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Arizona’s Immigration Bill is a Social and Racial Sin

From Jim Wallis via Sojourners.

For the first time, all law enforcement officers in the state will be enlisted to hunt down undocumented people, which will clearly distract them from going after truly violent criminals, and will focus them on mostly harmless families whose work supports the economy and who contribute to their communities. And do you think undocumented parents will now go to the police if their daughter is raped or their family becomes a victim of violent crime? Maybe that’s why the state association of police chiefs is against SB 1070.

This proposed law is not only mean-spirited —” it will be ineffective and will only serve to further divide communities in Arizona, making everyone more fearful and less safe. This radical new measure, which crosses many moral and legal lines, is a clear demonstration of the fundamental mistake of separating enforcement from comprehensive immigration reform. We all want to live in a nation of laws, and the immigration system in the U.S. is so broken that it is serving no one well. But enforcement without reform of the system is merely cruel. Enforcement without compassion is immoral. Enforcement that breaks up families is unacceptable. And enforcement of this law would force us to violate our Christian conscience, which we simply will not do. It makes it illegal to love your neighbor in Arizona.

Before the rally and press event, I visited some immigrant families who work at Neighborhood Ministries, an impressive community organization affiliated with Sojourners’ friends at the Christian Community Development Association. I met a group of women who were frightened by the raids that have been occurring, in which armed men invade their homes and neighborhoods with guns and helicopters. When the rumors of massive raids spread, many of these people flee both their homes and their workplaces, and head for The Church at The Neighborhood Center as the only place they feel safe and secure. But will police invade the churches if they are suspected of —harboring— undocumented people, because it is the law? Will the nurse practitioner I met at their medical clinic serving only uninsured people be arrested for being —with— the children of families who are here illegally as she treats them?

At the rally, I started with the words of Jesus (which drew cheers from the crowd gathered at the state Capitol), who instructed his disciples to —welcome the stranger,— and said that whatever we do to —the least of these, who are members of my family— we do to him. I think that means that to obey Jesus and his gospel will mean to disobey SB 1070 in Arizona. I looked at the governor’s Executive Tower and promised that many Christians in Arizona won’t comply with this law because the people they will target will be members of our —family— in the body of Christ. And any attack against them is an attack against us, and the One we follow.

Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles just called this Arizona measure —the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless immigration law.— On CNN, I defended the Cardinal’s comments, which likened the requirement of people always carrying their —papers— to the most oppressive regimes of Nazism and Communism. I wonder whether the tea party movement that rails against government intrusion will rail against this law, or whether those who resist the forced government registration of their guns will resist the forced government requirement that immigrants must always carry their documentation. Will the true conservatives please stand up here? We are all waiting.

Arizona’s SB 1070 must be named as a social and racial sin, and should be denounced as such by people of faith and conscience across the nation. This is not just about Arizona, but about all of us, and about what kind of country we want to be. It’s time to stand up to this new strategy of —deportation by attrition,— which I heard for the first time today in Arizona. It is a policy of deliberate political cruelty, and it should be remembered that —attrition— is a term of war. Arizona is deciding whether to wage war on the body of Christ. We should say that if you come after one part of the body, you come after all of us.

Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street —” A Moral Compass for the New Economy, and is CEO of Sojourners.

I was also interested in the events over in Congress today. The people who run Facebook got a dressing down, with members of Congress telling them how they should run their company. You must use opt-in rather than opt-out or some such nonsense. The sorry truth is that government uses its legislative powers to do what appears to be good at the time (in their minds), and in the process wrecks everything. Facebook has a bad security/privacy model — the market will decide. I want to have a cervezas with José and Maria after church on Sunday, — do not associate with them or we will arrest you (Constitution, free association and free exercise be damned). Don’t pack your chips or pretzels with salt — because we assume Americans and the free market are too stupid, lazy, and overweight to know better. We need a nanny. Don’t eat Foie gras, don’t use trans fats, but go ahead corporate America, pour in as much high fructose corn syrup as possible… no problem there.

