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Environmental justice concerns have been at the forefront in discussions of U.S. environmental policy. They have been central, in particular, to discussions of proposals for a nationwide carbon tax to address climate change. While economists tend to favor a carbon tax as the most cost-effective way to promote reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases, progressives and EJ groups often oppose this option on the grounds that it is regressive that it would disproportionately burden low-income households.

Our own research, conducted independently, finds that this claim is unfounded. We find that a carbon tax is inherently progressive, narrowing the income gap between rich and poor households. Beyond that, we find that it can potentially raisereal incomes of low-income households.

It is true that one outcome of a carbon tax works toward regressivity. A carbon tax would lead to higher prices of goods and services, especially those that are carbon-intensive (e.g., electricity and gasoline). There is ample evidence that low-income households spend a disproportionate share of income on these carbon-intensive goods and services; as a result, the higher prices from a carbon tax tend to have a regressive impact.

If this were the whole story, the carbon taxs overall impact would indeed be regressive.

However, several other features of a carbon tax make it progressive. As some have noted, a carbon taxs revenue can be returned to households in ways that promote progressivity. TheClimate Leadership Councils carbon dividend approach, in which the revenues are recycled in the form of a dividend check of the same amount to every U.S. household, would significantly work toward progressivity.

While this form of revenue-recycling may have many attractions, we find that such targeting is not needed to make the carbon tax progressive. Our work shows that a carbon tax isinherentlyprogressive a feature that has been overlooked in policy discussions. The carbon taxs inherent progressivity gives policy makers more options in policy design they can consider devoting some or all of the revenues to other purposes (such as providing compensation to displaced workers, or financing investments in infrastructure) while maintaining progressivity.

The inherent progressivity stems from other economic responses to the tax.

First, transfer programs in the United States, including Social Security and food assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), are partially or fully indexed for inflation. Lower income households, who rely more heavily on payments from these programs, are more protected from the higher prices of carbon-intensive goods and services.

Second, while much of the cost of a carbon tax is passed through to consumers, a significant fraction of the cost would be borne by owners of capital (i.e., shareholders). Thats because the industries most likely to be affected by a carbon tax are highly capital-intensive. This effect on capital returns is progressive since shareholders tend to have higher incomes.

The two responses above are sufficient to bring about an overall progressive impact.

A third outcome, environmental in nature, would augment the progressivity. In addition to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (the main objective of the policy), a carbon tax would lower emissions of several local air pollutants correlated with CO2. The associated health benefits are likely to be especially important for low-income households another progressive impact.

Meanwhile, alternatives to the carbon tax, including regulation and tax subsidies, aremuch less progressive and dont provide benefits to minority and low-income households in the same way that a well-designed carbon tax could.

Beyond the dimension of progressivity, the carbon tax has further attractions related to fairness. While progressivity focuses on the relative burdens to low- versus high-income households, theabsoluteimpact on income is an important ethical consideration. A 2017 U.S. Treasurystudy estimated that households in each of the lowest seven income deciles would on average experience an increase in overall income if the CLCs revenue-recycling approach were adopted.

Claims that a carbon tax is regressive are simply incorrect. They stem from a narrow focus on just one of the several important channels through which a carbon tax affects people. A more comprehensive assessment reveals that it is progressive and can enhance the quality of life of individuals across the income spectrum.

Gilbert Metcalf is the John DiBiaggio Professor of Economics at Tufts University. He was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Energy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2011 and 2012.Follow him on Twitter @GibMetcalf

Lawrence Goulder is the Shuzo Nishihara Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics at Stanford University. He has served on several scientific advisory committees to the U.S. and California environmental protection agencies.

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Molly Rush is a longtime peace activist in her mid-eighties who lives in Pennsylvania. She was a member of the Plowshares 8, along with brothers Daniel and Philip Berrigan, who in 1980 damaged a nuclear missile at a General Electric factory in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Last June, as protests against police killings raged, Rush reposted a meme she saw online. It depicted Martin Luther King Jr. and bore the message: Looted nothing, Burned nothing, Attacked no one, Changed the World.

Rush began hearing from others who criticized this post as insensitive and arguably even racist. She promptly apologized, thanking her critics and writing Ive learned a lot.

But, as Dan Kovalik recounts in his new book, Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture, Rushs apology was not enough. She was branded a racist on Twitter. Her children and grandchildren who defended her were called white trash. The Thomas Merton Center of Philadelphia, which Rush co-founded, issued a statement disassociating itself from her until she demonstrates both accountability to the people she has harmed and a commitment to continuous learning about how her behavior embodies white supremacy culture and impacts the people around her.

