While I appreciate thoughtful, principled deliberation, I can't buy Timothy Sharratt's earnest desire (expressed here) that congressional debates should partake of the tone and temper of measured arguments before the United States Supreme Court. Politics has always been a rough-and-ready contact sport and appellate judicial arguments have generally enhanced the cerebral over the affective. Let's not confuse the two.
Drawing on the biblical metaphor of the Church as a body with different parts with different functions, none of which should lord it over the other, a political body such America's federal government is comprised of different skills, functions, and interests. Indeed, one might suspect that the classically educated American founders had the three human "faculties" of will, reason, and the affections in mind when they separated federal powers among the executive, the judicial, and the legislative.
In any event, I suspect increasing expressions of congressional irrationality can be traced to the technology of modern media. Take away the cameras, the Internet, blogs, and tweets, and the residual rationality of your average member of Congress just might come out.
Drawing on the biblical metaphor of the Church as a body with different parts with different functions, none of which should lord it over the other, a political body such America's federal government is comprised of different skills, functions, and interests. Indeed, one might suspect that the classically educated American founders had the three human "faculties" of will, reason, and the affections in mind when they separated federal powers among the executive, the judicial, and the legislative.
In any event, I suspect increasing expressions of congressional irrationality can be traced to the technology of modern media. Take away the cameras, the Internet, blogs, and tweets, and the residual rationality of your average member of Congress just might come out.
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