Back prior to the 2022 US midterms, many warned that if the Republicans won the House of Representatives, given our current state of politics, they needed to win big. Otherwise, Speaker-to-be Kevin McCarthy was going to have an ungovernable caucus to contend with, should a minimal victory come to pass (https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-11-09/gop-inches-toward-control-of-house-but-narrow-majority-would-complicate-mccarthys-speakership). And it seems such prognosticators were proven 100% correct on the evening of 3 October 2023, when the Speakership, for the first time in our nation’s history, was vacated (on a vote of 216 to 210, 8 Repubs joining 208 Dems). This was brought on, from a procedural point of view, by a change in the House rules, made as a concession in order for McCarthy to ascend the Speakership back in January this year. As you’ll recall, it took over a dozen votes for McCarthy to gain the gavel in the lower chamber of our legislature, a chaotic affair not seen since the time prior to the US Civil War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2023_Speaker_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives_election). Essentially, McCarthy codified the mechanism of liberum veto that lead to his downfall. Yes, Representative Matt Gaetz is without question a gleeful political nihilistic arson-terrorist, but McCarthy, in agreeing to and implementing this rule change, put everything in front of him for the inferno to be started, including literally handing Gaetz the match.
The last 8 years have seen a lot of firsts in our country, most of them not good. Electing, as President, our first ever person who had never held public office or an appointment as a federal officer before, was disastrous, for example. But history, if we look at it, could have well predicted the eventuality of Tuesday evening (as well as much of our recent past debacles). In 17th century Poland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s parliament had a procedure called the “liberum veto” that allowed any one member of the body to object to any legislation, as the body required unanimous consent to agree to any measure. It eventually even got to the point where the exercise of this right of veto was sufficient to end the parliament altogether (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto). To make a long story shorter, this ostensibly very liberal, uber minority protection clause, was the cause of the massive political anarchy that brought down one of the most powerful powers in European history to the point that, Poland, after the third partition between Russia, Austria, and Prussia, ceased to exist.
Looking at events on October 3rd, 2023, using the lens of this knowledge of the past, makes it clear that this is history striking a very horrible rhyme with itself. What’s worse is that if you look back at this history, you’ll see that once Liberum veto became established, it became impossible to undo, even when it was well acknowledged that it was destroying the very country and system that had established it in the first place. So too, most likely, here. Once a right or privilege is given, even when it’s clear it’s poorly defined, leads to really bad downsides (making any upside seem small in comparison), or is literally killing people, pulling it back is nearly impossible. Will the House change its rules to make it harder for members to vacate the speakership? I doubt it, seriously doubt it. This immediate result, McCarthy loosing his speakership, was entirely predictable(https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/maga-wave-midterm-elections/). But what’s becoming clearer, is that the longer term trend, of the unraveling, weakening, and potential demise of the US democratic republican experiment, is also becoming true as well.
The founders, looking back at history, especially the Roman republic, were very concerned that republics had repeatedly failed because of the inability to control the various powers and interests at play in politics. Some worried about government overreach which would result in an autocratic state. Others worried about naked self interests destroying the fabric of society resulting in anarchy. Others recognized the cultural and ethnic diversity of the nation could either be harnessed for good or for evil purposes. And some even saw that the cognitive dissonance needed to have slavery exist within a free society as a massive cancer that would potentially rip the country in pieces. The point being, they knew they had to work hard to create a republic that could address these challenges and the challenges that the future would bring. They looked back and tried to use the examples of history to avoid the failures and hold onto the successes of democratic republicanism as the country emerged. They knew the first attempt, the Articles of Confederation, had failed, and so created a Constitution that would supplant it and help us form “a more perfect union”. They were wise enough to know it needed to change, and thus put in clauses to amend it and, if needed, revise it substantially (convention clause). It isn’t perfect, it was intended to be more perfect, but we need to recognize what is happening with a long view, much like they did.
What is true now is that it’s clear the forces of nihilism, self interest, and, I’ll say it, evil have made it clear that they are more than willing to see the republic fail to get their way. The Gracchi are alive and well, and they are more than ever willing to smash the clay jars in the forum to get their way; votes, or system, or anything else that might get in their way (http://backusec.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-gracchi-reborn.html). GEN Mark Milley, in his retirement speech, offered that US Military personnel “… don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it. Every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, guardian and Coast Guardsman, each of us commits our very life to protect and defend that document, regardless of personal price. And we are not easily intimidated.” (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/29/milley-farewell-speech-trump-dictator-00119130). So as much as these forces of evil are arrayed against the republic, there are those that are willing and able to proverbially right the ship. We need more of them, and most of them need to be those out of uniform. In my mind, yes, Matt Gaetz actually lit the match he was given, he is our Gavrilo Princip assassinating the Austrian Archduke (http://backusec.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-trump-phenom-abridged.html). McCarthy, Trump, and all of the blatant power seekers of the past and present are to blame for creating the powder keg that we, who elect them, have created for ourselves.
What’s the answer? Well there’s several ways this can go, if we look at history. Certainly there are the violent options of uprising, revolution or violent crackdown, all of which are bad options both in the short term and long term as learned in 18th and 19th century France, Russia, Austria, and so forth. There’s the ever slow unraveling of the republic and Balkanization that can occur, sometimes violent, sometimes peaceful, but never clean. There’s the option that the Romans took and simply resolve to first resist change to the point that it the sclerosis sets in and eventually plutocrats control things to the point that they work to create accommodations, and resulting factional strife, with an eventual autocrat emerging as “the winner” in a system of patronage and spoils. Or we can choose other paths, like having an enlightened political force/leadership come to make the needed reforms to revitalize the system (e.g. Lincoln, Roosevelt, etc.). Or to have a groundswell of support giving majoritarian power to those we hold to actually fix the system instead of tearing it down: meaning we vote not for ourselves but for the future. Or to use the mechanisms of the constitution, even reverting in some cases to earlier mechanisms (e.g. repeal the 17th amendment), to facilitate the tweaks needed to address the problems and forces that are making those problems worse.
The point being, we should be mindful of the lessons of history as we go forward. Choose, as the founders did, from the things that will help us and avoid those that will destroy us. Short term politics has the bad habit of not doing that and, worse, rhyming with the points in history that resulted in the utter demise of all that the idea of America stands for. I, like GEN Milley, will fight to stop that from happening. Will you?
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