Leaders of non-Christian faith groups should be invited to sit alongside bishops in the House of Lords, a historian who contributed to a commission on reform of the Second Chamber has suggested.
Writing in the Church Times today, John F. H. Smith, an architecÂtural historian who made a subÂmission to the Royal CommisÂsion on the Reform of the House of Lords, argues that, although bishops should reÂmain “in the majority”, “an interdenominational and interÂfaith college” would “broaden faith represÂenÂtation”.
“Religious leaders would, thereÂfore, continue to widen debate by bringing moral and philosophical perspectives to stand alongside the political, economic, and financial judgements of other groups,” he writes.
See, you get one bad idea — there should be an unelected legislative body made up (at least when it originated) of people whose greatest accomplishment was to make it down the birth canal alive.
Then you get another bad idea — bishops of the Church of England should sit on this body.
Then, logically, you keep extending your bad idea. OTHER non-elected religious leaders should sit on this body.
Of course Roman Catholic bishops should sit in the House of Lords if Church of England bishops do. But so should Unitarians, Seventh Day Adventists and Scientologists when it comes to that. When you’re picking people to serve in an unelected body what are the criteria anyway?
Catholic Mom – I strongly disagree. The Lords should have not been reformed in the 90’s to begin with. Having an unelected legislative body balanced by an elected legislative body is a huge strength that the UK has over the US. The elected body is slave to the whims of the voters. The unelected body is able to vote without fear of being ousted. The fact that they’re chosen by birth provides an ancestral anchor to society that gives much depth. Same with the monarchy.
If you get rid of hereditary peers, the monarchy is soon to follow. Slippery slope that I hope Britain doesn’t continue down…
#2: Much like our own senate before the 17th Amendment. I couldn’t agree more.
Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to be ruled by the “whims of the voters” would we? Not when we know that those with an “ancestral anchor” [i.e., inherited title] have no whims or vested interests of their own. 🙂
And of course we wouldn’t want anyone to vote with the dreaded “feer of being ousted” [i.e., fear of being answerable to their constituency] hanging over them.
All in all, I’d say a good benevolent dictactorship should be perfect for you.
#4 – no, I don’t want us to be ruled by the “whims of the voters” *only*. Having the balance of an elected + an inherited chamber is what I’m advocating.
Where in the world did you take my comments to think that I would support a benevolent dictatorship? A dictatorship, benevolent or not, would mean no elected chamber.
Hmmm … *I’m* not interested in aristocracy, though I can’t speak for Charles.
The real question (as I tell my political philosophy students) is this: are officials elected to carry out the will of the majority of their constituents, or are they elected to vote their own conscience? There’s always a spirited debate, with half coming down on one side and half on the other. By the end of class, someone usually suggests a bicameral solution: one house to vote the will of the majority of the constituents, another to vote their own conscience …. which, as I point out, was the way the Founding Fathers envisioned it as well. Until the 17th Amendment, the House was beholden to the electorate; the Senators were not. One voted the majority’s will (or was supposed to, anyway) and the other was free to do what it thought was right (though corruption set in, as it inevitably does).
I have no desire to fund an aristocracy. I would, however, like to see us return to the Founders’ vision.
Let me hasten to add that I am, for the sake of brevity, simplifying the Founder’s vision somewhat. Senators were unelected by the people in an effort to protect *States’ rights,* less to have legislators voting their conscience. But for the sake of the argument at hand, I think it’s safe to say that the senators were much freer to vote their own conscience than the representatives …
#2 Charles — I absolutely agree with you. I’m sick of having an entire government that makes decisions and votes according to its re-election chances. And of course they would — forget “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” they have much higher pay, better health plans and pensions than most Americans.
I’m not sure of the Parliament’s particulars, though. The House of Commons is much larger than Lords, yes? And I don’t believe there is any restriction on clergy and representatives from the other religions running for a seat in Commons? Blessedly, the UK campaigns only last a few months and are more grassroots, it seems. In other words, it doesn’t take the large wealth and connections to win a seat that it does here in the States.
#7, I, too, swim against the tide of the 17th Amendment. The Senate really did not need fixing to make it so like the House.
There is a very simple way to get around the concept of “what the voters want” vs “the representative’s conscience.” The person running for office should state clearly what their conscience tells them on a variety of issues so the voters are fairly clearly how they are going to vote.
The concept that somehow a bunch of totally unelected unappointed unvetted people with no specific qualifications whatsoever should take a hand in running a democracy is truly a bizarre one.
Judges are appointed rather than elected (sometimes) or appointed for life because they are not SETTING the law, they are stating what the law already says. Thus they should not be influenced by what their constitutents (or anyone else) thinks but solely by what, in their educated opinion, the law actually states.
