Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Our nation chose democracy to make decisions among ourselves because democracy most closely represents liberty: one man one vote. Maximum liberty is when everybody's vote is worth the same, where one person's vote can cancel the vote of another, and a third person makes the difference. Unfortunately, those who find democracy does not lead to the outcomes that they want are posing a new threat to our liberty, the supermajority requirement. This Supermajority Congress has gone from a 51% democracy to a 60% democracy by utilizing the filibuster. There's even an emerging two-thirds supermajority requirement when the opposing Party president leverages the law by vetoing until a Bill he wants crosses his desk.

Typically, supermajorities are used by conservatives because, by definition, they resist change but since political extortion has become the new norm, votes are now split along Party lines with little compromise. For example, during Obama's presidency, Republicans blocked virtually everything, no matter what, making them the most despised congress in history but then they were rewarded at the polls with landslide victories: America's version of cognitive dissonance. How does this compare to partisanship of the past? Certainly it's the worst since Franklin Roosevelt: he had a lot of shenanigans going on to get the New Deal going, and it was this bad when The South seceded but that's not exactly comforting either.