Obamacare, The House, and the Senate

From The Federalists Papers, article 73:

The oftener the measure is brought under examination, the greater the diversity in the situations of those who are to examine it, the less must be the danger of those errors which flow from want of due deliberation, or of those missteps which proceed from the contagion of some common passion or interest. It is far less probable, that culpable views of any kind should infect all the parts of the government at the same moment and in relation to the same object, than that they should by turns govern and mislead every one of them.

The populist, rash House has passed a travesty of a bill: emotional, power-hungry, the dream of any decent far leftist. Well, with the exception of federal funding for abortion for any female of any species. Things should not go so well in the Senate, where a "greater diversity" of situations and opinions should help bring some sanity to what is a crazy bad piece of legislation.

This is a great teaching moment in the history of the United States. Did the founders understand how treacherous simple democracies could be, and did they take steps to anticipate effective ways to stymie mob rule? The sedate, royal, sophisticated state of affairs in the Senate--all in comparison to the mob rule tendencies at the moment in the House--may be about to tell us something about the wisdom and greatness of the founder's vision.

As Abe Lincoln is known to have said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but..."