There is nothing more pugnacious or un-democratic — the lowercase “d” — than the heckler’s veto.  For the classicist, the reference is as old as Cleon to Pericles.  Mark Antony standing up to Brutus and Caesar’s assassins.  Mr. Smith’s crusade to Washington, even if such a move is not permitted by Mr. Jefferson’s Manual in the slightest.

In fact, the heckler’s veto has something of a pedigree in Virginia politics.  I’m almost certain every locality has their local gadfly, a quasi-Socrates hanging out in the back of the courthouse who pours over every budget, every special use project, and every new development with the prodigious zeal of a Torquemada and the myopic focus of a Cyclops.  Yes — I watched the Odyssey.  Three out of five stars.

It’s okay.

Certainly, being an island has its own rewards.  Witness the career of State Senator Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) who has turned the heckler’s veto into a governing art.  We can think of other examples in the Virginia Senate and elsewhere who made their careers by being imperious in the face of overwhelming momentum.  Former State Senator John Chichester (R-Stafford) squared off against governors and won and even survived primary efforts to dislodge him.

Yet from the mists of time to the latest budget debacle, it is difficult to consider a point in time where the heckler’s veto has helped the common taxpayer much less Virginia’s economy.

Consider the now-abandoned Atlantic Coast Pipeline and its sister project the Mountain Valley Pipeline and its impact on our energy prices if it had been built.  North Anna Nuclear Power station and its two remaining nuclear pad sites.  The proposed hydroelectric dam for the City of Fredericksburg in the 1960s.  Imagine for a moment if these projects had actually come to fruition and the impact they could have had on energy prices for Virginia ratepayers?

The problem isn’t just in energy projects.  Once upon a time, the idea of the Western Transportation Corridor (WTC) captured the imaginations of planners looking to divert traffic away from the I-95 corridor towards points west and away from barriers such as the Rappahannock River.  Charlottesville had its Route 29 bypass in the early naughties.  Light rail — which made Virginia Beach a town at the turn of the century — is still being kicked around.  How long did it take for the Silver Line to reach Dulles International Airport again?

Virginians do a lot of talking about affordable housing.  What we don’t do a lot of talking about is what makes it so unaffordable.  Localities are incentivized to build 5 or 10 acre lots vs. building 25 or 50 townhomes.  As the costs of education are shifted towards localities whose options to fund them broadly consist of 19th century tools to feed a 20th century education system, it should be no small wonder why we aren’t seeing a 21st century result.  Yet those same localities are pushed towards a certain type of development, complicated further by proffers, complicated further by a system where land use is determined by localities and transportations decisions made by the Virginia Department of Transportation after the fact.  Plywood palaces go up, taxes go up, and the tentacles of sprawl spider out into the countryside.  Yet any attempt at density or development brings out the heckler’s veto.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on the inner workings of our fair commonwealth.  In times past, a letter writing campaign would suffice, or a nasty article in a newspaper somewhere filed by someone with a good eye for scandal and fresh eyeballs.  Social media and the eponymous blog made it all worse before good ol’ fashioned newsprint yielded to the smartphone.  The heckler’s veto can now be purchased cheaply through influencers.

Time and time again, we see the impact of the heckler’s veto on Virginia’s political landscape.   Yet while it pretends to be the wisdom between thought and speech, it’s true aim is to serve as an endless series of doubts.  How many good ideas have fallen victim to the tactic of question-until-it-fails?  Or worse, discover that the tactic is a tried-and-true weapon of many a public relations hound whose expertise in astroturf drowns out the grassroots?

At core is the same impetus: an opposition to growth, economy, and business.  Opposition to crony capitalism?  You’ll find no stronger opposition than here.  Yet when every chance to improve the lives of others is caged in the terms of good ol’ fashioned envy?  Let’s pause just a minute and look at all the great things growth and economic vitality do bring.  Remember the fight over cell phone towers?  When was the last time you noticed one?

Imagine for a moment the obstacles basic sanitation in major cities would take on today?  Or the electrification of Virginia in the 1950s under Eisenhower?  Or improvements to the City of Richmond that every other major city seems to be able to make except Richmond.  How’s about the comparisons to 1950s-era Charlotte, North Carolina to 1950s era Norfolk.  Back then, both cities were of equal size and promise.  Today, Charlotte is an international hub.

Norfolk?  It’s okay.

Yet realize what the cost of indulging in the heckler’s veto and anti-growth rhetoric has cost the taxpayers and businesses of Virginia.  Consider the jobs and the talent we have driven away, the starter homes and townhomes that could have made families more secure, the opportunities heading to Tennessee or North Carolina.  At some point in time, the fears of “what if?” need to be overwhelmed with the imagination of “even if!”

The politics of anti-growth rhetoric and the heckler’s veto have done more harm than good.  Such rhetoric might be good for demagogues, but an endless series of doubts is no longer a doubt, and it is hardly any good for the commonwealth.