Why Getting Rid of the Senate Filibuster Would Mean the End of Democracy in America
The 1983 movie “War Games” was a precursor to the AI era. It was made during the Cold War era and featured a hacker who was looking for games, accidentally triggering a Pentagon supercomputer in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal.
There’s a lot of drama around whether everyone is about to die in a massive nuclear exchange when the hacker comes up with a brilliant idea. He has the computer play itself in Tic-Tac-Toe. After endless draws, it starts to understand that there are no winners if the US and Soviet Union fire nukes at each other, and it stands down instead of creating Armageddon:
Fun concept, right?
Well, the nuclear option for legislation in the Senate is the same type of game.
If either side decides to play – and all it takes is 51 votes in the Senate – the logical rules of how it will have to be played will end America’s time as a Constitutional Republic, lead to widespread violence, and inevitably tear the country apart.
In the end, there can be no winner in that scenario.
Most people do not understand this because these issues are seldom discussed publicly on either side.
Instead, it’s presented as something more like, “Our side has things we want to do. We can’t do them because we need cooperation from the other guys. So, the only solution is to change the rules so that we can do whatever we want without them having a say.”
This is why, for example, getting rid of the filibuster for legislation in the Senate is a mainstream issue in the Democratic Party that would have likely happened if Kamala Harris had won and Democrats controlled the Senate. Although Republicans don’t seem to be as close to actually passing this as Democrats are, Donald Trump is actively calling for us to get rid of the filibuster for legislation:
If either side pulled this off, the Senate would essentially become just like the House. All it would take to push anything through would be 51 votes. As a starting point, that would defeat the whole purpose of the Senate, which was intended in Thomas Jefferson’s famous words to be a “cooling saucer.” The Senate isn’t supposed to just pass whatever sounds good in the moment to the party in charge, which is basically what the House does. It’s supposed to be a place where things slow down and both sides look for ways to make things better and compromise, neither of which admittedly happens very often anymore.
However, where this becomes a dire threat to the continuance of America is when one party controls the House, Senate, and the White House. At that point, the party in charge can pass ANYTHING WITHIN THE LAW. This is why people get excited about it. It’s, “If we control the House, the Senate, and the White House AND get rid of the filibuster, we could pass a wish list of everything we want all at once!”
Sounds great, right? But this is also where the Tic-Tac-Toe game starts to play out.
When either side gives zero consideration to what the middle wants and passes what their base is calling for, it will inevitably be EXTREMELY UNPOPULAR. Certainly, EVERY conservative or liberal policy isn’t going to repel the public, but the second you start giving conservatives on X or liberals on Blue Sky whatever they want, the popularity of your party is going to fall off a cliff. That’s because the American people as a whole naturally recoil from radicalism, extreme shifts, and deeply partisan agendas.
In other words, if Republicans made abortion illegal in all cases, implemented a flat tax, and privatized Social Security, the backlash would be enormous. Similarly, if Democrats passed reparations for slavery, opened the borders, and imposed racial quotas, they’d get voted out of office.
Even if this held up (which it wouldn’t), it would make America nearly ungovernable. Imagine Democrats putting in ultra-left-wing policies and then four years later, Republicans reversing all those policies and putting ultra-right-wing policies in place. How do businesses, local governments, and individuals plan for the future under those circumstances? They can’t. It would create havoc and chaos.
Of course, we wouldn’t actually get to that point because, as Thomas Sowell has pointed out:
If you’re a politician without any sort of ethics (I repeat myself), what is the first thing you’re going to do if you can do anything you want within the law? You’re going to change the law and make sure you stay in power long-term. There are a lot of ways to rig the rules.
What if Democrats allowed 50 million immigrants and illegals in and made them all citizens? What if Republicans changed the law so that certain large Democratic states had their electoral votes nerfed down to nothing? What if either side added more states or changed the rules in some other way to make it nearly impossible to get them out of office?
