The Problem of the Veto State
In this insightful article, the author describe how the will of the people is subverted by the managerial class - that is, by the technocratic deep state. Even the ability of the people to determine "who are the people?" is thwarted. Excerpts follow.
The Senate's failure to pass the SAVE Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, is a testament to the power of the managerial regime. The bill does not attempt to remake the constitutional order, abolish federalism, or nationalize election administration in any comprehensive sense. It addresses a narrower, more elemental question: whether the American people, acting through their representatives, may insist that those who vote in American elections are in fact American citizens. The answer under the present regime appears to be no...
The constitutional machine, once praised for its capacity to refine and elevate popular judgment through its aristocratic elements, now increasingly appears to dissolve judgment altogether into a diffuse and unaccountable veto.
What is a republic (in the classical sense) if it cannot act on matters essential to its own political existence?...
The American Founders did not conceive of their Constitution as a simple democracy, nor even as a purely republican form in the modern sense...
In Federalist 63, James Madison describes the Senate as an institution designed to introduce a “cool and deliberate sense” into the councils of the nation...
As the aristocratic element, the Senate was to be the refining body, not simply a delaying one...
Regarding legislation such as the SAVE Act, the Senate ends up neutralizing the public will through a diffuse and proceduralized veto. The result is not an improved or moderated policy, but no policy at all...
In classical terms, this represents not the proper functioning of aristocracy but its corruption...
The formal Constitution remains, but it is now part of what James Burnham and Sam Francis would describe as a managerial order: a system in which real power is increasingly exercised by administrative agencies, professionalized bureaucracies, quasi-public NGOs, and the media apparatus that mediates public legitimacy...
In light of this, the Senate filibuster needs to be seen as one instrument among many that allow the managerial regime to delay, dilute, or prevent legislative changes that would disrupt its settled priorities...
The Senate, far from standing apart as an independent aristocratic body, becomes one more component in this system of diffused responsibility and perpetual deferral...
Notes
Which explains why we cannot vote our way out of the mess the managerial elite has placed us in.