like “a majority of senators were on the same moral plane” as the pro-lynching Senators who did the filibustering. How would his resolution have read? “We’re sorry about the lynchings — but it wasn’t our fault!” Helluva sincere apology there, Andrés.
He says that “[t]he filibuster is an anti-democratic instrument that upsets the delicate system of checks and balances already written into the Constitution.” Hang on, I thought that the filibuster was pretty much the last refuge of a beleaguered and largely powerless Senate minority when faced with the prospect of the majority running rampant over their rights and desires. It is the check and balance against pure majority rule in the Senate. If Martinez wants a complete and utter democracy, then why do we even have our representative republic in place? Shouldn’t all votes be put to the masses, and screw the non-whites, non-Christians, non-heterosexuals?
The filibuster is a tool. It’s a utility. It’s never going to be popular with the majority; that’s its whole point. It is the last roadblock, the final riot shield to keep the mob from running rampant over the unpopular guy. It absolutely must be kept in place if we are to keep a semblance of rationality in our Senate and fairness in our government. Removing it would be one more nail in the coffin of true democracy, and one more step down the road toward totalitarianism.
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I would just like to point out that he only uses the word “evil” once, and it’s NOT in reference to the filibuster itself.
He says it’s “anti-democratic”, a “reactionary weapon” that allows people to “kidnap” the Senate, and that they should “nuke the filibuster for all purposes.” It’s not much of a stretch of inference to conclude he thinks it’s evil.
Also, you know, I wasn’t going to respond to the rest of this, but I have to take issue with something you said, which on its own pretty much catapults this post into “rant” territory for me:
“If Martinez wants a complete and utter democracy, then why do we even have our representative republic in place?”
It is an enormous–and, I feel, unfair–leap in logic to suggest that because Martinez is against the filibuster, he’s against representative government in the democratic process. I have a feeling that you would never accept that as an argument (a very loose term) if it were made against you, because the second thing simply can’t be inferred from the first thing. As I see it, Martinez is obviously in favor of representative government, because he thinks the filibuster subverts it, and allows the minority power that they didn’t earn by virtue of the representative process. This allows good things to happen, yes, but it also allows terrible things to happen, like the filibustering of anti-lynching laws by Senate Democrats or the filibustering of major judicial appointees for spurious reasons by, once again, Senate Democrats.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue, though, it’s disingenuous of the Los Angeles Times or anyone else to not acknowledge the role of the filibuster in the non-passing of the anti-lynching legislation. It’s absolutely, positively relevant, and news organizations unwilling to highlight that fact deserve to be taken to task for it, and I’m glad Martinez did just that in his story. I expect it to change absolutely nothing, but your response to that story tells me a lot more about you and your own prejudices than it does anything that Martinez said.
Uh, it actually is a stretch if you believe that the word “evil” has a very specific meaning that none of the words you cite really apply to. A similar case could be made that, since you consider the Republican majority to be a “mob” “running rampant over the unpopular guy,” that you consider them to be evil. Is THAT fair to say? Of course not. Because we both know that isn’t really what you meant. But it could be inferred just as easily.
The problem is, evil isn’t something you should have to infer. You have to do a pretty frenetic dance there to get to “evil” from “anti-democratic.” I’ll tell you what I consider evil: Adolf Hitler. Osama bin Laden. Saddam Hussein. Josef Stalin. The September 11 hijackers. I take evil very seriously, and while I seriously question the actions of a lot of people on the left, both in the government and in the media, I’d hate to be thought of as calling them “evil” merely for that reason. Because I don’t think that. At all. And I would question the wisdom of anyone who did call them evil just because–horror of horrors–they disagreed with them. In my universe, evil takes a heck of a lot more than that.
No, Martinez doesn’t necessarily think, as you say, the filibuster subverts representative government. He says outright that it subverts democracy, and I totally agree with him. A pure democracy must have tools to subvert it in place or else, like I said, the majority always runs rampant over the minority. A representative republic, like the one we have in place, could also be said to “subvert democracy” because it can give minorities stronger voices in government than they would have in a pure democracy. I don’t call this subversion, I call it sensible. And I don’t think it’s a huge leap to suggest that if he wants to get rid of one form of “democratic subversion,” he’d gladly get rid of another.
