Filibusters are not sacrosanct, but they're useful

Critics of the Senate filibuster complain that it's undemocratic and obstructive. These are its two most appealing features. Our system of government is undemocratic and obstructive in many ways, including the Constitution's enumeration of congressional powers, the rights it explicitly protects, the types of laws it explicitly prohibits, and the bicameral legislature it created, with one house based on proportional representation, and the other giving equal voices to California and Wyoming. The two houses must agree on legislation, which has to be authorized by the Constitution and approved by the president, unless Congress can muster a two-thirds majority to overcome his veto.
 
The Constitution is undemocratic and obstructive for a good reason: to prevent tyranny by the majority. The Framers recognized that democracy is not the ultimate value but a means to preserve liberty by making government accountable. Pure democracy can be as great a threat to liberty as pure autocracy.

 Still, given the Constitution's built-in obstacles to getting things done, why do we need one more way to jam up the works, a rule that requires 60 votes to end debate and move to a vote? If Congress respected its constitutional limits, we probably wouldn't. But since members of Congress feel free to legislate on any subject that crosses their minds, with little restraint by the courts, it's nice to have an extra monkey wrench.

 Gun Owners of America certainly thinks so. Calling the filibuster "our greatest weapon for killing gun control," it warns that when "anti-gun Democrats get back into power and they want to push comprehensive gun bans, gun owners will be the ones using the filibuster."

 There's nothing sacrosanct about the filibuster, which the Senate has repeatedly tinkered with during the last two centuries, most recently in 1975. But given the way it works -- to prevent legislation, never to facilitate it -- I'm inclined to think it accomplishes more good than harm. Just ask yourself: Do you like most of what Congress does?

 Here's my problem: Senate Republicans are not talking about doing away with filibusters entirely. They say they only want to prevent filibusters from being used to block judicial nominations, and the judicial nominations they have in mind hold the promise of reining in government.