In an earlier post I expressed some relief that with the Democratic majority pared to fewer than 60 we would have our old Senate back complete with filibuster. And if its own lust to inaction proved insufficient and it appeared on the verge of doing something, we could count on a filibuster to re-establish inertia. I, of course, pictured one of our Senators rising to the occasion and proceeding to read from a telephone book. I apologize to anyone who may have been misled by my post. I think that’s the least I can do. Let me make this clear: there will be no reading from a telephone book, the classifieds, the Bible or anything else.

Only last night I learned that under Senate rules the filibuster now consists of simply notifying the Senate leadership of your intent to filibuster. If 41 Senators join in noticing such an intent, the matter they intend to filibuster cannot be voted on. They don’t have to filibuster, they just have to say they intend to. A real honest to goodness filibuster goes on and on preventing action on anything until the majority caves in and agrees to move on or the intransigent collapse with fatigue or under the weight of angry public opinion. The revelation of the filibuster’s demise upset me. The image of some pucker faced Senator rising to read anything within reach for days until, exhausted, the poor critter passes the torch to some fellow stalwart –this image turned to dust in my mind.. The filibuster is, in its own special way, a thing beautiful. It is also, evidently, a thing no more.

But, as is sometimes the case, in my upset, in my disillusion I found new beauty, new meaning. To be sure I pine for the old ways. But the world is changing and I am determined not to be left in the dust pathetically fingering a rotary dial while others text message. I will push on until that inevitable day comes when my children have to explain everything to me.

There is, I suppose, a beauty in natural progression, in the unfolding of a development both new and yet seeming to flow so smoothly from what preceded it. And so it is here: the ability to make nothing happen by filibustering has fathered the ability to do nothing by simply saying you will filibuster. The something you had to do in the form of a filibuster is now supplanted by the far less onerous task of communicating an intention to filibuster. In short, you can now do less to make nothing happen than you had to do before to make nothing happen. If that isn’t progress …

There is an obvious concern: if they weren’t doing anything in the first place, why do they need a more efficient way to do nothing? It is a good question, but there are answers. We need always to remember that the urge to act never goes away entirely. Even if you can’t see it, it is always there lurking just out of view. People have problems. The nation has problems. There will always be unseen forces pushing the Senate to do something about these problems. And doing nothing about them will require eternal vigilance. There is no magic bullet. Indeed, history proves over and over that at critical times weak Senates have given way and taken action. Civil rights, social security, medicare, college loans, the GI Bill, food and drug regulations, bank deposit insurance: all of these things were the fruit of Senates unwilling or too weak to do nothing. Making it easier to do nothing is just one more small bulwark protecting us from the ever present urge to act.

I like my government to be efficient and the new filibuster is efficient. If the Senate is going to do nothing, it should at least do nothing efficiently. That efficiency will free up some of the more creative minds among our elected to explore new and imaginative ways to do nothing. Some new developments in that regard are already being tested and proving very effective. One problem that has plagued efforts to keep the Senate from taking action is the tendency of some Senators to be pragmatic. I’m not going to name any names, but pragmatism has a dangerous tendency to bring people together. To address this problem a new and promising effort has been underway to make Senators more ideological. So if you can make the question about any proposed legislation whether it advances free market capitalism or socialism rather than whether it would work and you can persuade Senators that ideological purity is more important that solving a problem you have gone a long way toward ensuring that nothing will be done. Another technique which has also shown a lot of promise and is an adjunct to making Senators more ideological is to keep front and center irresolvable questions that have nothing to do with solving problems and are by their nature ideological. Thus, for example, proposing a constitutional ban on gay marriage, an issue that must be admitted to have nothing to do with unemployment or the regulation of financial institutions (large gaming houses) or health insurance, draws out ideological differences and sidelines pragmatism. These creative efforts are solid evidence that making inaction easier can and will inspire further advances.

The application of these developments may have far-reaching impact. At the domestic level people may begin to apply them to their personal lives, to their families. Discussions between parents and children or husbands and wives that often prove endless as the participants share views, desires and new ideas could be cut mercifully short if the new filibuster were available to the parties. The trip to Yosemite or the new stove or the overnighter with friends might never happen. The parties would be spared discussing them. And the family might at last achieve the exemplary state of affairs our Senate works tirelessly to achieve: making nothing happen.