Kovalik, a labor and human rights lawyer who lives in Pittsburgh, says the center has continued to shun Rushan example of cancel culture that the left inflicts to ensure orthodoxy and stamp out dissent.

Its an urgent premise, one worthy of a book. But Kovaliks book falls short of being worthy of its premise.

What happened to Rush, to whom Kovalik dedicates Cancel This Book, is lamentable. But its the sharpest example of cancel culture in some 200 pages of exertion. And even here the overreaction she experienced was offset by statements of support, including that of a Black former board member of the Thomas Merton Center who declared, Molly said nothing that was racist or offensive and those zealots can K.M.A, which stands for kiss my ass.

In this and other respects, Cancel This Book comes across as overreaching and, worse, a testament to the craving for victimization that Kovalikdecries. (We learn, for instance, that the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where he is an adjunct professor, doesnt pay him enough.) Instead of an incisive critique of how well-meaning people can become agents of injustice, what we get is an effort to blame the left as a whole for the actions of a few.

Kovalik lays out his thesis in the books preface: [T]oo many on the left, wielding the cudgel of cancel culture, have decided that certain forms of censorship and speech and idea suppression are positive things that will advance social justice.

Okay, like what?

Worst of all is when Kovalik gushes about how conservatives including Fox News blowhard Tucker Carlson are open to having liberal and even leftwing guests on their shows, overlooking that they serve mainly as punching bags.

Kovalik singles out David Remnick of The New Yorker for having famously, and quite effectively, advocated for the invasion of Iraq in 2003an invasion that has destroyed the lives of millions.

As a longtime subscriber to Remnicks magazine, I dont remember its pivotal role in this foreign policy blunder. What I recall are the massive protests in the United States and around the world by progressives who were solidly opposed to an Iraq attack. And what does any of this have to do with cancel culture?

Kovalik also tells the tale of a left-wing journalist named Lee Fang who wrote an article published by The Intercept last summer that quoted a Black resident of East Oakland who asked [W]hy does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it? Another Intercept journalist, Akela Lacey, sent out a tweet accusing Fang of being a racist that received thousands of likes and responses. Unmentioned by Kovalik is that Fang expressed regret for his insensitivity, Lacey thanked him for it, and life went on. Fang has more than a dozen Intercept bylines so far this year; hes hardly been canceled.

Writing about the COVID-19 pandemic, Kovalik goes on and on about the double standard that exists when the left condemns mass gatherings like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally while winking at mass Black Lives Matter protests, glossing over that the former was mostly maskless while the protesters were mostly masked, although social distancing was not practiced at either.

But, again, why is this cancel culture, as opposed to, say, an opportunity to disparage the left?

Yes, there are people who have suffered serious and demonstrably unfair consequences for saying the wrong thing. But except when this is done by the government, it is not censorshipa point I distinctly remember hearing Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitzwho contributes a back cover blurb calling Kovaliks book a strong liberal argument against the cancer of cancel culturemake when I sat in on one of his classes while visiting Harvard in 2006. The First Amendment, he said as he scolded a student who got it wrong, doesnt protect you from being harshly condemned and even fired for the things you say.

Nor are even the most disagreeable actions of a few indicative of a grand moral failing among an entire political persuasion. I know many people on the left who respect and defend the rights of others to say things and hold opinions with which they disagree. I like to think Im one of them.

But Kovaliks book looks past these exceptionsperhaps even the rulein his determination to make the left look bad.

Throughout Cancel This Book, the reader is treated to a smug sense of moral superiority masquerading as a commitment to fairness.

Kovalik chides the Black Lives Matter protesters who he imagines go home at night and watch Hillbilly Elegy on Netflix and wallow in the satisfaction that they are not like those people on the screen. He blames the call to defund the police for the Republicans surprisingly strong performance in the 2020 election. And perhaps this slogan did backfire. But, in this case, isnt it Kovalik who is urging that certain things not be said?

He notes that liberal-leaning California approved anti-worker and anti-union referenda while voting down a key criminal justice reform in the same election as they voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden. Inconsistent, hypocritical, and disappointing, surely. But is this cancel culture?

Worst of all is when Kovalik gushes about how conservatives including Fox News blowhard Tucker Carlson are open to having liberal and even leftwing guests on their shows, overlooking that they serve mainly as punching bags. Kovalik goes on to exalt Carlson as an anti-war crusader:

Indeed, there is good reason to believe that Carlson may have personally convinced President Trump not to launch a war against Iran, as his hawkish advisers had been urging him to do. If that is true, then Carlson deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, at least.