It could and almost inevitably would go even further than that because, although the Supreme Court gives Congress a lot of latitude, it would also tell them, “No,” more than a few times. Yet, when you can have the presidency, a majority in the House, a majority in the Senate, and no filibuster on legislation, that’s not even an impediment because you can simply stack the Supreme Court with flunkies who will declare whatever you do is Constitutional.
If you add enough partisan Supreme Court justices, then the Constitution effectively no longer exists, and the law is whatever the people in charge say it is. Let’s say Democrats did this. They could literally choose not to allow Republicans to vote, and Supreme Court justices Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi would declare it constitutional.
In other words, once we go down this route, it inescapably ends in one-party rule, which will be considered absolutely intolerable and a justification for violence to half the country. That means the old America is dead, we’ve reset the slate to 1776, and the party that is best able to take and hold the country with violence will be in charge from then on.
In particular, this presents Republicans with a dilemma, because there is a very real possibility that Democrats will take over the government and get rid of the filibuster for legislation. If they did do that, it could fairly be treated as an attempt to impose one-party rule on the country.
That’s the point where, say, someone blows up a car with a liberal Senator in it, and you cheer them on because it’s a blow for democracy, or you root for a military coup to overthrow the Democrats and take charge before they act on their desire to kill as many conservatives as possible. That means our country is much closer to the brink than most Americans realize.
With that in mind, some people would argue that it’s time to abandon democracy ourselves, get rid of the Senate filibuster, and try to lock our side in power. On the one hand, if the Senate filibuster goes away, it would be much better to be in power than out of power. On the other hand, think about what that entails.
What percentage of Americans do you think want to see Democracy end so one side or the other can rule by force? Among the Democrats, there may be a significant minority that would be okay with seizing power and violently oppressing their political opponents, but among Republicans, that number is extremely small.
If you’re a Republican and you’re not willing to call off an election, see people arrested for disagreeing with whoever is in charge, and encourage the military to kill Americans by the tens of thousands as they revolt, this is not a direction you want to go in. Incidentally, it’s not a direction Democrats should want to go if they are smart either, not just because a lot of them would die and the odds are against them winning, just like during the Civil War, but because we have it pretty good here.
Look at countries like Ukraine, Yemen, and Israel. Would you want to be in their shoes right now? Would you like to give up Starbucks in return for bombings? Full supermarkets for people trying not to starve to death? A collapse of the United States and its reemergence in a non-Democratic form, just as we saw with the Roman Empire after Caesar crossed the Rubicon?
Whether you’re conservative or liberal, don’t kid yourself. ALMOST NOBODY will be better off if our country flies apart, and getting rid of the Senate filibuster for legislation is a sure sign it is guaranteed to happen. Let’s hope both parties step back from the edge of the cliff because if they don’t, the America that was passed onto us by previous generations will die, and something newer and uglier will rise in its place.
This would make sense if the Democrats hadn’t already absolutely promised to do this themselves the minute they get power. They’ve openly bragged about making DC and Puerto Rico states, packing the Supreme Court with anti-constitutional socialist judges, going after the first and second amendments and having a universal mail in no voter ID Voting periods lasting 100+ days if they get in, which basically means our democracy is over. So we could wait around for that to happen or we could pull the plug now and get some real constitutional protections in there beforehand. This whole idea that you can’t kill democracy because you have to wait for us to kill Democracy is just kind of crazy. I’m not falling for it.
The filibuster was supposed to be used very rarely. What Democrats do now as they simply use it to prevent the party that was voted in to never get anything accomplished until they can get in and then use it to rig the game for total control. If you do, the Democrats are crazy now just wait till elections. Don’t really matter And they don’t have to worry about what we say because what we say will be illegal and votes won’t matter anyway.
This is old school fatalism ignoring the fact that there is no more old school as Democrats have decided they can exploit the smallest majority to get their political way.
If Democrats take control of the legislature, they will absolutely pull the nuclear option. They did it under Harry Reid already.
I am sick and tired of the conservative constraint so we can feel all high and mighty and moralistic while we watch the Democrats go scorched earth with zero political consequences.
Democrats will have to do the speaking filibuster... so at least we can get them to do some work instead of their lazy ass protesting and silent resistance.