#10: [blockquote]The concept that somehow a bunch of totally unelected unappointed unvetted people with no specific qualifications whatsoever should take a hand in running a democracy is truly a bizarre one.[/blockquote]
That may be a truly bizzare idea in your mind, but the idea of having only elected officials run a country is an historical innovation. I don’t want everyone who runs the country to have to worry about re-election when making decisions.
An appointed, second chamber would work in this regard, but the historical accident of birth is a better method of random selection IMHO. And a more historically grounded method.
I don’t, by the way, advocate funding an aristocracy in the US! Just don’t take away the aristocracy in the UK (says the Anglophile American).
I think an appointed Senate in the US is more fitting to our short history.
[i]There is a very simple way to get around the concept of “what the voters want†vs “the representative’s conscience.†The person running for office should state clearly what their conscience tells them on a variety of issues so the voters are fairly clearly how they are going to vote.[/i]
This is basically what goes on now, yes? The best we can really do is vote for the person who best represents our own viewpoint. But I’m not sure it gets around the problem, because a candidate seldom knows ahead of time every issue he’s going to be asked to deal with.
[i]The concept that somehow a bunch of totally unelected unappointed unvetted people with no specific qualifications whatsoever should take a hand in running a democracy is truly a bizarre one.[/i]
The senators pre-1913 were hardly unappointed, unvetted, or without qualification. They were sitting representatives, who were then elected by their states’ representatives to the senate.
I think this measure of independence is actually very good for the republic. The Founders did not want a majoritarian democracy, because they feared a tyranny of the majority (to use a phrase coined much later). This was part of the system of checks and balances.
Ah, Charles, we already have political dynasties here. The difference is that our dynasties have their eyes set on the presidency, which is why they serve in Congress. That, and to collect a nice salary, perqs, and amass more power and wealth from even more private contributors. This way, if their presidential aspirations fail, they’re assured of a prestigious and well-paid position in the private and/or “charitable” sector.
The dynastic Lords, however, won’t become prime minister. There aren’t many perqs to the job that they may not already have, due to their family position and work.
The giggle of the day comes from CM’s notion that politicians can just tell us who they’re going to vote “their consciences” on a variety of issues. Hahaha, really? As if they tell the truth and don’t cast their vote with the highest bidder? Yes, we have tens of thousands of lobbying interests in Washington because our legislators vote their consciences, can’t be bought, never renege on promises, and have enough of their OWN money to be elected and re-elected. Heh.
“Judges are appointed rather than elected (sometimes) or appointed for life because they are not SETTING the law, they are stating what the law already says.”
If you think that you need to open your eyes. Judges make law all the time. If what you say is true then it would make no difference whether a judge is appointed by a Democrat or a Republican, but that is not the case.
The Founder, quite correctly, had a realistic view of people and power. They chose to fragment it. Unfortunately in the name of “progressive reform” the country is “un-fragmenting it” and consolidating more and more power in the federal government and in the executive.
ooops, “who” should be “how” in line 6.
And I just thought of the most prominent scam to tweak the “will of the people.” Redistricting. What a corrupt and manipulative thing that’s been in Texas, designed to ensure a one-party monopoly in state and national representation.
I’m with you 100% Charles. They should have left the House of Lords alone in the first place. Nothing good has come of its “reform,” and the more “reformed” it gets, the worse it will be.
It might be worth recalling that the campaign for the 17th Amendment developed out of a sense that – particularly in the party-machine states like Pennsylvania – the manner of election of US Senators laid itself open to manipulation by special interests. It was much easier to bribe a handful of swing votes in a state legislature than the wider electorate.
If one were to analyze it, I suspect that both systems produced their share of statesmen, placemen and crooks, but Progressive efforts at reform weren’t simply grounded in the notion that the popular majority is always right (in fact, many Progressives saw that as the essence of Tammany politics).
[blockquote] An appointed, second chamber would work in this regard, but the historical accident of birth is a better method of random selection IMHO. And a more historically grounded method.
[/blockquote]
Tell me you’re kidding, right?? A bunch of aristocrats with no requirement for any education whatsoever nor having held any job whatsoever or necessarily worked a day in their lives at any activity at all constitutes 1) a good pool of people to run a country and 2) (most bizarre of all) a “random selection” of the population? How could it possibly be LESS random??? You want random — pick every thousandth name out of the phone book. I believe it was William Buckley who said “I would rather be governed by 2000 people selected at random from the Boston telephone directory, than by the 2000 faculty members at Harvard.”
Also, why is you think these people are immune to lobbying and having their own personal vested interests which may differ markedly from the best interests of the rest of the population?? Where do you think their money comes from?? Beamed down from outerspace??
In effect the 17 Amendment turned the Senate into another House of Representatives. It should be repealed and that part of our checks and balances restored.
The problem is not the unelected chamber. It’s the elected one.
