Dump the filibuster for its disgraceful past, its abuse today
“Words matter” is a cliché being tossed about these days. But, really, they do matter.
By now, the phrase “filibuster” has conjured up images of Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell doubling down and demanding Democrats do not tamper with the rule. And Mcconnell, being Mcconnell, went a bit further, threatening a “scorched earth” policy if Democrats kill the filibuster. It seems no one has told Mcconnell that the GOP no longer has real power.
“Filibuster” is a simple word with negative historical baggage. The term has roots with the Dutch term “flee-booter” and notorious historical links to the Spanish filibusteros, those bloodthirsty Jolly Roger pirates who stuffed their knee-high boots with jewels, gold coins and pillaged goods.
One famous “filibuster” who loathed the term was from Tennessee. No, I’m not talking about Davy Crockett but another historical Tennessean from the Old South’s dark past: William Walker.
Walker ruthlessly invaded Nicaragua with his private militia, declared himself president in 1856 and reintroduced slavery. Historian Brady Harrison describes Walker as a “five-foot-five colossus across the isthmus.” Walker’s attempt at destroying the city of Granada in Nicaragua was an utter failure.
In the decades before the Civil War, private militias — such as the original Texas Rangers — were heavily recruited in the Old
South to suppress slave revolts by employing terroristic tactics to dominate and recapture them.
Freelance militias, which became known as mercenaries, traveled to South America during the fever of Manifest Destiny to set up independent republics friendly to the slave trade. There were other excursions to neighboring countries, such as the one supported by Mississippi Gov. John Quitman, who raised an expedition to invade Cuba in 1853 and annex new slave territories — with no luck.
By the 1900s, the term “filibuster”
had evolved to an egregious term related to paramilitary groups used for “obstructing” laws and bills unfavorable to the Old South. These filibusters favored the Confederacy, expanding white rule and the empire of Jim Crow.
In 1871, Wisconsin Sen. Charles Eldredge, a Democrat, filibustered a bill to suppress the Ku Klux Klan, while Georgia segregationist Richard Russell filibustered anti-lynching laws in the 1930s. But the one closer to its contemporary use is when Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina
spoke on the Senate floor for 24 hours against the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act.
“The word filibuster, though, lived on as a synonym for any furtive attempt to defend the slave interest and, after that, white supremacy by subverting legitimate political procedure,” John Patrick Leary wrote last month in the New Republic.
Unfortunately, filibustering has been embraced and maintained by the GOP.
Senate Republicans in Congress threaten to use the filibuster rule to destroy any legislation like the For the People Act, which promotes reasonable and further extensions of the Voting Rights Act. On Thursday, Senate Republicans in the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 7, which legally suppresses voting on the pretense of improving voter security. It is headed to the House.
The filibuster rule should be rebuked and eliminated because of its disgraceful past and its legacy of subjugating the people for the sake of profit and power.