Rousseau and the Filibuster

Remember the Partitions of Poland

Turkey Vultures, Joe Palaia Park, Oakhurst, N.J.

I've gotten to a point in life where I'm not entirely sure what's on our bookshelves, or where exactly many of the books have come from. This situation, when it was new, used to bother me, but now I look forward to the joy of discovery.

Recently my wife handed me a paperback copy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Government of Poland (trans. Willmoore Kendall, 1985). She asked me if it was mine. I don't believe I'd ever seen it before, and frankly I don't think I'd ever heard of The Government of Poland. 

It seemed destined for a trip to the local used book store - we have way too many books for our small house. But it was a very short book, so I decided to read it before sending it on its way. 

I'm very glad I did, for a variety of reasons, but I'm only going to talk about one of them here. Rousseau is talking about the liberum veto, a Polish veto power that makes the filibuster of the American Senate look positively timid. Here's what he says:

"There is, to be sure, something in the heart of man that clings more stubbornly to individual privileges than to those advantages that, though greater, are less exclusive; nor can anything save patriotism, enlightened by experience, teach him to give up, in favor of greater goods, a once-glorious right that has become pernicious through abuse and is now inseparable from that abuse." (P. 56.) 

It struck me that, in American politics, we seem never to discuss the fact that the filibuster is catnip for a senator's ego. It makes the senators individually very powerful, it allows them to act in a capricious and arbitrary way and not even explain themselves, and right now it may let them destroy democracy. And later, if they wish, deny that they had had that intention.

I suspect that Vladimir Putin may be very familiar with Polish history. If so, I bet he's looking at us and laughing up his sleeve.

See also The 800-Pound Gorilla in the Oval Office.