Actually, good on Arizona. When their restaurants have to pay fair, or at least minimum wages and overtime to white boys and girls for cutting vegetables and running the dishwasher, when uncle Henry and aunt Jane have to trim their own cactus, when Union carpenters move in to do the framing work on all those senior housing developments, then they’ll get it. Following laws will be a 100% full time job for Arizonans. Just follow the law, and your dinner out will double in price, and your buy-in for a place at Sun City (assessment fees, capital contribution costs, original housing cost) will double; all because José and Maria aren’t doing it for next to nothing anymore. You’ll be paying Brandy and Todd instead, and they won’t take your crap, they’ll walk out or strike. Oh, and don’t forget about the sales and property tax increases, because a big segment of your society isn’t earning or spending in Arizona anymore. At least you won’t have to look at those odd Catholic foreigners, those scary people and their scary brown children (they’re all the same aren’t they???).

But, you want it both ways don’t you?

Unfortunately, the worst laws are those quickly enacted to make a point. They create a country where we are free to be fat, lazy, cheap, and protected because someone had an idea and made a point. Whatever happened to building things with our ideas? Now we just write laws for the sake of laws. We use ideas as fodder for the word-processing programs that enshrine law over and above all else, and most particularly over the Law that tells us we are free.

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, , ,

The undelivered speech of President Kaczyński

Dear Representatives of the Katyn Families. Ladies and Gentlemen.

In April 1940 over twenty-one thousand Polish prisoners from the NKVD camps and prisons were killed. The genocide was committed at Stalin’s will and at the Soviet Union’s highest authority’s command.

The alliance between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and the Soviet attack on Poland on 17 September 1939 reached a terrifying climax in the Katyn massacre. Not only in the Katyn forest, but also in Tver, Kcharkiv and other known, and unknown, execution sites citizens of the Second Republic of Poland, people who formed the foundation of our statehood, who adamantly served the motherland, were killed.

At the same time families of the murdered and thousands of citizens of the eastern territory of the pre-war Poland were sent into exile deep into the Soviet Union, where their indescribable suffering marked the path of the Polish Golgotha of the East.

The most tragic station on that path was Katyn. Polish officers, priests, officials, police officers, border and prison guards were killed without a trial or sentence. They fell victims to an unspeakable war. Their murder was a violation of the rights and conventions of the civilized world. Their dignity as soldiers, Poles and people, was insulted. Pits of death were supposed to hide the bodies of the murdered and the truth about the crime for ever.

The world was supposed to never find out. The families of the victims were deprived of the right to mourn publicly, to proudly commemorate their relatives. Ground covered the traces of crime and the lie was supposed to erase it from people’s memory.

An attempt to hide the truth about Katyn —“ a result of a decision taken by those who masterminded the crime —“ became one of the foundations of the communists’ policy in an after-war Poland: a founding lie of the People’s Republic of Poland.

It was the time when people had to pay a high price for knowing and remembering the truth about Katyn. However, the relatives of the murdered and other courageous people kept the memory, defended it and passed it on to next generations of Poles. They managed to preserve the memory of Katyn in the times of communism and spread it in the times of free and independent Poland. Therefore, we owe respect and gratitude to all of them, especially to the Katyn Families. On behalf of the Polish state, I offer sincere thanks to you, that by defending the memory of your relatives you managed to save a highly important dimension of our Polish consciousness and identity.

Katyn became a painful wound of Polish history, which poisoned relations between Poles and Russians for decades. Let’s make the Katyn wound finally heal and cicatrize. We are already on the way to do it. We, Poles, appreciate what Russians have done in the past years. We should follow the path which brings our nations closer, we should not stop or go back.

All circumstances of the Katyn crime need to be investigated and revealed. It is important that innocence of the victims is officially confirmed and that all files concerning the crime are open so that the Katyn lie could disappear for ever. We demand it, first of all, for the sake of the memory of the victims and respect for their families’ suffering. We also demand it in the name of common values, which are necessary to form a foundation of trust and partnership between the neighbouring nations in the whole Europe.

Let’s pay homage to the murdered and pray upon their bodies.

Glory to the Heroes!

Hail their memory!

Perspective, Political,

A fall, big and fast

From the Los Angeles Times by Niall Ferguson: America, the fragile empire: Here today, gone tomorrow — could the United States fall that fast?

For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public have tended to think about the political process in seasonal, cyclical terms. From Polybius to Paul Kennedy, from ancient Rome to imperial Britain, we discern a rhythm to history. Great powers, like great men, are born, rise, reign and then gradually wane. No matter whether civilizations decline culturally, economically or ecologically, their downfalls are protracted.