Instead of sitting around striving for some unattainable purity that really does not do anyone any good, Kovalik advises, people should apply themselves to worthier tasks. And just maybe, if youre lucky, you can do something great like Tucker Carlson and stop the next war.

Pardon me while I wipe the vomit from my keyboard.

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There. Thats better.

In his books conclusion, Kovalik allows that there are likely things he overstated or just got wrong. Its admirable for him to say that, after producing a compendium of grievances that seem to attribute to political worldviews what is really just inherent in human nature.

The sad fact is that people on the left can be, and often are, too judgmental and unforgiving. Thats an indictment of their style, not their politics. But its a real problem. And the solution is laid out in remarks Kovalik says were made by Ibram X. Kendi, the author of Stamped From the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist, at a symposium:

[T]hose who are constantly growing and striving to be a better form of themselves are constantly recognizing and admitting their mistakes, and constantly seeking to be better for them. And so, I think that we should take the pressure off of our backs to essentially be perfect. But we should simultaneously do that for other people. And so, an anti-racist doesnt just recognize that theyre gonna make mistakes. Theyre gonna allow other people to make mistakes.

Kovalik deserves credit for sharing this wisdom. But, for the most part, Cancel This Book ignores it.

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I asked Barber of the Poor Peoples Campaign what his movement would do if Biden doesnt go as far as hed like to see. I dont think thats the last word, he told me. You know, Lyndon Baines Johnson didnt want to do the Voting Rights Act. The people decided he had to.

He went on: I dont think we know fully what any president really wants to do until we put the pressure on. He quoted something Franklin Delano Roosevelt allegedly once said to the labor activist A. Philip Randolph: Go out and make me do it. That apocryphal FDR quote came up many times in my reporting. It is a way of putting the onus on activists, while also showing them respect.

Sirota hears echoes of Johnson, too. Not since LBJs era have we simultaneously had a Democratic Congress, a non-celebrity-type machine-Democratic president, and a boisterous left-of-center movement making concrete policy demands, he said. That particular confluence can create the ideal conditions for significant and fast progressive change. What lies ahead, perhaps, is the make-me-do-it presidency.

What is holding the factions together for now is the sense that they have a singular chance to bend the American trajectory.

One of the things thats impressed me about all members of Congress is there havent been a lot of people acting like spoiled brats, Schatz told me. We have an opportunity to do more work in this short time period than many of us have done in previous decades.

Many of the people I interviewed saw 2021 as a break not only from 2017 and Trumpism, and not only from 2009 and the financial-crisis failures, but also from 1981, the year Ronald Reagan became president. Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem, Reagan famously said. What I heard socialists, progressives, moderates, and the White House itself agree on is that the country has a chance to plot an escape from that imprisoning assumption. Were breaking out of the Reagan consensus right now, Trumka, the union leader, told me.

Pete Buttigieg, Bidens secretary of transportation, ran to the right of the progressives in the 2020 campaign, but often spoke of ending Reagans grip. I asked him if the era of big government was back. I would definitely say the idea that government is the problem is over, he told me. Its a new era of expecting government to help solve big problems.

It is awkward but important to bear in mind that, when Reagan got to work slashing both government and taxes, he had a perhaps ambivalent ally in a young senator from Delaware named Joe Biden. Biden voted for the package that is now viewed as the seedbed of the Reagan age. It is remarkable that Bidens White House, more than Clintons or Obamas, should embrace the idea of ending Reagans reign.

This really is the place where we can change the paradigm of how government has operated since Reagan, Mike Donilon, a senior White House adviser to Biden who began working for him, fittingly, in 1981, told me. One thing he has always believed is government can be a force for good in peoples lives. Naturally, he wanted to frame Bidens stance today in terms of continuity. But I pushed him on the improbability of it allthis leader, of all leaders, driving a turn away from a center-right consensus of which he was a card-carrying member.

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Joe Biden and the New Progressive Era - The Atlantic

President BidenJoe BidenFour members of Sikh community among victims in Indianapolis shooting Overnight Health: NIH reverses Trump's ban on fetal tissue research | Biden investing .7B to fight virus variants | CDC panel to meet again Friday on J&J On The Money: Moderates' 0B infrastructure bill is a tough sell with Democrats | Justice Dept. sues Trump ally Roger Stone for unpaid taxes MORE is approaching the 100-day mark high in the polls, thanks in large part to his ability to unite fractious Democrats behind his policies.

