When Thomas Jefferson was elected Vice President, he also became President of the Senate. An overlooked accomplishment in his storied career was the manual that he provided to guide the operations of that chamber. His rules embody the ideal of democracy we have—a representative democracy that puts a premium on the order and decorum that promote deliberation. Representatives are not sent simply to vote the interests of those who supported them. They are supposed to deliberate for the common good. That obligation in turn requires listening to others and looking for compromises to move the polity forward.

Recently, two Tennessee representatives used a bullhorn and led protesters in chants in order to disrupt a session of their legislature. After being expelled from the House of Representatives (albeit briefly), they were widely celebrated in the media and left-wing circles. President Biden even welcomed them to the Oval Office to congratulate them for their behavior. Such applause, however, shows the widespread contempt for the proper operation of representative democracy. Closing down a legislature deserves condemnation, not praise.

The rules for speaking in a legislature are and should be different from the rules of political discourse outside the legislature. In his manual, Jefferson was concerned with how legislative rules can advance legislative deliberation. His rules prohibit members from interfering with the speech of other members even by hissing. Deliberation can occur only when legislatures are orderly enough to hear members who wish to speak. Another of Jefferson’s rules forbids impugning the motives of others during legislative debate, whatever they do outside the legislative chamber. Calling others’ motives into question leads to anger without productive discussion of the measure at issue. Creating an atmosphere for good deliberation requires screening out inflammatory irrelevance.

Just consider the widely accepted rules of decorum for courts. No judge would countenance for a moment an advocate’s use of a bullhorn to drown out his opponents’ arguments in court. Neither is it appropriate in a representative body.

To be sure, on the campaign trail, politicians and the public are free to impugn one another’s motives and even to hiss one another’s speeches (although even here they may not shut them down as happened in Tennessee). The hurly-burly of politics has purposes other than mere deliberation, such as allowing the public to let off steam. It is also impossible to police the speech of everyone in a continental republic, but a smaller collegial body can impose standards of decorum on a relative few when they interact in a particular space. We see replications of this dichotomy in academia. Even on campuses with robust free speech rules, professors are not allowed to insult their colleagues at faculty meetings, because, like legislatures, they are deliberating—on such matters as curriculum and appointments.

Jefferson’s rules have become the standard for legislatures throughout the United States. Using them to police legislative behavior does not trench on democracy, but protects it. On the basis of these rules, it is easy to conclude that the expelled Tennessee legislators were in egregious violation of them. Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson not only interfered with other members’ right to speak by bringing a bullhorn to the floor but they led spectators in the galleries in chants to make it impossible to conduct business. Indeed, while their actions did not incite the violence of January 6, their object was similar—disrupting the lawful process of the legislature.

In a more complicated incident, Zooey Zephyr, a Montana representative, accused her colleagues of “having blood on their hands” for restricting the ability of children to change their genders. As a result, the Montana House censured her and prevented her from speaking on the floor for the rest of the legislative session unless she apologized for the comments, arguing that the statement violated the requirement to engage in “civil discourse.” Accepting Jefferson’s rule as the proper standard, one might argue that, however indecorous the statement, it does not directly call into question the motives of her colleagues. The difficulty, however, is that the comment does tend to imply that her opponents are murderers. Those are the people who in ordinary life are caught having blood on their hands for doing injury to others. It is certainly not the kind of comment that is likely to advance deliberation.

Even assuming these legislators broke the rules, there is still the question of whether the punishment is appropriate. The Tennessee legislators are far more culpable than the Montana legislator. While Zephyr refused to withdraw her remark, a simple censure would have ordinarily sufficed without silencing her for the rest of the session. But the problem with light punishment is that social media and political polarization have fundamentally changed the incentives for many legislators. By acting outrageously, they gain more followers on social media and more support among radical members of their party. Indeed, all of these legislators have become political celebrities. These political gains position them to win primaries for higher office.

Of course, there have always been possible advantages of playing to the crowd rather than working with colleagues, but the outside game is now more attractive because of these social changes. Greater incentives for undermining sound deliberation are rationally met with more severe punishments to deter the behavior.

But it does not follow that these punishments were optimal, particularly if the result was primarily to increase the offenders’ name recognition. For instance, the Tennessee legislators were simply selected again by their constituents under the standing rules for filling legislative vacancies and sent back to the legislature, presenting the majority with an unpalatable choice of kicking them out again in the face of their district’s decision or just allowing them back. An alternative would have been to strip the Tennessee representatives of their committee assignments. If representatives substantially disrupt deliberations, they should not be given the additional opportunities for deliberation that committees provide. This approach would at least not have allowed them to render the punishment moot by triumphantly returning to the legislature.

Congress has itself recently experimented with the punishment of exile from committees. The problem with its actions, however, is that is not clear in many cases that the punishment was warranted, let alone prudent. Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was kicked off committees for a variety of statements she made outside of Congress—even before coming to it. Her comments were indeed fatuous—a mélange of conspiracy-mongering and extreme partisan attacks, even if she disavowed many of them once elected. But the problem with punishing such statements outside Congress is that it is very difficult to draw principled lines without endangering the robust political debate outside of the legislature.

Sure enough, when the Republicans took the House they promptly kicked Democrat Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Relations committee for saying, again outside of legislative debate, that “It’s all about the Benjamins.” She was complaining that big money supported Israel and that money explained why many of her colleagues supported the Jewish state. Critics complained that the specter of money distorting the views of legislators was in this context an anti-Semitic trope. Whatever the truth of that charge, this statement too was fatuous. But where will disciplining members of Congress for absurd, even hateful statements outside of legislative debate end? In a legislative body as big as the House, every election now is guaranteed to bring in a few more members who have made similarly egregious remarks. The tit-for-tat of kicking members off committees at the beginning of each Congress is likely to increase bad feelings among members and make deliberation for the rest of the session harder.

The Democrats’ decision to throw Paul Gosar off committees was more complicated. He had put up a video based on an anime cartoon that showed him as a character attacking President Biden and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez with a sword. This was an idiotic social media stunt. The harder question may be whether it was a silly parody or an actual threat. But at least in this instance, it may be possible to draw a salutary line: don’t even parody physical violence against your colleagues or the President of the United States.

None of these punishments, of course, address causes that have made such behavior more common. Our political climate of polarization is resulting in the election of politicians for whom outrage and offense are their stock-in-trade. They then may revel in their punishments, because they can fundraise off of them. Exile from committees imposes little deterrence because such politicians never had any serious interest in committee work, which requires knowledge and compromise, both of which may be harmful to their brand.

At this deeper level, the only solutions are structural ones that must come from outside the organization and processes of legislatures. Top-two primaries, in which candidates of all parties run in the same primary with a run-off in the general election, make it harder for extremists to be elected. In that system, an extremist can be more easily defeated by a moderate candidate of his own party who can draw support from members of the other party in both the primary and the general election. Revising campaign finance regulations to allow political parties to make greater contributions to candidates would also give our parties more resources to defeat know-nothings and grandstanders.

On their own, even Jefferson’s very sound rules of legislative practice do not suffice to counteract the pathologies of contemporary politics.