In the same way, the challenges that face the United States are often represented as slow-burning. It is the steady march of demographics — which is driving up the ratio of retirees to workers — not bad policy that condemns the public finances of the United States to sink deeper into the red. It is the inexorable growth of China’s economy, not American stagnation, that will make the gross domestic product of the People’s Republic larger than that of the United States by 2027.

As for climate change, the day of reckoning could be as much as a century away. These threats seem very remote compared with the time frame for the deployment of U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan, in which the unit of account is months, not years, much less decades.

But what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arrhythmic — at times almost stationary but also capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over a number of centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?

Great powers are complex systems, made up of a very large number of interacting components that are asymmetrically organized, which means their construction more resembles a termite hill than an Egyptian pyramid. They operate somewhere between order and disorder. Such systems can appear to operate quite stably for some time; they seem to be in equilibrium but are, in fact, constantly adapting. But there comes a moment when complex systems “go critical.” A very small trigger can set off a “phase transition” from a benign equilibrium to a crisis — a single grain of sand causes a whole pile to collapse.

Not long after such crises happen, historians arrive on the scene. They are the scholars who specialize in the study of “fat tail” events — the low-frequency, high-impact historical moments, the ones that are by definition outside the norm and that therefore inhabit the “tails” of probability distributions — such as wars, revolutions, financial crashes and imperial collapses. But historians often misunderstand complexity in decoding these events. They are trained to explain calamity in terms of long-term causes, often dating back decades. This is what Nassim Taleb rightly condemned in “The Black Swan” as “the narrative fallacy.”

In reality, most of the fat-tail phenomena that historians study are not the climaxes of prolonged and deterministic story lines; instead, they represent perturbations, and sometimes the complete breakdowns, of complex systems…

…

If empires are complex systems that sooner or later succumb to sudden and catastrophic malfunctions, what are the implications for the United States today? First, debating the stages of decline may be a waste of time — it is a precipitous and unexpected fall that should most concern policymakers and citizens. Second, most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises. Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly indeed as the United States contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $1.5 trillion — about 11% of GDP, the biggest since World War II.

These numbers are bad, but in the realm of political entities, the role of perception is just as crucial. In imperial crises, it is not the material underpinnings of power that really matter but expectations about future power. The fiscal numbers cited above cannot erode U.S. strength on their own, but they can work to weaken a long-assumed faith in the United States’ ability to weather any crisis.

One day, a seemingly random piece of bad news — perhaps a negative report by a rating agency — will make the headlines during an otherwise quiet news cycle. Suddenly, it will be not just a few policy wonks who worry about the sustainability of U.S. fiscal policy but the public at large, not to mention investors abroad. It is this shift that is crucial: A complex adaptive system is in big trouble when its component parts lose faith in its viability.

Over the last three years, the complex system of the global economy flipped from boom to bust — all because a bunch of Americans started to default on their subprime mortgages, thereby blowing huge holes in the business models of thousands of highly leveraged financial institutions. The next phase of the current crisis may begin when the public begins to reassess the credibility of the radical monetary and fiscal steps that were taken in response….

Perspective, PNCC, Political, ,

PNCC Diocese of Canada, and others, get no info from the City of Hamilton

From TheSpec: City tries again for social housing funds

The city is pitching four social housing projects to the province in hopes of receiving a final slice of government stimulus cash.

The city’s previous applications — which included a proposal to turn the former Royal Connaught Hotel into mixed-use housing — were all turned down. This application is Hamilton’s last chance to receive funding from the joint federal-provincial program.

The proposals the city chose to submit were judged based on several criteria, including cost, the bidder’s background, site and construction readiness, and location, said Rick Male, the city’s director of financial services.

The four housing proposals, which were approved by council recently, were the highest-scoring submissions of the 13 compliant projects submitted.

The city’s top priority is a proposal from the Hellenic Community of Hamilton and District. It asks for $210,000 to turn an old fire hall on its property into four affordable housing units, which would add to the 39 units the non-profit organization already operates, said Nathan Hondronicols, president of the Hellenic Community.

The second priority on the list, submitted by Homestead Christian Care, is for 46 housing units at the site of a former bar on Main Street East. The two final proposals, which were also included in the last round of applications, are proposals for 27 units for families on Burton Street and 59 units for seniors on Upper Gage.

