One of the factors making human conflict so difficult to resolve is the human tendency to overemphasize injuries done to oneself while underemphasizing injuries done by oneself to others. This leads to escalatory behavior: Joe calls Ann's argument ill-informed, Ann calls Joe's argument ignorant, Joe calls Ann's argument idiotic, Ann calls Joe an idiot, Joe calls Anne a stinking whore... we've all seen this many times.

It applies just as well in political conflict. Political factions push hard, and people on each side accuse the other of outrageous political sins, feeding more outrage -- and off we go.

This is especially dangerous in a two-party system like ours where the majority rules. We understand that the current majority will push its own agenda, and when the wheel of fate turns, the other party will become the majority and push its own agenda. But when you couple this with the escalatory tendency mentioned above, you get the potential for an underdamped oscillation running way out of control. If the Republicans can kill the filibuster for judicial appointments when they are in the majority, why can't the Democrats in their turn kill the filibuster for all appointments? And what will prevent the Republicans from retaliating in their turn by killing the filibuster for all legislation?

When you combine this with the overall pursuit of power, you get into some very nasty possibilities. Killing the filibuster is a way to weaken the power of the minority. Why not pursue such tactics as far as they can go? Why couldn't the Democrats, citing the precedent set by the investigation of President Clinton, set up investigations of all the Republican leadership, and then bias those investigations to dig up lots of dirt on their political opponents?

Three dampening factors protect us against such excesses. The first is the law. However, as we have seen with the Guantanamo cases, the torture cases, and the cases of the two American citizens held without charge, an administration can usually get around the law, especially by claiming that the nation is at war.

The second dampening factor is the moral restraint of our politicians. Unfortunately, that has been eroded seriously in the last few years. In the compromise that was reached on Monday, we saw 14 Senators show their own moral restraints. But look at the reactions: some of those Senators may pay for their moral restraints in their next election. It would seem that moral restraint doesn't pay in American politics. If you don't have blood in your teeth, you're not fighting hard enough.

The third dampening factor is the wisdom of the people. This doesn't look too good, either. Certainly their acquiescence to the torture, Guantanamo, and so forth suggest that they're willing to throw away all protections when they feel threatened. I retain some optimism that the average American has a sense of decency and fair play -- all the polls showed that the American people were strongly opposed to the elimination of the filibuster. But politics is being taken over by the extremists on both sides; the fact that so many Senators calculated that it was in their political interest to push for this confrontation demonstrates that public opinion is of less importance than special interest power.

It appears, then, that American politics is moving towards ever greater excesses against the notion of fairness towards the minority. If you get 50% minus one votes, then you're screwed, and the majority can do pretty much anything they want to you -- including tilting the system to insure that they remain in power.

The question for debate is:
Have the dampening factors in American political conflict been surpassed by the driving forces?

(Definition: a "driving force" is what pushes the oscillations higher and higher; it is the opposite of a "dampening factor", which dampens out the oscillations.)

Yes, and so am I. Filibustering is fine, the problem is using cloture rules to prevent an up-or-down vote on judicial nominees. Here are two polls (one by CBS and another by the RNC) that show between 67% and 83% support for the "nuclear option" when questions are phrased in such a way that accurately describe the current situation, rather than only using vague references like "do you thing the filibuster should be abolished?" which hasn't been on the table since Daschle, Biden and Kennedy proposed it a decade ago.


Or it could represent greater faith in the accuracy of issue polling that it deserves. Which special interest was hounding the Senate to let judges who have majority support get an up-or-down vote as they always had until recent years? The "nuclear option" only reverts to the status quo prior to recent obstructionism.



That's an inaccurate assessment of what would have happened with the "nuclear option." Cloture would have remained in effect in every case except judicial nominations, and even there, it was gradually reduced over time from 60 to 51 votes. This rule could have been in effect since cloture was first introduced in 1917, and it wouldn't have changed one iota of American history until the last few years. The assertion that the "nuclear option" is a power grab by the majority just doesn't hold a drop of water-- such empty partisan rhetoric might sway the uneducated, but it is simply not founded in fact.

Have the dampening factors in American political conflict been surpassed by the driving forces?

If the question considers obstructionism via unprecedented abuse of Senate rules a dampening factor, and democratic processes (majority rule) as a driving force of politics, then no, the dampening factors have overwhelmed the driving forces, ground the system to a hault, and begun to move the country backward into tyranny, instead of merely slowing the majority's forward progress as intended.

The power-grabbing anti-democratc Democrats continue to mount unprecedented abuses by stretching unintentended loopholes in Senate rules as they have never been stretched before, and the Republican majority refuses to crank up the driving forces to overcome such abuses because seven of them are so corrupt as to want to make the abuses available to Republicans in the future. That's not moral leadership, that's pure capitulatory appeasement at its cowardly worst.

Republicans have a name for the seven Senate Republicans who defected to the pro-abuse faction of the filibuster issue-- RINO (Republicans In Name Only). There should be a similar name for their partners in tyranny who oppose democratic processes at every turn: DINO (Democrats In Name Only). Hopeful the public will get so fed up with Rinos and Dinos that a libertarian pro-democracy third party can replace the anti-democratic DNC like the GOP replaced the Whigs.

You know a political party is in big trouble when it begins to forsake the very principles for which it was named.

edited to fix some tags

Jack22, I find your posting to be an extremist, partisan rant; I do not wish to reply to it directly because it ignores the real issues raised by this topic, using them only as a vehicle for a rant. The issue in the topic is laid out in nonpartisan terms. Yes, it relies on recent history which has the Republicans in the majority role, but the posting concerns principles of good government, not the particulars of any case.

I would like to step back and observe to other readers that in many ways, Jack22's post represents a portion of the problem. Even a topic with a deliberately dull title and an academic feel is invaded by the partisan rants. I ask the readership, what hope can our democracy have when this kind of behavior is so common?

Have the dampening factors in American political conflict been surpassed by the driving forces?

Ultimately, the American people are the counterweight. The will of the people remains supreme.

When excesses reach too far, the people push those responsible out of office. I think the American people have a grasp over what they want out of their elected officials and it is public opinion that drives politics, not politicians.

I firmly believe that it is voters and issues which decide elections, not corporations or candidates. Run a candidate who has views that people agree with (and who can express those views effectively) and he or she will be elected, regardless of party.

The driving forces that you speak of are ultimately self-defeating. I disagree that administrations are "above the law" as evidenced by the Nixon and Clinton (real or threatened) impeachments. The law is supreme to most politicians, especially when the transgressions are made public.

Jack22 I agree with Erasmussimo. Of course, polls are going to differ based on how qustions are asked and who is asking them. I have no problem with your linking a CBS poll to this thread, but please spare us a trip to an RNC webpage. There would be an equal lack of credibility in linking someone to a DNC page.

I agree, and I hope that the American people will play their role fully. The 9/11 attacks were a triumph for terrorism because the American people were truly and deeply terrorized. Under the spell of their terror, they relaxed their vigilance, granting politicians great powers in order to protect them. The four years since then have seen the political system swinging pretty far away from its previous center of gravity. If this process had taken place over several decades, it might have been easier to handle, but I fear that the suddenness of it all has robbed many politicians of their sense of propriety. The fact that moderates who found a compromise are reviled by many within their own parties bodes ill for the Republic.