The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
For decades the United States Constitution and the arcane rules of the US Senate have stymied American democracy in a variety of ways. We have become their hostages. Recently it appears that the expressed desire of a heavy majority of voters may yet again be thwarted in two important concerns of the American people: a permanent federal law upholding the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision fifty years ago, and tighter gun control laws and universal background checks for every purchaser of guns.
In the leaked information regarding Justice Alito’s brief re. Roe vs. Wade, and in the questions about the Roe decision asked by the conservative justices in their initial consideration of the issue a few months ago, it seems evident that the six justices appointed by Republican presidents will declare Roe vs. Wade unconstitutional. Therefore the states will be given the power to render abortions very difficult, if not impossible, for women to obtain. A bill to insure the right of abortion was quickly but narrowly passed in the House of Representatives, but Senate Republicans, using the antiquated and antidemocratic filibuster rule, refused even to allow debate on the bill.
After the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the president and Democratic members of the Senate tried to pass a bill for universal background checks because of another loud public outcry over the murders of the nineteen children and two of their teachers. Again the Senate minority leader convinced his caucus to forbid debate on the bill, and so it was rendered moot, as was easily predicted.
Why does this pattern keep happening, again and again? It is because the members of the 1787 Constitutional Convention needed to make several crucial compromises to get the Constitution approved. One of those compromises was to make it extraordinarily hard to amend the Constitution itself. In addition, small-population states were granted more political power in certain respects than large-population states. Therefore every state, regardless of population, has only two senators. In 1787, a majority of the states had small populations, relative to the large-population states. This intentionally gave rural states an advantage over urban states. That pattern has persisted for more than two centuries. However, it was universally agreed that the size of each state’s delegation in the House of Representatives would be determined by its actual population.
Over time, the Senate developed its own unique set of rules for how it was to operate. One of those rules was to insist that certain bills would require a t least a sixty-vote majority. Another allows any senator or group of senators to filibuster against any proposed bill, effectively preventing a vote ever to be taken on the bill, so long as the filibuster continues or is threatened to continue. The Senate has long called itself the Greatest Debating Society in the World. For more than a century though, its absurd filibuster rule has turned it into the World’s Worst Society for Truly Debating Anything.
For far too long the Senate has ceased to be a check on federal power in order to balance out the executive and judicial branches and the House of Representatives. Instead it has become the major agency of obstruction to thwart the objectives of the majority of Americans and House members. The Senate fancies itself to be the last, best hope of democracy. Not surprisingly, it has turned itself into the worst internal enemy of democracy in too many important instances. This is the result of the Constitution giving it far more power 235 years ago than is good for our country in 2022.
Every woman should have the right to an abortion under reasonably circumscribed conditions, and that right should be guaranteed by federal statute for all women in all the states. A very sizable majority of Americans favor that. Universal background checks for gun purchasers should be mandated, and the sale of all automatic weapons should be limited solely to the military and the police, and outlawed for everyone else. Most Americans also favor that.
Nonetheless, the American people, because of a necessary but distasteful compromise in 1787, are being held hostage by both the Constitution and the Senate. The needed amendments to allow a far more complex nation smoothly to go about its business have never been passed, largely because of the Senate. The idolatry of outdated governmental structures is preventing sensible contemporary government. It makes no sense, but the pattern does not change. What kind of cockamamie country have we become?
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.