Two polls out earlier this week showed Bidens approval ratings at almost full support. A Quinnipiac University survey showed Biden with support among Democrats at 94 percent. A Monmouth University poll showed Biden doing even slightly better, at 95 percent, with those in his party.

The results are surprising given the skepticism many progressives had for the 78-year-old Biden, whose age and background seemed out of step with the direction of his party.

But as he approaches the 100-day marker, Biden has been successful in uniting Democrats behind him.

First of all, they were wrong, says Michael Eric Dyson, the author and historian, of the progressive skepticism.

People who predicted a sore thumb or a problem have been pleasantly surprised that he's been far more progressive and far more aggressive in getting stuff done. He ain't waiting around.

Bidens first weeks in office were focused on a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. It was popular in part because of the $1,400 direct payments to most households, but it also included provisions prized by the left meant to help working families and address inequalities for women and minority groups.

The president decided to move the package with the use of budget reconciliation rules that sidestepped a filibuster, something that pleased progressives worried the pursuit of GOP votes could water the package down.

Now Biden is eyeing the same basic strategy for moving a large infrastructure package costing trillions of dollars. It also goes beyond infrastructure and includes measures tackling climate change that are prized by progressives.

While the $2.2 trillion bill is not as large as some on the left want, it is plenty big. Democrats do differ on a number of parts of the bill, and there are likely to be some difficult weeks of negotiations ahead.

But it has also generally kept Democrats in line, debating within and not complaining about the direction of the bill.

Thus far, he has been astute at picking those areas that can keep his coalition in place rather than tearing it apart, said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

Moderates and progressives agree, for instance, that infrastructure matters a great deal and that endless wars without clear progress dont benefit the U.S. or its allies.

Thats a reference to this weeks announcement by Biden that the U.S. will withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11.

Biden is showing that despite the tensions between moderates and progressives, there is a remarkable degree of consensus over big issues within the party, Zelizer said.

While Biden had been an unsuccessful advocate for smaller troop presence in Afghanistan during the Obama years, progressives were nevertheless surprised to see him embrace the progressive position of a full withdrawal given his more moderate rhetoric on the campaign trail.

This wasnt necessarily where candidate Biden was. There were others who were bolder and calling for this more often, said Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War.

Biden has shown a decisive streak so far in his presidency, deciding quickly to cut bait with the GOP on the COVID-19 talks when Republicans offered a proposal less than a third the size of his own.

Biden advisers say part of the reason hes moving quickly is because he knows he doesnt have the luxury of time, particularly as the midterm elections move closer.

Biden understands that time is of the essence and thats why hes moving at a rapid but responsible clip, said one adviser to the president. And the 100 days has also shown us the gap between the political class on cable and Twitter and the rest of the country; Bidens numbers are strong and as important, the public support for his proposals is strong.

The adviser added that its been a terrific start under terrible circumstances in the middle of a pandemic and following an insurrection at the Capitol.

There have certainly been some moments of friction.

Progressives criticized Biden for proposing a slight increase in the defense budget,rather thancutting it.

There have also been complaints about Bidens handling of the border crisis, where child migrants are being held as a wave hits the border. On Thursday, Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiBiden angers Democrats by keeping Trump-era refugee cap Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones calls on Breyer to retire Biden rebuffs Democrats, keeps refugee admissions at 15,000 MORE (D-Calif.) gave a nudge to Biden on refugees, arguing it was time for him to lift a ceiling on the number allowed into the country.

Progressives are also wary of the Biden administrations plans to move ahead with a $23 billion arms sale to the United Arab Emirates that had been approved under the Trump administration.

But Dyson, who with other historians met with Bidenlast monthat the White House, said the president clearly learned lessons from his time as vice president under Obama, who was more cautious on policy issues.

That kind of caution, carefulness, calculation, this man has seemed to throw to the wind, he said.

Dyson said even he has been somewhat surprised by Bidens approach, which he says is more Lyndon Johnson than Obama.

I thought he would be working with Republicans out of necessity and temperament, he said. But he wont compromise fatally with Republicans and he hasnt done it with venom. Hes done it with a smile on his face.

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Biden wins over skeptical progressives | TheHill - The Hill

The Democrats now in power should weigh the present opportunity against future peril. Republicans have their own ambitious agenda which they will be delighted to enact over the helpless cries of a filibuster-less Democratic minority as soon as they can. A tour of recent history offers some stark examples of what that might look like.