There’s about $120 million up for grabs this round, said Brent Whitty of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Successful projects will be announced by the end of March.

In the previous application, the controversial Connaught proposal was listed as the city’s top priority for funding. Tony Battaglia, spokesperson for the group that owns the Connaught, said he was surprised to learn the proposal was excluded from this round of applications after it was listed as the city’s first priority last time.

Anthony Jasinski, treasurer of the Canadian diocese of the Polish National Catholic Church of Canada, shares Battaglia’s concern. His church’s proposal for 83 units on Barton Street was included in the last round but nixed this time.

“We’re very upset,” he said. “We’re still fuming over this last result and we’d like to know what it is that invalidated us.”

Of course, governments reaching decisions in secret, or according to subjective criteria, is not the sole province of communist or authoritative regimes. It happens in Canada too. A good RFP process should result in scored rankings which are then open to all. After-all, it is the public’s money, and they should be able to judge whether the process was properly followed and whether the RFPs were equitably scored.

Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, ,

At the Mall (in Poland)

From the NY Times: Poland Looks Inward After Film Puts ‘Mall Girl’ Culture on View

WARSAW —” They loiter at the mall for hours, young teenage girls selling their bodies in return for designer jeans, Nokia cell phones, even a pair of socks.

Katarzyna Roslaniec, a former film student, first spotted a cluster of mall girls three years ago, decked out in thigh-high latex boots. She followed them and chatted them up over cigarettes. Over the next six months, the teens told her about their sex lives, about the men they called —sponsors,— about their lust for expensive labels, their absent parents, their premature pregnancies, their broken dreams.

Ms. Roslaniec, 29, scribbled their secrets in her notepad, memorizing the way they peppered their speech with words like —frajer— —” —loser— in English.

She gossiped with them on Grono.net, the Polish equivalent of Facebook. Soon, she had a large network of mall girls.

The result is the darkly devastating fictional film, —Galerianki,— or Mall Girls, which premiered in Poland in the autumn and has provoked an ongoing national debate about moral decadence in this conservative, predominantly Catholic country, 20 years after the fall of Communism.

The film tells the story of four teenage girls who turn tricks in the restrooms of shopping malls to support their clothing addiction. It has attained such cult status that parents across the country say they are confiscating DVDs of the film for fear it provides a lurid instruction manual.

The revelation that Catholic girls, some from middle-class families, are prostituting themselves for a Chanel scarf or an expensive sushi dinner is causing many here to question whether materialism is polluting the nation’s soul…

Adam Bogoryja-Zakrzewski, a journalist who made a documentary about mall girls, said the phenomenon had laid bare the extent to which the powerful Polish Catholic church —” anti abortion, anti-gay and anti-contraception —” was out of touch with the younger generation, for whom sex, alcohol and consumerism held more appeal. —The shopping mall has become the new cathedral in Poland,— he said…

In Communist times the Church offered a viable alternative to the status quo and the government agenda. What was lost in the transition is the sense of Catholic faith as a viable alternative.

People reacted quickly to the economic and political changes in Poland. The money came out of the mattresses and people began to take care of more than basic needs. One of the earliest rush purchases was of “Goldstar VCRs.” People bought them like candy. Generally, the public were very agile in redirecting according to the social condition – a more natural and normal situation.

Unfortunately, the Church did not adapt to the new status quo in Poland and left a gap between people’s expectations and the Church’s reality. The Roman Church in Poland threw itself headlong into politics and the reclamation of ‘lost property.’ While the older generations, already conditioned to Church as a part of their social identity, have remained in the Church, younger people have abandoned the Church.

The reasons start with the lack of adaptation and relevancy in the new socio-political order in Poland, the appearance of greed and political gamesmanship early on (including politically motivated homilies on Sundays). That was exacerbated by paedophilia/paederasty scandals, the discovery of a number of clergy, including high ranking bishops who were in league with the communist government, and the Church’s voice being overshadowed by religio-political movements such as the Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk’s Radio Maryja (more-or-less the neo-cons of Poland).

