HASTERT RULE IN DEFIANCE OF DEMOCRACY

The so-called Hastert rule, the rule followed by speakers of the House of Representatives that says only legislation that has a majority of “Republicans” favor, can be brought to the floor for a voted. The condensed version is only republicans can make laws. To be honest, the above sentences should be renderer neutral by saying political party or both parties rather than Republican Party. The thing that is wrong with being fair is that the Republicans are not fair but the Democrats are; this is part of the innate “win at all cost” mentality of conservatives. Author George Lakoff described it from the point of view of a cognitive linguist, the morality of the natural order (Moral Politics: How liberals and Conservative Think, Amazon Kindle.Com). For example, it is morally correct for a conservative to consider a woman as subservient to a man in marriage.  In the case of the House of Representatives, the ones elected to power have absolute power; they will compromise only is they want.  Like George Bush, said following a win by a fraction of a percent, he had political (moral) capital and he was going to use it to destroy social security.

The problem was a sin of omission in the founding documents of our country. The objective was to form a federation with out impinging on anyone’s rights; thus, it was an impossible mission. The switch was supposed to be from a monarchy to a democracy, from a single person in power by giving power to the people. No one could possible foresee that individuals would divide into small factions within constitutional government and that the factions would act like individuals, that is groups of people acting in a manner similar to the way individuals act in hierarchy dominance with one group ending up as a monarchy. This is what the founding father’s fashioned democracy to avoid.

The Hastert rule gives that kind of power the Speaker of the House of Representative. They follow rules the party in power makes. When the House of Representatives decided the speaker had the power to not bring a bill to the floor for a vote, he or she was given the power needed to kill that legislation. The people of the United States who made that decision made it counter to the beliefs in the Constitution; the people who financed the campaigns of the politicians who made the decision. No one in the latter half of the 18^th century when our nation was forming could have guessed how the nature of the political parties would change the way it has in the 21^st century even with the excesses of the French revolution staring them in the face.

Modern political parties have morphed into a party of democracy; a party of the people in the spirit on which our founding fathers based this nation, on one side, and a party of the rich or the party with the royalty attitude, which was the exact thing they were fighting at the time. If you are poor, black, Latino, or non-Christian you are a failure and deserve whatever life gives. If you are rich, you are successful, idolized, and deserve everything you get as a reward including—especially—the deference or your underlings. Being at the top of the hierarchy of man, which in the United States is being speaker of the house, is reward for giving deference to the rich, even for ignoring the wishes of the people (gun control legislation, subsidies to oil companies, etc) and building elevators for Cadillac’s.    

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