The other day, in the wake of Uvalde, I wrote:
“But, for me at least, one truth has changed.
I no longer believe that gun reforms are even possible —
— no matter how overwhelming the need is
— or, for that matter, how overwhelming the popular support for gun reform legislation is.
And that is because the U.S Senate has become an AMERICAN HOUSE OF LORDS, supported by the most pernicious system of ROTTEN BOROUGHS since that same corrupt, anti-democratic system was overthrown in 19th Century England.
Coupled with the systematic deliberate perversion of the Supreme Court over the past two+ decades,
ALL meaningful political reform in America is simply impossible.”
To be clear, that means ALL Reforms, including:
— reforms that protect the rights of minorities, voters, women, working people, the poor, immigrants, while also addressing the growing Climate Crisis, the increasing economic inequality, threats to a free press, political corruption, and the dominance of money in political campaigns.
For further amplification of this subject, the reader may wish to go to my September 18, 2020 observations in Ending America’s Rotten Boroughs: Toward an Institutional New Deal — whose thesis was (and more emphatically the ever, still remains):
In times of social and political crisis, no solution is possible without prior Fundamental Institutional Reform.”
_I — A Case Study (Summary)
A Case Study that perhaps best illustrates the cause and effect link between Institutional Reform and broader Social, Economic and Political Reforms is the 19th Century British Parliamentary system — especially before and after 1832.
As I pointed out in that piece, before 1832 the Institutions of the British Parliament were badly broken. More than 150 seats in the House of Commons were “Rotten Boroughs” many of which had fewer than 50 eligible voters controlled by a corrupt Crown and Aristocracy absolutely opposed to any meaningful social reforms. Manchester, the second largest city in England, in desperate need of infrastructure, public health, education and other basic social services, had no representation at all. To make matters worse, the House of Lords, dominated by by a large majority of ultra-reactionary Tories, blocked any law the Commons passed to address even the most pressing problems the nation faced. It was only after the Tories’ lost power in the House of Lords and the Reform Act of 1832 passed both Houses, that the Rotten Boroughs were largely eliminated, and the powers of the House of Lords were significantly reined in. And a year after these major Institutional Reforms passed, “the Slavery Abolition Act,” which had been blocked for more than a decade, finally became law.
Today, America faces the same institutional dysfunction the British faced before 1832. Our obstructionist “House of Lords”/Senate prevents the passage of virtually any and all remedies to the many crises our society confronts.
And handling the current crises — no matter how urgent each is — one by one, on a piecemeal basis is a strategy clearly (as this past year has shown) doomed to fail.
Only major institutional reform — that is equivalent to the abolition of the English Rotten Boroughs and the destruction of the House of Lords unchecked veto power — will allow us to begin to solve the problems we face.
II — A Case Study (The Problem & Solution)
The problem with the 1830’s British Parliamentary Case Study, as it was presented in my earlier piece (and as it is presented thus far here), is that remains for Americans an interesting — but useless — bit of historic trivia. For it does not explain HOW that Institutional Reform was accomplished.
And that HOW, is the LEVER with which we may lift a world of weight which is crushing us under our own inert political traditions.
It is a lever whose fulcrum can be uncovered in the Parliamentary History of the 19th Century.
Curiously enough, the lever that lifted the crushing weight of the House of Lords’ obstructionism from the British Body Politic, rested in the hands of the very symbol of hide-bound adherence to age-old tradition:
— THE KING.
Through the first three decades of the 19th Century, the power of the House of Lords, especially to thwart the will of the House of Commons, remained largely intact — reenforced by the overwhelming majority the conservative Tories held in that chamber. There was, quite simply, no way that, given the composition of its members, it would ever accede to even the slightest parliamentary reform — let alone the major Reform Bills passed by the Commons in 1831 and early 1832.
Prime Minister, Charles Grey, 2nd Earl of Grey, himself a member of the House of Lords (though only as a part of the small minority of liberal Whigs in that chamber), was the first to figure out that the Lever of Reform would have to come from OUTSIDE the House of Lords.
Grey realized that an OUTSIDE LEVER had always existed. The Lever was the power of the Monarch to create new peers. Grey would have the King create liberal, reform-minded peers who would expand the the number of Lords in order to out-vote the Tory conservatives. King William IV hesitated at first, but when he agreed with Grey’s plan to add 80 liberal Whigs, the Tory members surrendered.
In just a over a year Grey rammed through Both Houses two of the most consequential reforms of the entire Century: The Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832 and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.
Charles Grey had discovered “a lever long enough...[to] move the world.”
III — Another Outside Lever
That same principle of the OUTSIDE LEVER has served other reformers — facing the same impossibly intractable institutions — ever since. As I detail in another piece, “On the Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement: Walls, Bridges, and Arcs,” more than a century after Grey discovered his OUTSIDE LEVER, John Hume, a Northern Irish Catholic school teacher, would re-discover — in his use of Tip O’Neil, Ted Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Ed Muskie, and other Irish American leaders — the same principle of the “Outside Lever” that would ultimately bring peace and hope to Northern Ireland.
So, it comes down to this:
- Today’s US Senate has become an AMERICAN HOUSE OF LORDS that has blocked (and will continue to block) desperately needed social, economic, environmental, and political reforms;
- Further: there is no rational prospect that the Senate will (or is even can), on its own, reform;
- The only solution is an OUTSIDE LEVER that will move the Senate’s “House of Lords World.”
- And yet, to all appearances, no such OUSIDE LEVER exists in the larger American Political World.
- But appearances can be deceiving….
