Politics

Remember when Senate Republicans threatened the "nuclear option" to change filibuster rules so Democrats couldn't filibuster Republican nominees? Now Democrats are threatening the nuclear option against Republicans.

Here's a little bit of history.

"Republicans of the Bush era opted against it for fear that the fallout would be too great. The oft-stated warnings from Democrats (notably including then-Sen. Barack Obama) was that by reducing the power of the minority, Majority Leader Bill Frist and the red team would be setting a dangerous standard. The implicit warning, though, was that payback would be hell.
Despite a nominee blockade worse than the one the current minority now imposes, Frist yielded and let the old rules stand. Populating the left-leaning federal bench with Scaliaites was not as appealing to Republicans as preserving the power of the minority, a status soon to be imposed on the GOP by voters." 

These guys know that the collapse is near. Democrats are probably not worried about being a minority party. They're primarily worried about getting as large a share of the loot as they possibly can before the collapse.

I've long said that people's love, trust and devotion to government and authority is derived from our feelings toward parents - the family - and extended family - the clan. In War Is the Health of the State, Bourne writes:

"There is, of course, in the feeling toward the State a large element of pure filial mysticism. The sense of insecurity, the desire for protection, sends one's desire back to the father and mother, with whom is associated the earliest feelings of protection. It is not for nothing that one's State is still thought of as Father or Motherland, that one's relation toward it is conceived in terms of family affection. The war has shown that nowhere under the shock of danger have these primitive childlike attitudes failed to assert themselves again, as much in this country as anywhere. If we have not the intense Father-sense of the German who worships his Vaterland, at least in Uncle Sam we have a symbol of protecting, kindly authority, and in the many Mother-posters of the Red Cross, we see how easily in the more tender functions of war service, the ruling organization is conceived in family terms."

This is why I doubt we will ever get rid of coercive government.