I don’t have a problem with media pointing out that the anti-lynching laws were filibustered. I agree that they should. I have a problem with Martinez’s argument that the filibuster should be eliminated because it can be used in this way. He fails, like so many other anti-filibuster people fail, to see the bigger picture in all this, which is one reason why I’m taking him to task.
The other reason is that he says the resolution to apologize should have mentioned the filibuster. As I said in the post, this is stupid. An “apology” that attempts to give an excuse like “it was the filibuster’s fault!” is not only not an apology, it’s a coward’s way out. If the resolution had included language attempting to explain away the Senate’s fault in not passing the anti-lynching laws, it would have been both embarassing and disgusting, and I’m disgusted with Martinez for suggesting that’s how we should have done it.
I’ll grant you that if you define evil in the more narrow sense you do, perhaps Martinez doesn’t think that the filibuster is evil. But that’s your opinion, and unless Martinez himself joins this discussion, we won’t know for sure. However, this is semantics, and missing the point. Pretend I said “actively harmful” in its place.
Lastly, I purposefully didn’t equate the “mob” with Republicans, as you suggest I did. I hold the same opinion no matter who is the majority and who is the minority. I want the filibuster in place, and just as powerful, because if it’s not there, the Senate majority, whoever it is, will always be able to do as it pleases, and the minority will get trampled, and that’s not something I ever want to see happen.
So, what rights do you feel the majority party in the Senate deserves? Because it sounds like you’re saying “none.” Do you also disagree, then, with the supermajority rule? Because there are still a minority of people being trampled on. If 99 senators agree on something and one senator disagrees, is that Senator having his rights trampled on? At what point–for YOU–does it stop being “trampling” for you and start being okay?
How do you get “the majority should have no rights” from “the minority should not be denied this one right”? Do you really think the existence of the filibuster completely removes any and all power that the majority has?
In large part, I believe the procedures in place currently are good the way they stand, including the filibuster and the supermajority rule. We’ve been fiddling around with this government for hundreds of years, tweaking it here and there, and it’s evolved to the point it has because that’s how it seems to work for us at this point. I support the right of Bill Frist to want to get rid of the filibuster, I just don’t agree that it should be done. Perhaps in the future a majority will agree, and then it’ll continue to evolve.
I only consider it “trampling” if the minority has no way to check the majority’s power. If they hav e no tools like the filibuster to help them ensure they get a say in matters, then the majority won’t have any reason to give them any respect. It’s human nature to seize power where it’s available, and that’s what would happen if tools like the filibuster were removed.
The filibuster IS anti-democratic. It’s supposed to be. The United States is supposed to be a constitutionally limited democracy, not a direct, unlimited one. Majority rules, but within limits. If the majority thinks, ‘Brian should be denied free speech rights because he’s anti-Bush,’ that doesn’t mean they can do it. Sure, their not being able to do it is technically anti-democratic, but I’m glad of that. Sometimes you need anti-democratic things to protect minority rights. As far as I’m concerned, the Republicans can get rid of the filibuster if they want, but I’m sure it won’t be long before they regret it. They won’t be in the majority forever. And payback’s a b–ch.
As for Matthew Murray’s point, yes the anti-democratic US Senate filibuster was used to block civil rights legislation. It was relevant. But take it one step further. The Jim Crow laws themselves were passed by constitutional, democratically-elected legislatures. Jim Crow laws were a democratic expression of the will of the majority of southern states. If the anti-democratic filibuster was relevant, then so was representative democracy itself.
“The Jim Crow laws themselves were passed by constitutional, democratically-elected legislatures. Jim Crow laws were a democratic expression of the will of the majority of southern states. If the anti-democratic filibuster was relevant, then so was representative democracy itself.”
I made a couple of slight mis-types here. I should’ve written…
Jim Crow laws themselves were passed by constitutional, democratically-elected state legislatures. Jim Crow laws were a democratic expression of the will of the majority in southern states.