The House of Commons, Rosenstock-Huessy argues, is a body, not a collection of individual units. MPs do not have, as US Representatives and Senators do, individual desks; there is only one table in Commons. And up to the time that Rosenstock-Huessy was writing, MPs were never addressed by name in Commons unless they were under discipline. This anonymity was “at the root of the institution”: MPs “are without personal character, anonymous like a good jury, where twelve ordinary men are the embodiment of public conscience . . . . the individual member is 1/658 of the unit, the will of which is voiced by the Speaker.” What does it do to the mother of Parliaments to have a C-Span camera moved into Commons?
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
