Imagine living in a country where the very foundation of human rights and our God-given freedoms to peacefully protest our government could be upended by a simple majority vote. Unfortunately, that’s what happened in Fascist Canada Monday night, and that’s why the American filibuster is vital, is something that should be cherished and protected, not scuttled.
With just 54 percent of the vote (185-151), the Canadian Parliament legalized Prime Minister Adolph Trudeau’s Nazi-style Emergencies Act. With just 54 percent of the vote, it is now legal in Canada to crush peaceful dissent and protest by freezing assets and bank accounts, forcing privately-owned tow truck operators to tow offending protest vehicles, arrest peaceful protesters — and all of these outrages are being committed without due process or judicial overview.
Now imagine such a thing happening in America…
Imagine if that kind of massive upheaval in our daily lives, in the world we have become accustomed to, was possible with a simple majority vote.
Majority rule means living in a world where there are five wolves, four sheep, and there’s a vote to decide what’s for supper.
The U.S. Senate filibuster, with its 60-vote threshold, pours cold water over the passions of the day, forces both sides to work together, and ensures that life, as we know it in this country, cannot be scuttled by a simple majority vote.
Look at the upheaval and misery caused by Obamacare. In the 2008 elections, Democrats secured a 60 vote majority in the U.S. Senate and therefore did not need to work with Republicans. The results were catastrophic. Obamacare became the law of the land, millions lost their health insurance, the cost of healthcare skyrocketed, and suddenly we were required by law to purchase a corporate product… That— as well as nakedly fascist things like the Emergencies Act — is exactly the kind of disruptive power-grab the filibuster is designed to protect us from.
Believe me, you actually do want it to be difficult to pass legislation in America, especially at the federal level where everything is a stifling one-size-fits-all “solution” forced on a wildly dynamic country where that approach almost always does more harm than good.
Democrats are desperate to kill the filibuster in order to consolidate their power, to rig our elections in a way that would ensure their majorities. But even if they had been successful, before long, they would have felt just how misguided that was.
Eventually, Republicans would’ve assumed power in D.C. and, without the filibuster, the GOP could then do any damn thing they pleased. If it’s legal to force every American to purchase a corporate product for their own good, how about a gun?!? Hey, let’s dismantle Black Lives Matter. Let’s pass a federal law that requires ID to vote and ends early voting. Majority vote dismantles the EPA. Majority vote outlaws public unions. Majority vote institutes national school choice.
Believe me, some of those ideas are pretty appealing, but what’s not appealing is 1) the disruptive nature of such a thing, 2) knowing that as soon as Democrats are back in charge, everything would be reversed, and 3) the whiplash effect of it all, the idea of living in a country where there’s no political stability due to the whim of the majority.
Stability means more to me than always getting my way.
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