For more on this see The Battle for Souls by Jan Puhl:

The Roman Catholic Church sees itself as the custodian of Polish culture. Even today, it still carries weight in the nation’s politics. But fewer and fewer people are obeying its commandments…

Those fewer and fewer are the young, the future. They are at the mall…

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political, , , ,

When defense is co-opted for offense

A Serbian-Canadian’s reflection of NATO’s involvement in the internal affairs of Serbia. Also recall that NATO bombed Serbia on Easter Sunday. From The Bloody Catholic Easter 1999 by Dr. Vladimir Ajdacic at Swans

Easter is the most sacred and the happiest day for Christians. However, the people of Yugoslavia will never forget Easter 1999. NATO, led by the Americans, carried out vicious bombing attacks on a variety of civilian targets in Yugoslavia. Despite a message and request from the Pope not to bomb during this important Christian holy day, NATO bloodied their hands. The patriarch of the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, Aleksej II, predicted their actions correctly. NATO’s message, written on the bombs and tomahawk missiles was, “Easter presents to the Serbs”…

Similarly, NATO working outside its bounds in Afghanistan, continues to ‘mis-target’ civilians.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political

Military Aid to Israel: Legal, Political, Economic, and Humanitarian Impact

Josh Ruebner, National Advocacy Director, US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation will be presenting Thursday, February 25, 7PM at Albany Law School on “Military Aid to Israel: Legal, Political, Economic, and Humanitarian Impact.” The presentation is sponsored by the Muslim Law Students Association (MLSA)

Military Aid to Israel: Legal, Political, Economic, and Humanitarian Impact

Thursday, February 25
7:00pm – 9:00pm

Matthew Bender Room 425
Albany Law School
80 New Scotland Avenue,
Albany, New York 12208-3494

Between 2009-2018, the United States is scheduled to give Israel $30 billion in military aid. Through its illegal 42-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, Israel has misused U.S. weapons in violation of U.S. law to kill and injure Palestinian civilians, destroy Palestinian civilian infrastructure, blockade the Gaza Strip, and build illegal settlements in West Bank and East Jerusalem. The average American taxpayer will pay $19.19 in military aid to Israel in 2010.

How much of this total will your community provide? Is this a good use of your tax dollars? What role do your taxes, here in Albany, play in perpetuating violence in the Middle East?

The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is a national coalition of nearly 300 organizations working to change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political

Unemployment, Jobs, and Justice

Two from Interfaith Worker Justice:

Extend Unemployment and COBRA Now!

Are you unemployed? Do you know someone who is? Urgent action is needed to make sure that Congress extends the lifeline for workers by extending unemployment and COBRA coverage before the end of the month. Your response will help someone put food on the table, keep their lights on and of course, enable them to live with some dignity during this harsh economic climate. Click Here to take action!

This isn’t an issue of slackers who sit around enjoying a check. There are too few jobs for too many unemployed workers, approx. 1 job for every 4 persons unemployed. Further, the skill sets of many unemployed workers will not transfer forward. They will need significant retraining to be prepared for the time when jobs once again become available. Also remember that unemployment assistance, which is temporary help for people who are ready, willing, and able to work, makes an immediate economic impact. Those dollars are spent, returning $1.67 to the economy for every dollar in assistance.

Principles on Jobs

It is time for people of faith to act and bring their moral vision to the national conversation on jobs.

Interfaith Worker Justice has stood with workers in times of economic prosperity and stands with them now in this time of economic crisis. Yet we are continually confronted by stories of workers who want to work but can’t find jobs, workers whose hours have been cut from full time to part time and workers who have been victimized by employers who will not pay them for the work they have done.

Our religious traditions teach us that work is a sacred act, that when we labor we are —God’s hands— on earth. Those who work and those who cannot work must be treated fairly. —Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages.— (Jeremiah 22:13)

As people of faith, we call for an economy that provides a good job for everyone who wants and needs one. While it is good and right to pass measures that can put some people back to work, it is not enough. All jobs should be good jobs, paying living wages and benefits, allowing workers dignity and a voice at the workplace, ensuring worker’s health and safety, and guaranteeing their right to organize unions.

IWJ has developed a “Statement of Principles” on Jobs that I have signed. Please join me in signing that principle statement.

Perspective, Political, , ,

IWJ sponsors Public Policy Training

Save the Date for Interfaith Worker Justice’s Public Policy Training!
March 14th-16th – Chicago

Learn from experts on the IWJ national staff and local organizational leaders. The trainers bring extensive experience in interfaith organizing, worker and union campaigns, and organizational development.

