DAVID MARCUS: In an age of broken institutions, the filibuster is one relic we can't afford
The filibuster, which is in essence a 60-vote threshold to pass legislation in the United States Senate, is a well-intentioned instrument meant to protect the rights of states, markets and individuals from excessive federal law. But it must now be abandoned.
Under the filibuster, the Senate can only act when a piece of legislation is overwhelmingly popular, and in the current case of the Save America Act, which has widespread public support, not even then.
When the Senate abdicates this power, the power doesn’t disappear, rather it is vested in non-governmental institutions that we are meant to trust are working in the interest of the country and its people.
So, for example, without the Save America Act’s limits on mail-in ballots, non-government entities, like Mark Zuckererg and Meta back in 2020, are free to influence elections by offering mail-in ballot assistance, but only in their politically approved areas.
In an age in which we had trusted institutions of education, homeless outreach or monitoring of elections, this might be fine, even admirable. But we do not live in such an age. In our age, far-left progressives have captured almost every institution the Senate willingly hands its power over to.
In the 1720s, England had almost no government-run prisons. Instead, wardensips were purchased, and the warden would profit from prisoner fees.
In 1729, an architect named Robert Castell was thrown into debtors' prison, but could not pay the warden’s fee. He was put in a room with a man who had smallpox, contracted the disease and died.
Outrage ensued, and even Sir Robert Walpole, arguably England’s first prime minister who far favored indirect management to direct government control of institutions, began to see the need for state-run prisons.
Was the flawed, non-governmental prison system of Georgian England really so different from our own federal government handing millions of dollars to fraudulent day care centers in Minneapolis or no-show hospice care sites in LA?
Even short of fraud, our leading institutions have had incredible negative impacts in areas like the trans movement, where basically every single one of them agreed that children should be subjected to surgery and hormones to change their gender.
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It was not until executive orders, state legislatures and the courts stood up to trans madness that the fever began to cool, and now, hospitals are quietly removing those "services."
It was the government, by and of the people, that put in check the shadow government of far-left institutions that nobody ever voted for.
Castell was not the first person to be abused or to die in the very old private English prison system, so why did his case suddenly cause so much furor and eventual change?
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Well, about 25 years earlier something had arrived on the scene in London called a newspaper, suddenly, not just the literate Londoner, but the man who heard the news read aloud at the coffeehouse or tavern had an immediate window into corruption.
Likewise, 25 years ago, we saw the rise of online news, and suddenly the gatekeepers could no longer hide the evils of the institutions on whose boards they often sat.
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Suddenly stories of voter fraud, or detransitioning, or absurd DEI lessons in our schools could not be covered up. The rot at the core of our institutions was laid bare for all to see, just as the cruelty of England’s prisons were 300 years ago.
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Today, Senate Majority Leader John Thune faces a choice similar to Walpole's in the 18th Century. He would much prefer to keep the federal government out of the lives of Americans, but the institutions that do operate in their lives are broken and corrupt.
While it is the House of Representatives, not the Senate, that is meant to be the vehicle of popular will in our system, that Senate is not meant to be a perpetual roadblock to the will of the people’s house even in the face of massive popular support.
Sadly, that is what the filibuster has become today, an excuse for our legislators to do nothing as non-government institutions continue to firm their grip on American society.
There might have once been a time when the filibuster made sense, but now is not that time. Now is the time for the people’s government to take back power from our broken, far-left institutions.