The End of Debate

(The following represents a minority opinion of the CRIMSON Editorial Board on the Senate's cloture rule.)

Senator Anderson's proposal to modify the rule on cloture, by reducing the majority needed to end debate from two-thirds to three-fifths, has failed. From the start the proposal received remarkably unaggressive support from the liberals who sponsored it. They, and the outright opponents of the change, failed to recognize two things: first, that a government, though imperfect cannot afford to hamstring itself; second, that proper legislation is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for effective civil rights.

The immediate issue is not elimination of debate, but reduction of the margin by which a majority must be overwhelming in order to submit its proposals to a vote.

Liberal opponents of the reduction seemed to fear that in the future they might want to form an obstructionist minority. They, and the present opponents of effective civil rights legislation, fail to see that minority rights are those protected by the Constitution; the freedom of a minority to debate is not the privilege to annul the will of the majority, when that will would respect minority rights.

Opponents of the reduction, and some liberals who failed to support it, say that the present Senate two-thirds rule strikes a happy numerical compromise between complete majoritarianism and one-man veto. Why, I wonder, is two-thirds a happier compromise than three-fourths or four-sevenths, or five-eights, or three-fifths? Why, except that it has been sufficient for one hundred years to abort legislation attempting to implement the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments?

Any liberal willing to renounce the voting rights of a generation of Negroes--not his own voting rights--for the sake of a happy numerical compromise may well renounce the name of liberal at the same time.

Opponents of the reduction observe the painful progress which the courts, the Executive, and Negro citizens are making in obtaining proper suffrage, education, housing, and employment for Negroes. They infer that effective civil-rights legislation is not really so necessary, warning liberals not to conceive whatever legislation does get through as a salvation. Since the Civil War liberals have learned that opponents of civil rights would not respect even so high an authority as an amendment to the Constitution. That there exist inadequate laws which purport to effect Constitutional strictures is no argument against adequate .

Opponents of the reduction appear to have forgotten that the end of debate is not debate but action: the same Constitution which guards the legitimate rights of minorities grants to majorities the right to rule.

Opponents of the reduction appear to have forgotten that the end of debate is not debate but action: the same Constitution which guards the legitimate rights of minorities grants to majorities the right to rule.