In 1995, its not much of an exaggeration to say, the filibuster saved the regulatory state.

The previous years midterm elections under President Bill Clinton was a bloodbath for Democrats. Republicans gained 54 House seats and nine in the Senate, handing them majorities in both chambers. The GOP-controlled House, led by hard-charging Speaker Newt Gingrich, immediately passed an avalanche of bills to fulfill the so-called Contract with America. The presidents veto pen provided some defense, but Clinton, chastened by his partys electoral defeat and repositioning himself toward the center for his 1996 reelection, was reluctant to veto many GOP bills. The sturdiest backstop against the Gingrich juggernaut was the 47-member Senate Democratic minority caucus armed with the power of unlimited debate.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia in his Capitol Hill office, April 5, 1995. | AP Photo/Joe Marquette

A key GOP target at that time, as it is now, was the nations regulatory regime. A GOP bill to cripple the ability of agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue public health and safety rules came to the Senate floor. Majority Leader Bob Dole sought to end debate three times, but the Democratic minority held firm, and each cloture petition fell short, the last by only two votes. The bill failed.

In 2005, President George W. Bush, emboldened by his reelection and backed by healthy GOP majorities in Congress, set out to partially privatize Social Security. The proposal would have transformed the governments social safety net for elderly Americans into a stock market investment. Solid opposition by the 45-member Democratic Caucus stopped the proposal in its tracks, even before it came to the Senate floor. Just three years later, the global financial crisis erased trillions of dollars from Americans private retirement savings but Social Security checks went out as scheduled.

Proponents of filibuster abolition correctly point out that the filibuster has been sometimes deployed to block noble bills such as the mid-20th century civil rights legislation. But obstruction by the minority can eventually be overcome by popular will and presidential leadership, as eventually occurred with civil rights. In contrast, an unchecked majority can wreak havoc.

It isnt necessary to look as far back as 1995 or 2005 to see what life would be like without the filibuster. Just remember the past four years of presidential nominations.

In late 2013, Democrats, frustrated with the slow pace of confirmations for President Barack Obamas nominees, deployed the so-called nuclear option by unilaterally changing the rules to allow for simple majority confirmation of executive branch and judicial nominations, except for the Supreme Court. In the short term, it paid off: they were able to win confirmation of many Obama nominees in the remainder of that Congress, before the GOP regained the Senate majority in the 2014 midterm and ground the nominations process to a near-standstill.

But in the long term, it was a disaster for Democrats.

When Donald Trump became president in 2017, he had free rein to nominate and win confirmation of virtually anyone, including some Cabinet and sub-Cabinet nominees whom Democrats considered plainly unqualified or repugnant. Moreover, he had a clear field to repopulate the federal judiciary with young Federalist Society-blessed nominees. Altogether, Trump appointed a record 174 district court judges, 54 courts of appeals judges and three Supreme Court justices in only four years.

It is laughable that commentators gave Trump and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell credit for the accomplishment of confirming so many judges. It is no accomplishment to shoot fish in a barrel. With no filibuster to give the Democrats leverage, all McConnell needed to do was schedule votes and the outcome was inevitable.

When Democrats attempted to muddle McConnells schedule, he brandished the precedent of their 2013 rules change to justify a retaliatory strike by unilaterally changing the rules to speed nominations, including to the Supreme Court. Most disturbingly, McConnell was able to ram through Amy Coney Barretts confirmation to the high court in blatant disregard of his blockade of Merrick Garlands appointment because the filibuster was no longer available for nominations.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett meets with then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as she begins a series of meetings to prepare for her Supreme Court confirmation hearing, on Capitol Hill, September 29, 2020, in Washington, DC. | Susan Walsh-Pool/Getty Images

One reason McConnell had so much time to schedule votes on judicial nominees is that he had few legislative items with any hope of enactment and for that, Democrats largely have the filibuster to thank. Republicans wanted to defund Planned Parenthood and limit protections for undocumented immigrants, among many other priorities. The reason those goals were not realized was the legislative filibuster. For example, a proposal to impose stiff restrictions on abortion had majority support in a 2018 vote, but failed to advance when 46 senators said no.

In those years, Trump was as frustrated by the filibuster as any Democrat is today. He repeatedly called on congressional Republicans to nuke the legislative filibuster and called them fools for not doing so. Yet McConnell and his GOP colleagues did not yield to presidential pressure.