This Training is designed for:

  • Organizers with faith-based organizations or workers centers
  • Board members, leaders, or volunteers of interfaith organizations
  • Religious or community outreach staff of unions

Sessions covering…

  • How you can be involved in moving federal, state, and local legislation?
  • How to engage in multi-racial alliance building around policy issues?
  • How to engage labor and religious leaders in your policy goals?
  • The current status of Immigration, Jobs, and Wage Theft campaigns and legislation?

IWJ National Office
1020 W Bryn Mawr, 4th floor
Chicago, IL 60660

More information on registration and costs is available at the IWJ website.

Perspective, Political, , , , ,

Filibuster, how did that Liberum Veto work out for you?

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” — Edmund Burke

The current method of filibuster being used in the U.S. Senate reminds me of the corrupted version of the Liberum Veto as practiced during the periods in which the Polish Commonwealth was weakened.

From Wikipedia: Liberum veto (emphasis mine):

[The] Liberum Veto (Latin for I freely forbid) was a parliamentary device in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It allowed any member of the Sejm to force an immediate end to the current session and nullify all legislation already passed at it by shouting Nie pozwalam! (Polish: I do not allow!).

From the mid-sixteenth to the late eighteenth century, the Polish—“Lithuanian Commonwealth utilized the liberum veto, a form of unanimity voting rule, in its parliamentary deliberations. The “principle of liberum veto played an important role in [the] emergence of the unique Polish form of constitutionalism.” This constraint on the powers of the monarch were significant in making the “rule of law, religious tolerance and limited constitutional government … the norm in Poland in times when the rest of Europe was being devastated by religious hatred and despotism.”

This rule evolved from a unanimity principle (unanimous consent), and the latter from the federative character of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was essentially a federation of countries. Each deputy to a Sejm was elected at a local regional sejm (sejmik) and represented the entire region. He thus assumed responsibility to his sejmik for all decisions taken at the Sejm. A decision taken by a majority against the will of a minority (even if only a single sejmik) was considered a violation of the principle of political equality.

…

In the first half of the 18th century, it became increasingly common for Sejm sessions to be broken up by liberum veto, as the Commonwealth’s neighbours —” chiefly Russia and Prussia —” found this a useful tool to frustrate attempts at reforming and strengthening the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth deteriorated from a European power into a state of anarchy.

Many historians hold that a major cause of the Commonwealth’s downfall was the principle of liberum veto. Thus deputies bribed by magnates or foreign powers, or simply content to believe they were living in some kind of “Golden Age”, for over a century paralysed the Commonwealth’s government, stemming any attempts at reform.

In the past, the U.S. Senate was governed by a high degree of decorum. It was the house of slow deliberation, and where disagreement arose, it arose in a gentlemanly form. As with the way the Liberum Veto was used as part of proper deliberation, the atmosphere of discourse and compromise had worked to strengthen the country.

In momemts of severe disagreement, a Senator could rise and invoke a filibuster (as everyone points to, recall Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). The Senator invoking the filibuster had to occupy the floor and continue deliberation, expounding on the reasons he was against the legislation or otherwise wasting time. It was a personal effort at blocking legislation.

Certainly, power and politics played a role in the past, but not to the extent to which it has over the past 20 years. We have moved from a proper system of checks and balances to the misuse of such, much as the Liberum Veto came to be misused. In this day, one Senator may simply state that he disagrees with some legislation, nomination, or treaty and retire to his golf game while that issue remains blocked indefinitely. Any issue may now become the hostage of any one man.

In order to move past the filibuster a super majority is required. In effect, most legislation now requires a super majority to get past the whim of any one Senator. Our government in general, and particularly any effort at substantive reform, may be brought to a grinding halt. As with the corruption of the Liberum Veto, a Senator’s objections are no longer personal, deeply held beliefs that a Senator was forced to defend in person. They are no longer part of the art of gentlemanly disagreement. The filibuster is a weapon in the hands of every Senator doing the bidding of his masters, i.e., the interest groups, lobbyists, and moneychangers.

The danger of the corrupted Liberum Veto lives on in the form of Senate filibusters under current Senate rules. While the filibuster does have a role in defending the opinion of the minority, it should not be used to permanently impede the will of the majority. That is not how the framers envisioned our system. More dangers lie ahead. The filibuster in the hands of a Senator kowtowing to a foreign power (Israel, China) will further speed the end of the American experiment. It is time to get this powerful tool back in check.

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