The Passion

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

David Hume

Through the votes we cast and the tax dollars we pay, we elect and compensate members of the U.S. Congress. Because the law actually requires the majority of us to pay for our government, what Congress delivers in return is akin to a product. And Americans can't stand that product.

The poor quality of the performance we see in Congress is not for lack of time spent trying. In 2011-2012, the Republican-controlled House and Democrat-controlled Senate were in session for more days than they had been in any congressional session over the previous thirty years. Yet, that 112th Congress enacted 283 public laws, the fewest passed since the birth of the statistic back in 1947. In 2013-14, the 113th Congress managed to nudge that figure up to 296 — the second lowest total. By comparison, the "Do-Nothing Congress" of 1948, infamously nicknamed by President Harry Truman, passed 906 bills into law.

Of course, the total number of laws enacted is hardly the only measure of legislative effectiveness. In fact, many Americans actually prefer that even fewer laws be passed. But either way, we are collectively disgusted with the work of our representatives. Recent polls have revealed the lowest levels of public confidence in Congress in four decades. And in 2014, 74 percent of Americans believed that Congress was "unproductive" — with 50 percent labeling its work as "very unproductive."

So the broad answer to our first important question — "Why should we still care about the state of the U.S. Congress?" — is that we should because it is not delivering the kind of quality product we are paying for. Rather, it is providing a product that is defective and harmful.

It is true that our founding fathers did not set up our system of government, and especially Congress, to run efficiently and arrive at big decisions quickly. On the contrary, they purposely created a system that would foster measured deliberation and steer clear of any sudden, dangerous moves. In this way, the founders sought a legislative branch that would operate in a manner rational and responsible enough to serve the people well. In making the case for creating Congress, and advocating for passage of the Constitution, James Madison wrote in 1788, "No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability."

Today, though, we see a childish Congress bickering on a daily basis, governing by crisis, and holding very little "respectability" at all in the eyes of Americans — including many of our very own incumbent representatives. The epic level of failure in the House and the Senate is not just about conservatism or liberalism — it is about a lack of pragmatism. Concepts like negotiation and compromise, upon which our legislative process has historically been based, now seem nearly extinct.

It is often observed that our country is politically divided. We will investigate this fact as we move deeper into our analysis. But the problem we are facing stretches beyond the battle between red states and blue states. Structural defects within the system play a major role in the constipation of our Congress. Thankfully, we have political and constitutional avenues available to us through which we can repair these breaches, if we care enough to do so. We should care, as the stakes could not be much higher. It will take time, effort, and education. It will also take passion.

GET A LITTLE MAD

In 1976, the searing satire Network hit American movie screens, and it would go on to win four Academy Awards. One went to screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky — his third Oscar in the category. Another was awarded to Peter Finch for his best actor portrayal of a fictional network television anchor named Howard Beale.

Beale is fed up with the news business and even more irritated by the problems gripping the country. He is so outraged that he no longer cares about network protocol. The anchorman lets loose in a series of improvised on-air rants — first putting him in a vice with his corporate bosses, then, ironically, turning him into a national sensation. In the movie's classic scene, Beale scowls from behind his anchor desk, lamenting the sorry state of the nation — the busted banks, the gun-toting shopkeepers, the violent crime, the recession, the inflation, the Russians. And then his voice rises menacingly as he stalks toward the newsroom camera:

All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm a human being, God damn it! My life has value!" So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more!" I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them, and stick your head out and yell — "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!" Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!

As soon as Beale is done, we see people opening up their windows across American cities and yelling out the complaint exactly as he instruct- ed them to. Chayefsky's words touched something deep in popular culture in that moment, and four decades later we can still hear the catchphrase being recited from time to time by pols, protesters, and people who are just plain exasperated. After all, each of us knows what it feels like to be at our wit's end watching what seems like a world spinning out of control.

Of course, we can all agree that screaming our anger aimlessly in public is not a very effective way of dealing with life's daily frustrations. But when a great number of voices come together to express collective anguish, the sound becomes powerful. Throughout American history, many of our most consequential political movements for justice and change have been born out of a deeply felt sense of righteous indignation.

Organized, passionate outrage is how our country was founded in the first place. Were it not for the bravery and sacrifice of the Revolutionary War generation, discussions about our rights and the government's responsibility to its citizens might never have been possible. That same passion, balanced by a great deal of reason and collaboration, led to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Great intellectual debates continued in the years following ratification, but modern historians now take note of the fervently held beliefs that powered political life in the 1790s. In one of his many books and articles about the American Revolution, historian Marshall Smelser dubbed this decade "The Age of Passion."

From that starting point, we can clearly look back at the battles that Americans waged and won by pressuring the government to act during the most turbulent times in our country's history. Some of these victories took far too long in hindsight, but still the United States achieved the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, civil rights,...