One persistent argument for the rules change among Democrats is that we might as well do it because if we dont, they will. But from 2015 to 2020 Republicans had ample opportunity to go nuclear for legislation and they refrained. It was during this period that a bipartisan group of 61 senators, including then-Senator Kamala Harris, signed a letter defending the legislative filibuster.

Be assured, McConnell would not refrain again if Democrats do him the favor of detonating the next nuclear bomb. Pledging precisely such retribution in a March 16 statement, McConnell previewed the nightmare slate of anti-labor, anti-abortion and anti-immigrant bills Republicans would pass when they regain the majority in the future. There is no reason to doubt McConnells ability to deliver these chilling results if the filibuster disappears.

At the moment, full repeal seems unlikely because some moderate Democrats are not on board. A seemingly more modest proposal has emerged among some in the party to exempt from the filibuster certain urgent bills such as those pertaining to voting rights or climate change.

This idea is just as dangerous. Every bill is critical to one constituency or another. The slope is endlessly slippery. The other side has a list of urgent bills as well, and theirs include limiting voting rights and blocking regulation of fossil fuels. Soon, the exceptions will swallow the rule and the filibuster will be gone.

Without the filibuster, the Senate would become revenge-soaked, Hatfield and McCoy-style, as the two sides take turns passing laws over the futile objections of their adversaries. If Democrats expand voting rights, the next Republican majority will constrict voting rights. If Democrats expand the membership of the Supreme Court, Republicans will expand it further to add GOP appointees.

Some, such as Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman, argue that such policy swings are appropriate in a democracy: Its what an accountable system is supposed to look like; otherwise, the voters never get what they vote for. True, in many European countries, the government simply enacts its program. But compromise and moderation are baked into those parliamentary systems, as multiple parties compete for proportional representation and the government falls if it loses support from one wing of the coalition or the other.

The U.S. system is different: a rigid, increasingly polarized two-party, winner-take-all-contraption where power is often decided by a tiny margin. Whoever wins, the Senate filibuster is a cushion against the sudden imposition of that partys policy wish list on the rest of the country.

Without that cushion, each shift in congressional control will unleash a legislative free-for-all. Half of the country will be euphoric and the other half infuriated. This would be an unhealthy scenario for any democracy, but an especially alarming prospect for ours, where there is already so much distrust of institutions and demonization of opponents, and where the violence of Jan. 6 by a pro-Trump mob may be a harbinger of things to come.

Most fundamentally, it is unhealthy if the process by which a nations policy disputes are resolved is up for grabs. Just as baseball teams dont get to claim four outs when they come to bat, the ground rules of our democracy must be obeyed. Challenges to the umpires of democracy calls to disregard state-certified election results, or to fire the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian for her interpretation of Senate rules, or Trumps unceasing attacks on our nations courts should be condemned.

The rule of law is not a mere slogan. It means that laws and rules apply equally to all and can be changed only by legitimate means.

So, whats the solution for those who bemoan the current gridlock but want to avoid civil war?

At least give the traditional legislative process a chance to work. It is noteworthy that 10 Republicans were willing to negotiate with President Joe Biden about coronavirus relief. Their initial offer was too low and Biden knew that negotiation was unnecessary since he had the option to pass his bill under filibuster-less reconciliation process. But if 10 GOP senators were willing to visit the Oval Office to talk about compromise on one bill, shouldnt Democrats at least explore that avenue on other bills before blowing up the chamber?

(Reconciliation, by the way, is like "The Purge" films in which crime becomes legal for a day. Like the Trump record on nominations, reconciliation is another preview of life without the filibuster where both parties go big on either tax cuts or social spending. But at least it is somewhat constrained by budget rules.)

The bill most proponents of filibuster abolition insist must pass immediately without minority input is H.R. 1, pertaining to voting rights and related topics. Voting rights has historically enjoyed bipartisan support. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a bipartisan bill and has been reauthorized several times with broad bipartisan support, the last time in 2006 with unanimous Senate support.

To be sure, todays Republican Party is no longer the party of Everett Dirksen, and H.R. 1 will not pass the Senate in its current form. But is incremental progress possible? How can we know before the bill is even marked up in committee?

If compromise proves impossible, Democrats should consider filibuster reform before leaping to filibuster repeal. Biden has expressed support for requiring bill opponents to engage in live debate, like Jimmy Stewart in the classic film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Ironically, the talking filibuster might actually disadvantage the majority party, which typically wants the ability to conduct other business while a cloture petition to end debate is pending.

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