News Intelligence Analysis
March 24, 2005
Stopping the Senate Filibuster
In the name of freedom and
goodness,
thought suppression is in the air
"The spirit we have, not the work we do, is what makes
us important to the
people around us."
By Joan Chittister, OSB (National Catholic Reporter )
And at Lew Leadbeater.com
A group of music educators has launched the National
Anthem Project because
they're concerned that Americans no longer remember the words
to the "Star
Spangled Banner." (cnn.com, Sun. Mar 13, 2005)
Meanwhile, Robert Byrd, the 87-year-old Democratic senator
from West
Virginia, is concerned that Americans, even some senators, no
longer
remember the value of time-honored senatorial practices. In terms
of which
one of those two concerns is most important for Americans to
remember if
America is to maintain the spirit that makes it American, I'm
with Byrd.
There's a move in the Senate right now to restrict the right
to filibuster
during discussions of judicial appointees. If you're tempted
to assume that
something as remote and obscure as the Senate rules of filibuster
have
little to do with the likes of us, think again.
In Colorado they want to fire a college history professor
for comparing the
workers in America's great World Trade Center, site of the infamous
terrorist attack on 9/11/2001, as equivalent to the Germans who
worked in
Adolph Hitler's fascist war machine, supporting its policies,
sustaining its
operations. It is a shocking and painful use of language, true.
It is an
unacceptable image of the motives and goals that inspired these
servants of
corporate financial policies, surely. But is it treasonous? Un-American?
Academically unacceptable? Should a professor be fired for raising
such a
comparison in a college classroom in a country where pornography
is a
protected industry and making people think is supposed to be
one of the aims
of the course? Unless, of course, the educational system is now
to be
nothing but a tool of the state. One thing is sure: A statement
like that
makes a person think.
In the church these days, too, anyone who wants to talk about
the nature of
life, the stem-cell question, the definition of marriage, the
human rights
of homosexual citizens or the ordination of women is targeted
for
ecclesiastical sanction, accused of being a "bad Catholic,"
silenced on
church property, threatened with excommunication, and made the
target of
right-wing pressure groups designed to save the world from the
possibility
of examining other ideas. Like curing paralytics on the Sabbath
or raising
women from the dead, I'm sure.
In the Senate of the United States, that supposed guardian
of U.S. civil
rights, almost no one raised a voice against the invasion of
Iraq for fear
of being accused of being un-American. It was "a time of
a war" -- though
that "war" hadn't declared yet -- and the expectation
was that at the first
whiff of administration intent everybody had to "get behind
the President."
Lawmakers who questioned the idea, who did what lawmakers are
supposed to
do, were scorned in public, scoffed at on the floor of the House
and Senate.
Or, even more pointedly, were accused in election campaigns of
being
unpatriotic for thinking differently.
No doubt about it: We have entered a new phase of history.
In the name of
freedom and goodness, thought suppression is in the air. Now
discussion has
become dissent.
It is intimidation time in the United States of America. Everybody
is
expected to follow the flag bearer rather than the Bill of Rights.
It is inquisition time in the church. Everybody is expected
to accept
clerical answers rather than pursue Christian questions of conscience.
It is the period of the new McCarthyism, the rush to purify
the soul of the
nation by those who would do anything, however democratically
impure, to
achieve it.
The unwritten assumption is that to open for discussion what
the ruling
system decrees to be final is to attack or abandon the system
itself.
Now the Senate is dealing with the same tactics. There is
a move to outlaw
the filibuster on judicial nominations. With it goes one of the
few
legislative tactics a minority has in response to government
by majority.
Once the majority has spoken, the thinking seems to be, no one
may say
another word. Called "the nuclear option" because it
is designed to
obliterate all dissent, the proposal threatens the only legislative
tactic a
minority can hope to maintain -- the power of its voice to persuade
people
to keep thinking about a question rather than rush to judgment
about it. But
suppression of discussion eliminates the very concept of "parliament."
It
requires government by fiat. (See Politicalwire.com)
The darkest moments of human history have always had silence on their side.
At the same time, fortunately for us, there have also always
been voices
that refused to be silent, who over and over again cried out
to us, in both
church and state, to keep on thinking. These were voices like
the martyrs of
the early church who spoke out against the imposition of the
state religion
of the Roman Empire, Bartolome de Las Casas who traveled all
the way back to
Spain from Central America to debate in public against the position
of the
church that Indians were not full human beings, Salvadoran Archbishop
Oscar
Romero who spoke for the poor in a climate that exploited them
as pawns of
the rich, Dorothy Day who spoke for peace in a country bent on
violence,
Martin Luther King, Jr. who spoke for persecuted blacks in a
white culture,
Alexander Solzynitsin who spoke for freedom in the midst of Stalinist
oppression.
Now I think we may have just heard another such voice. Senator
Robert Byrd
gave a speech last week, "A Cry to Freedom in the U.S. Senate,"
that could,
if heeded, bring America, as well as the Senate, to the crossroads
of the
future. (www.commondreams.org)
It could bring us face to face with the
question, like we faced more than 200 years ago, of what direction
as a
nation we intend to go. We must decide now if the values that
brought us
this far are worth keeping.
Byrd says in opposition to the move to restrict filibusters
on judicial
appointments: "The curbing of speech in the Senate on judicial
nominations
will most certainly evolve to an eventual elimination of the
right of
extended debate. And that will spur intimidation and the steady
withering of
dissent. ... The ultimate perpetrator of tyranny in this world
is the urge
by the powerful to prevail at any cost. A free forum where the
minority can
rise to loudly call a halt to the ambitions of an overzealous
majority must
be maintained."
From where I stand, Byrd's warning is a statesman's call to
state, church
and educational institutions, however much power they have, to
beware the
power to suppress thought, to dampen speech. In the end, all
that a move
like that can really do is to destroy the very intellectual energy
such
institutions need to survive their own inevitable intellectual
inertia.
I wouldn't worry too much about people forgetting the words
to the national
anthem. If we forget the processes that keep the tyranny of the
majority
from happening -- think carefully -- what will we have left to
sing about?
A Benedictine Sister of Erie, Sister Joan is a best-selling
author and well-known international lecturer. She is founder
and executive director of Benetvision: A Resource and Research
Center for Contemporary Spirituality, and past president of the
Conference of American Benedictine Prioresses and the Leadership
Conference of Women Religious. Sister Joan has been recognized
by universities and national organizations for her work for justice,
peace and equality for women in the Church and society. She is
an active member of the International Peace Council.
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