I'm not among those who regard America's founding fathers as secular saints, geniuses whose writings apply to our transcontinental nation of fifty states and 330 million people with the same aptness as they did to the thirteen original and largely rural ones tucked between the Atlantic Ocean and a ridge of mountains a few hundred miles inland. But if called upon to defend the view that they are always speaking truth to us today, I think I'd highlight views advanced by Alexander Hamilton in the 22nd Federalist Paper:
To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision) is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser number. . . . The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, the caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength, of its government is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must in some way or other go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority in order that something may be done must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.
Hmmm, I think one might safely infer from this Hamilton's opinion on the Senate filibuster rule and the need, in around another two-and-a-half centuries, for three-fifths of the Senate to agree that a voting rights bill passed by the House can even be debated and voted on in "the world's most august legislative body." Of course, since each state has two senators, no matter how large or small its population, the number of senators needed to sustain a filibuster might represent a tiny minority of Americans. In the same essay, Hamilton foresaw too the mischief attaching to the equal representation of states:
Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Delaware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts that fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America . . . . In addition to this it is to be observed that there is a probability of an increase in the number of States, and no provision for a proportional augmentation of the ratio of votes.
At the time Hamilton was giving voice to these quaint concerns, the population of the biggest state (Virginia) exceeded that of the smallest (Delaware) by a factor of about 13. Today, California's population is about 68 times more than Wyoming's, 63 times more than Vermont's, 54 times more than Alaska's, and about 24 times that of North and South Dakota combined. If forced to contemplate Mitch McConnell's US Senate, Alexander Hamilton would not be able to stop throwing up.
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