IV_ — A Lever to Move a World
Picture a global map of our planet’s continents seen from space. Of course it would take more than one such picture to show them all (Antartica is still missing in the two I have posted). Now imagine that each one of those separate continents represented a major social, economic, environmental problem that confronts America today: North America could stand for The Climate Crisis; South America could represent Racial Injustice; Europe might be Economic Inequality;
Africa could stand for Voter Rights Suppression and the Attack on American Democracy; Asia — the Denial of Women’s Rights; Australia might represent Gun Violence. And, of course, though there are other issues that require urgent attention, we’ve pretty much run out of continents to represent them (Antartica? Any suggestions?).
Remember that Archimedes said:
“GIVE ME A LEVER LONG ENOUGH AND A FULCRUM ON WHICH TO PLACE IT, AND I SHALL MOVE THE WORLD.”
NOT
”GIVE ME A LEVER LONG ENOUGH AND A FULCRUM ON WHICH TO PLACE IT, AND I SHALL MOVE A SINGLE CONTINENT.”
The seemingly separate, disconnected continents are, in fact, all inextricably part of one single, indivisible world, AND, THUS, NO LEVER is long enough, NO FULCRUM regardless of where it is placed, can move a single continent by itself.
That is the FIRST LESSON to be learned.
It is the lesson Prime Minister Charles Grey learned from all the failed attempts in the first three decades of the 19th Century to democratize the British Parliament and to abolish slavery. His predecessors and contemporary colleagues were doomed to failure because they were trying to move single, individual “continents” (the evils of unrepresentative government and slavery) ; they did not see that the larger world these “Reform-Continents” were part of was the House of Lords. Grey saw that world, and recognized the lever and fulcrum necessary to move it.
If we are to succeed in moving the Continent-sized Problems, we face today, we must learn the same lesson Grey did. Otherwise, our attempts at reform will come to nothing: Young children will continue to be murdered in classrooms; Women will continue to die of botched attempts at abortion in back alleyways; Racial hatred will continue unabated, and Domestic Terrorists will plague our land; Voter suppression will continue to deny the young and minorities their right to vote; Climate Change will continue to devastate larger and larger parts of our country and the world; the Gap between the 1% and the other 99% will continue to grow, denying more and more Americans a shot at the American dream; and a myriad of other urgent problems will only grow worse.
While we cannot ignore our Continent-sized Problems, we must recognize they can only be addressed and solved as part of a larger world — And that is the World of the AMERICAN HOUSE-OF-LORDS/SENATE. We must discover a LEVER & FULCRUM to MOVE (ie, reform and fundamentally change) THAT WORLD.
And that brings us to the SECOND LESSON Charles Grey can teach us:
The Lever to Move a World Must come from OUTSIDE that World.
In 19th Century Britain the OUTSIDE LEVER rested in the hands of the King.
21st Century America has no King (though there is one who wishes he were).
The closest thing we have to an institution that might serve as a LEVER in 21st Century America to protect and extend vital national Reform is the US Supreme Court. But, alas, rather than a LEVER for Reform, the majority of its members have chosen to make the Court into a sledgehammer to be wielded against the rights and interests of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.
But one OUTSIDE LEVER still remains. And, in the final analysis, it is the only one in our Democracy that counts: ELECTIONS.
The only OUTSIDE LEVER available to Americans to MOVE THE WORLD that is currently the HOUSE-OF-LORDS/SENATE is Senate Elections.
It is an unwieldy lever placed on an unstable fulcrum of voters, but it is the single tool we have, and so it is the one we must learn to master.
IV — Mastering the Senate Election Lever
The essential first step in mastering the Lever that will Reform the House-of-Lords/Senate is to help voters, and especially Reform Activists and those highly motivated Single-Reform-Issue voters to see their issue as just one “Reform-Continent” that is part of a larger World which includes other “Reform-Continents” that different voters have an equally passionate commitment to. That also means that there is no LEVER that can move just one “Reform-Continent.”
It must be MOVE THE WORLD OR MOVE NOTHING.
In Other Words, We must create a GRAND CAMPAIGN COALITION THAT UNDERSTANDS — above all else:
No Laws Passing Police Reform are possible Without Victory over Republicans in Senate Elections;
No Laws Fighting Climate Change are possible Without Victory over Republicans in Senate Elections;
No Laws to Help End Gun Violence are possible Without Victory over Republicans in Senate Elections;
No Laws to Protect Abortion Rights are possible Without Victory over Republicans in Senate Elections;
No Laws to Protect Voting Rights are possible Without Victory over Republicans in Senate Elections;
No Laws [fill in the “Reform-Continent” you’re passionately committed to] are possible Without
OVERWHELMING VICTORY OVER REPUBLICANS IN SENATE ELECTIONS.
(AND:NONE OF THE ABOVE WITHOUT VICTORY OVER THE REPUBLICAN IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION)
Of course, it will be impossible to beat all Republicans in Senate races. But that should still be our STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE.
[NOTE: Actually, the many diverse Reforms that different Activists & Voters are committed to need not be an obstacle to Electoral Success; for it can provide a TACTICAL MAP for micro-targeting voters through specialized appeals on Social Media as well as through other Campaign Methods.]
Every seat matters. Yes, it may take years (John Hume’s quest for a just peace in Northern Ireland took 30 years to achieve), the closer we come to that goal, the closer — and sooner — we will be to the kinds of fundamental institutional reform (specifics of which are enumerated in my 9/18/20 piece titled Ending America’s Rotten Boroughs...) that will put and end to the GOP’s House-of-Lords/Senate — and the closer we will come to the policy reforms America needs.
Let us begin to create that Coalition for this November.
Spread the word — especially among those who are passionately committed to a Progressive Reform which differs from yours.
E Pluribus Unum!