There was alignment both at the elite level and the popular level in support of those policies for a long time. It functioned because the minorities it target were politically weak.
A positive example would be something that would have passed if the majority party wanted it when the minority party was against it.
Now, do people claim that anti majoritarianism is good? Sure. Clearly there are people who benefit from this system. In addition, a lot of people do justify it who seemly don’t directly benefit economically, simply due to an ideological affinity.
Huh?
Congress derives its authority from the constitution, at least in the U.S.
None of that is prescribed by the constitution.
It would help to be a bit clearer.
The Constitution specifies that the House and Senate make their own rules via a simple majority vote.
The Senate set a rule that they would require a vote to end (previously unlimited) debate and hold a vote on an issue. Originally, this required a two thirds majority, which was lowered to 60 votes later.
More recently, the Senate changed the rules again to only require a simple majority vote on some matters.
Nothing about the Filibuster rule was ever specified in the Constitution.
I do want to push back though a bit. The filibuster isn’t the only rule I was referring to, and the entirety of the constitutions specification of the rule making process is literally “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings”. So when I say rule making broadly has nothing to do with the constitution, it’s because it quite literally doesn’t.
If you genuinely don't understand how congress came about and why their actions are accepted by the other branches of government, I would recommend doing some reading of history.
It must be the case that I simply haven’t read enough, simply because my understanding differs from yours. It can’t be possible that my points are a result of careful study over several years.
Speaking of careful study. I suggest that you go back and actually read what I wrote and address what I said. Please inform me where in the constitution there is a prescription for what the house and senate rules must be.
You keep talking about congressional authority. I will reiterate, that is completely tangential to my points.
Most users on HN would rather not encourage that kind of behaviour.
It's better for a small minority of people to make the rules. A small minority of people agree with this, thus it is correct.
Clearly there are things desired by the majority of the population that are not desirable because of downstream effects.
There are thousands of comments and posts on HN every year describing examples.
Really, their core quibble with the Crown, and the sticking point that prevented any peaceful solution (because compromise would have seriously threatened the political power of the nobility in Great Britain), was that they wanted rich people to have the franchise and to be able to hold high-level offices, not just aristocrats.
The founders understood that, which is why they set things up the way they did. Nothing has changed since then. If anything it's even more true, given the new and extensive ways the elites have to manipulate majority opinion.
Quite a few of them are not shitshows.
So I consider your first sentence to be proven false.
If people were wiser and did their research better, these kinds of campaigns would be ineffective and the rich would lose their sway.
The founders also probably didn't expect our government to grow so large and so corrupt. The richest and most corrupt entity in the United States is the government itself. The vast majority of the government is not even beholden to people at all in any way, shape, or form. This includes the tens of thousands of employees in the federal bureaucracies, as well as organizations like teacher's unions who are funded indirectly by tax dollars. Many, if not all, monopolies today are also artificially created by government policy, allowing for an unholy union of corporations and the government.