filibusterism

English

Etymology

From filibuster +‎ -ism.

Noun

filibusterism (uncountable)

1. (dated) Piracy, freebooting; the waging of unauthorised war.
2. (US) The practice of forcefully and unauthorisedly acquiring control of foreign land.
   • 1858 April, “Mr. Buchanan's Administration”, in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 1, number 6:

     All this was simply weakness; but in turning from the conduct of the Finances by the administration, to consider its management of Filibusterism, we pass from the consideration of acts of mere debility to the consideration of acts which have a color of duplicity in them. On the Filibusters, as on the Finances, the First Annual Message of the President was outspoken and forcible. It characterized the past and proposed doings of William Walker and his crew, as the common sense and common conscience of the world had already characterised them, as nothing short of piracy and murder.

   • 1859, “Politics at Home and Abroad”, in Orestes Augustus Brownson, editor, Brownson's Quarterly Review, volume 4, page 214:

     Conservatism has come to mean, with us, filibusterism, the acquisition of our neighbor's land, the extension of negro slavery, the reopening of the slave trade, and placing under the ban of society every publicist who raises his voice against such conservatism.

   • 1986, J. D. Hardin, Murder on the Rails‎^[1], page 30:

     […] Doc furtively kicked him in the side of the leg, to remind him that the main reason they were there was to hush up even the faintest suspicions that filibusterism was flaring up again in Central America.

3. The practice of delaying legislation by filibuster or other obstructive tactics.