Re # 6
Anglicanum
[blockquote] The real question (as I tell my political philosophy students) is this: are officials elected to carry out the will of the majority of their constituents, or are they elected to vote their own conscience?[/blockquote]
[url=http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s7.html]Edmund Burke’s reply to the Electors of Bristol[/url]
OK, CM, first, you erroneously say that the peers aren’t educated. Really? I wouldn’t bet on that. Their names were probably on the books at Eton before they were born. And then you say elite education and qualifications are a bad thing (re: the Buckley quote). So, which is it?
Btw, with the previous government programs, the middle and lower classes had/have greater access to the likes of Eton and Oxford than any of us would have to Choate or Harvard. If you had the academic record and were middle or lower class, you attended Oxford — money wasn’t an obstacle. I know — my English friends’ sons and daughters graduated from Oxford and Cambridge while I struggle to help my son afford Texas Tech.
It’s also spurious to assume, as you’re doing, that they don’t work. They likely do. It costs quite a few bob to maintain the ancestral homes which, as part of English history, need to be maintained and accessible to the public. Forget the Austen-esque picture you may have of “lords.”
Lastly, you missed the point regarding political money. These blokes don’t have to spend millions of dollars on re-election campaigns term after term. They don’t run. It’s the campaign contributors that raise eyebrows as to whom our American politicians actually serve. Moreover, it’s the House of Commons that wields more of the actual power than the Lords. This is NOT the same thing as having a House of Representatives and a Senate.
If you can’t see the benefit of having a non-elected spiritual and historical voice in the administration of government, then that’s one thing. I would disagree but respect your opinion. But trying to equate the Lords with our politicians just doesn’t work.
The principal problem in modern Britain’s polity is the erosion of any checks and balances. In the United States there is a division of power which (usually) discourages intemperate actions or policies on the part of the government. This is accomplished by limiting the powers of the Federal government and reserving all other powers to the states. Additionally we have three (in theory) co-equal branches of Federal government each of which can act as a brake on the others.
In Great Britain this is not the case. At one time there was a form of divided power and therefor some semblance of checks and balance. But that has been greatly, and I would argue dangerously, eroded over the last two centuries.
In the first place, the judiciary in Britain has never wielded anything remotely close to the power that ours does in the United States. As for the executive power, it was at one time generally held by both the monarch (an unelected official) and His/Her ministers, normally drawn from Parliament. However following the death of the Prince Consort (Albert), Queen Victoria withdrew from almost all active involvement in government affairs. Her reign was so long that by the time she died the precedent was more or less set in concrete and none of her successors tried to reclaim real governing authority.
The other blow to any checks and balances came in the 20th century with the gradual emasculation of the House of Lords. Today it is no longer a body of unelected hereditary Peers who were at least usually well educated and possessed some spirit of noblesse oblige and a sense of duty to serve Queen and Country. Now it is a body composed mainly of political cronies appointed by the previous Labour government. No doubt the Tories are weighing how to break Labour’s iron grip on the Lords. But any action they might take will likely serve only to increase the sadly accurate perception that the Lords has become the playground of political sycophants beholden to whichever party sat on the Treasury Bench when they were ennobled.
All of which leaves us with an all powerful Commons that has no effective restraint on its powers. And that is both unhealthy and dangerous.
Ad Orientem,
You are somewhat over generous in your paean to the House of Lords of times gone by. Certainly there were men who – when they succeeded to their father’s title – felt themselves obliged to take part in the proceedings of the House, to acquaint themselves with the issues and vote in the interests of the nation. There were plenty of others entitled to sit, who rarely attended sessions except when summoned to defend against Liberal and Socialist “excesses” (the famous Tory “backwoodsmen”). The great debate of 1911 over the Parliament Act – the first step in curtailing the power of the Lords – saw a massing of members many of whom had set foot in the chamber but once or twice in their lives.
Conversely, the life peers appointed between 1958 and 1999 (when most of the hereditary peers were done away with), though often ex-politicians, frequently demonstrated a strong commitment to critiquing and amending hasty government legislation.
The problem with appointed chambers is frequently not the fact of appointment but who does the appointing. The Irish Seanad is practically unique in that its membership is the result of functional elections (the universities and five vocational panels) although many of those selected are former members of the Dail.
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[Stands and applauds Catholic Mom]
And you’re right. It was WFB but I think he mentioned the first 1000 names in the phone book. Although I do think the Senate functioned better as it was originally constructed by the Founders.
carl
Please note what I actually said.
There is no REQUIREMENT for any level of education or experience to sit in the House of Lords as a hereditary peer. Maybe you have a Ph.D. from Oxford, maybe it was only your daddy’s money that kept you from being expelled from Eton. Either way, you qualify.
There is no REQUIREMENT for any experience, knowledge, or accomplishment. You might have won the Nobel Peace Prize. You might never have gotten off your butt a day in your life. Irrespective, you are qualified to govern by virtue of being born.
