Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Do you believe she should be president?
In November of 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev, and all but three Democrats voted to change the filibuster rules of the Senate. The change reduced the majority required for Senate approval of executive and judicial nominees from 60 votes to 51 votes. Fifty-two Democrats and “Independents” voted for the change. No Republicans did.
At the time, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., warned the Democrats, “You will no doubt come to regret this, and you may regret it a lot sooner than you think.”
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, warned, “I think the minority will rue the day that they broke the rules to change the rules.”
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, both former senators, applauded Reid’s decision.
Do you believe super-majorities should ever be required, or are you adamant that the majority should always rule? If you believe the latter, then you have no appreciation of the reason why we have a Bill of Rights.
It was added to the Constitution for the express purpose of putting certain matters beyond the will and vote of the majority. It guarantees every American religious liberty. It guarantees your choice to worship as a Catholic, or as a Baptist. Or not to worship at all.
Should the majority be able to make a law that says, “Everybody shall faithfully sacrifice to the Roman deities?” Or a law that says, “No American shall practice the Catholic faith?”
If Republicans are in the majority, should they be able to pass a law by majority vote that says, “All Republicans are exempt from paying the federal income tax, and all Democrats shall pay income taxes at a 50 percent rate?”
If the Democrats become the majority, should they by majority vote be able to pass a law that says, “All persons who voted Republican in any of the last five presidential elections shall forfeit citizenship, be reduced to slavery, and work for a Democrat slave-master for seven years?” Or that all Republicans shall attend Maoist-style “re-education camps” to be taught the virtues of socialism?
If you don’t see the danger of majority rule degenerating into mob rule, you’re blind. Our Constitution, as drafted, had no Bill of Rights.
It was the Massachusetts, Virginia and New York state ratifying conventions that insisted one be added to the Constitution.
Those Americans who insisted on a Bill of Rights were hard-headed practical men. They had seen England go from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic to Protestant at the will of the monarchs’ majority in Parliament during the consecutive reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Mary and Edward VI (1485-1553).
And they watched the Civil War between Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, as Puritanism became ascendant, and then the Restoration of Charles II and the High Church (1688).
Our founders didn’t want the religion of this country changing with each new president or Congress. They outlawed establishments of religion, and guaranteed the free exercise thereof. They put the question of religion above the will of the majority.
Reid’s decision to eschew the 60-vote rule and approve judges by a majority vote has come back to haunt the Democrats; first with Neil Gorsuch, and now Brett Kavanaugh.
In the movie, “A Man for All Seasons,” the importance of laws is made magnificently clear.
William Roper: “So, now you’d give the Devil the benefit of law?”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that.”
More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ‘round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast. Man’s laws, not God’s. And if you cut them down, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake?”
Be careful what you wish for.
Posted: QCOline.com September 6, 2018
Copyright 2018, John Donald O'Shea
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