Is This the Dumbest Filibuster Defense Ever Written?

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There are lots of bad arguments for the filibuster, but this one in the Wall Street Journal is particularly stupid. jonathanchait writes

I have read a lot of bad arguments for the filibuster. They typically consist of a hazy or outright false historical account of how the filibuster was created, a post hoc rationalization for its existence, and some hyperbolic scenario of the nightmare world that would be created by allowing legislation to pass by majority rule. I am not sure I have ever read a filibuster defense quite as stupid as the one that appears in today’s Wall Street Journal.

This is a rather bold thesis. One way to test it would be to look at some places that allow majorities to enact legislation and see if they have stamped out — or even reduced — praying, fishing, caring for children, and so on. The United States Senate used to pass legislation on a majority-rule basis, and its people still had plenty of time to read, hunt, etc. Every state government, and every other democratic government in the world, also has the ability to pass laws on a majority basis.

The Founders deliberately created a supermajority requirement to alter the Constitution. They rejected proposals to require a supermajority vote to pass laws. It has become common, almost required, for filibuster defenders to cite the Founders as if they designed the filibuster, a practice that is both a result and a cause of the widespread misimpression as to how the practice came into being.

Solon and Greene, searching for an international comparison to validate their theories, have come up with “England.” Presumably, they mean the United Kingdom, the nation that contains England, but which hasn’t been called England for the last 500 years. What’s more, they seem to believe that in this imaginary parliamentary system that would somehow be created after the filibuster goes, the number of parties would proliferate because it is proportional to the population. Why do they believe that? It is hard to say. Israel has many active parties despite being much smaller than the U.K.

 

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