The Buckley comment was related to the absurd comment that the House of Lords represented a “random sample” of the population. The point was, if you want a “random sample” of the population, you pick a “random sample.” You don’t pick either the Peers of England or the 2,000 professors of Harvard, neither of which group represents by any stretch of the imagination the actual population of the area in which they live.
The Founding Fathers did not necessarily set out to create a country with no monarchy and no aristocracy, but by the time they were done that was what they had done; and I say good on them. If somebody thinks I’m going to tug my forelock to them just because their great-great-something grandfather was a big enough thug to be awarded a title by an even bigger thug, they can think again. In this context, “tug my forelock” encompasses “allow them to legislate over me.”
You know who had a good idea how to deal with aristos who got too big for their britches? The French.
Re #29
Ross
The French Revolution was the greatest catastrophe to hit Europe between the Black Death and the First World War. I think a fairly strong argument could be made that it paved the way for many of the horrors of the 20th century.
Just for some historical background, Sir William Blackstone was the preeminent writer on British law in the 18th century and a great influence on our founding fathers (who were, of course, British subjects until 1776). He wrote of the British constitution:
[blockquote]If the supreme power were lodged in any one of the three branches separately, we must be exposed to the inconveniences of either absolute monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy; and so want two of the three principal ingredients of good polity, either virtue, wisdom, or power. If it were lodged in any two of the branches; for instance, in the king and House of Lords, our laws might be providently made and well executed, but they might not always have the good of the people in view: if lodged in the king and commons, we should want that circumspection and mediatory caution, which the wisdom of the peers is to afford: if the supreme rights of legislature were lodged in the two houses only, and the king had no negative upon their proceedings, they might be tempted to encroach upon the royal prerogative, or perhaps to abolish the kingly office, and thereby weaken (if not totally destroy) the strength of the executive power. (Commentaries, Vol. 1, 1753, p 51)[/blockquote]
#19: “Tell me you’re kidding, right?? A bunch of aristocrats with no requirement for any education whatsoever nor having held any job whatsoever or necessarily worked a day in their lives at any activity at all constitutes 1) a good pool of people to run a country and 2) (most bizarre of all) a “random selection†of the population?”
Well, it worked for Massachusetts, didn’t it? (and please, it’s D. Phil at Oxford, not PhD – it’s not “the other place”).
[blockquote] If it were lodged in any two of the branches; for instance, in the king and House of Lords, our laws might be providently made and well executed, but they might not always have the good of the people in view: [/blockquote]
Yes indeed. An unelected hereditary aristocracy just MIGHT have a teeny tiny tendency to pass laws which promote their own power and wealth at the cost of the interests of the general population. I mean, it’s a 1 in a million chance, but still…
[blockquote] if lodged in the king and commons, we should want that circumspection and mediatory caution, which the wisdom of the peers is to afford. [/blockquote]
Now all you have to do is demonstrate that the peers have some special circumspection and mediatory caution (that is, other than the circumspection and mediatory caution necessary to protect their own interests which I don’t doubt for a moment they have ) that is notably lacking in other classes.
[blockquote] if the supreme rights of legislature were lodged in the two houses only, and the king had no negative upon their proceedings, they might be tempted to encroach upon the royal prerogative, or perhaps to abolish the kingly office, and thereby weaken (if not totally destroy) the strength of the executive power. [/blockquote]
Oh no! Gasp! We surely cannot be encroaching upon the royal prerogative or (unthinkable horror!) abolishing the kingly office!! No, we shall continue to place executive power in the hands of a single unelected family and their descendents where it clearly most properly resides. No other form of executive power can possibly be imagined.
As an American whose ancestors fought against the Crown (and suffered for it), I don’t hold any desire to be placed under a hereditary government. But, neither do I believe that the will of the people at any given moment is necessarily the wisest or best policy under which to be governed. There is something to be said for a longitudinal view of policy, and while I wouldn’t want to have life peers in our Senate I understand the sentiment and respect the history of that office in the British House of Lords.
I agree, BlueOntario. And I’m also wondering if it’s possible to have this conversation without the fake gasps and the eye rollings.
Come now, you can’t see the position of my eyes from where you are — though I admit that some of these comments are causing them to get stuck under my eyelids. But when someone quotes a historical figure saying that cutting out the king from “supreme rights of legislature” would be a terrible mistake due to the “temptation” to “encroach upon the royal prerogative” or even — unthinkable act — to “abolish the kingly office” altogether — a reasonable response is to indicate that while the original author obvious considered this an unfathomable act, you yourself can fathom it quite easily. A rhetorical “gasp” conveys this gap between the author’s “see what a terrible result might follow” and your “and your point is?” rather more briefly than this sentence.