Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Liberal Calls for End of Filibuster: Be Careful What You Wish For

I think the totalitarian streak of some liberals seems to shine through every once in a while.

The filibuster may seem like an arcane procedural issue to rail on about (we've already published excellent articles about it in these pages by William Greider and Thomas Geoghegan), but it has serious substantive results. America desperately needs a twenty-first-century social democratic reformation, but no such thing is in the offing as long as the filibuster remains in place. As I write this, there are almost certainly fifty-one votes in the Senate for a healthcare reform bill with a public option and good subsidies, the Employee Free Choice Act, and cap and trade. But there aren't sixty votes for any of those.

Of course this filibuster is there to prevent the "tyranny of the majority" at the expense of the minority. If they could pass things with 51 votes then liberals would have flipped out in the 6 years when the GOP controlled the White House and Congress.

Imagine if one party needed just 51 votes to create a fascist dictatorship that made Bush President for Life? I mean 9/11 could have gotten people scared enough to think that was a good idea. It would only take 51 GOP votes to make that happen.

What is funny is that liberals like this writer can't convince a majority of people that these ideas are worth doing so he just wants to make Congress into a rubber stamp. He just wants to impose his will on America with no one there to stop it. That sounds suspiciously like something out of Soviet Union. If he wants a totalitarian government run by him and his "progressives" then come out and say it. Then just wait for a large part of the nation to succeeded from the Union.

No comments: