There’s this thing called the “conservative movement,” but it hasn’t had much clarity about its objectives for a very long time, perhaps since the days of President Ronald Reagan. It was consistent back then in its thematics, even if it wasn’t very effective. But since then, and mostly due to weak Republican presidents and then a purely negative oppositional approach when the other party is in power, it has lacked a workable, effective, and principled plan of governance.
I’ve been following the thematics and rhetoric of this movement since my college days, and it has always frustrated me that it seemed to lack a core beyond nostalgia and annoyance at various features of modern life. That’s all justified, but it isn’t hard-edged enough to provide a winning agenda concerning the great question: What then should we do? So this latest development, a product of these past five years of astonishing upheaval, is hugely welcome.
What the movement has discovered is something that has been around for at least a century but has heretofore largely escaped notice from intellectuals and think tanks. That’s because the problem has mostly crept around in the background and rarely seemed serious enough to provoke a crisis or a battle.
That problem is the administrative state. It’s the fourth branch of government and far more powerful than the other three, even though it’s found nowhere in the Constitution. The rise and power of the administrative state have fundamentally distorted the very meaning of democratic government and the rule of law. It has also massively invaded industrial capitalism in every sector such that most of the largest and most highly capitalized companies have deep ties to the bureaucracies that regulate them.
It has also wrecked the media because this machinery provides most of the content and priorities of the reporting in this country. The administrative agencies sit atop the entire corporatist state that has ruined American freedom. Many people understand this today in a way in which this problem was largely invisible just a few years ago.
We’re talking here about millions of permanent job holders and contractors with the federal government who have far more decision-making power than office holders. The House and Senate could go on a long trip to China, and the judiciary along with it, and the government would continue on as always. That shouldn’t be the case. That’s not how the Founders designed the American system to work.
Beginning in the Great War and through the New Deal and continuing in the decades after World War II, administrative bureaucrats gradually seized control of the operations of government. True, they’ve largely done this with the permission of Congress, but nothing in the Constitution even permits Congress to delegate that much of its authority to the permanent bureaucracy. Nonetheless, Congress passed legislation that left its interpretation and enforcement to the executive branch, while giving up its own powers.
This system seemed to work for everyone in government, but it created a vast number of victims in the public, from taxpayers to small businesses to real estate developers to homeowners. They’ve had very little voice. Regarding the judiciary, court precedent has established deference to the bureaucracies over the plaintiffs, with the result of a huge power shift from the people and their representatives to government agencies.
Still, the system went largely unchallenged and even mostly unnoticed. For decades, you could go to a thousand political events and not hear much about this problem at all. Now, it’s all the talk, and it comes in many forms: We hear about the deep state, the establishment, the globalist masters, the entrenched bureaucrats, the corruption of the FBI, the imperium of the CIA, and so on. This is a mighty and wonderful shift.
Three things happened to change this situation.
First, President Trump won the election in 2016. That wasn’t supposed to happen, according to the establishment agenda. Every major newspaper, corporation, and large foundation; the polling firms; and so on were somehow certain that they had fixed the system so that Hillary Clinton would become president. That change caused a dramatic shift among the establishment from tolerating democratic forms so long as they served its cause to disgust and horror that the people’s will was contrary to its own.
Second, President Trump governed as if he had a mandate. He did things that were previously unthinkable. He withdrew from climate change accords and the World Health Organization. He declined to drum up international conflict and sought peace with regimes that were considered enemies. He appointed a fantastic slate of federal judges around the country who favored the rights and liberties of people over the power of governments. And he started to gut the regulatory and oversight powers of the agencies themselves. (In my view, his trade wars were a huge distraction, but that’s a subject for another day.)
Third, this provoked a massive backlash from the administrative state. All powers of the establishment were deployed to confound the administration, such as the preposterous claim that Russia somehow hacked the election to get him in power. Yes, the Democrats and their allies were the crowd that was most aggressive in “election denial” long before President Trump. This led to two impeachments in addition to vast efforts at all levels to make life as miserable as possible for the Trump administration.
That all came to a head with the great COVID-19 caper in which President Trump was surrounded on all sides and told that a bioweapon from China was going to kill many millions unless he wrecked the U.S. economy and allowed a massively liberalized system of mail-in ballots that made it much easier to manipulate election outcomes.
Tragically, he went along with this at the urging of both his son-in-law and his own vice president. After about 30 days of this nonsense, the president grew incredulous but had lost power over the government. The administrative state was ruling the country with insane dictates over businesses, churches, schools, and even homes. The plot worked and the Trump administration found itself very much on the ropes.
Watching all of this unfold has been the great revelation of our times. The administrative agencies overplayed their hand, outed themselves and their real agenda, and made themselves a political target. In a cosmic sense, perhaps this is what needed to happen, because three years later, there’s a vast movement in this country and around the world to end the corrupt government/media/business combine and return control and freedom to the people.
This is no easy task. The first Republican president who swore he would abolish the Department of Education was President Reagan. He failed. It’s still around today. Symbolically, that’s the first agency that needs to go in a Republican-led government, should the Republicans recapture the White House.
Talking about crushing the administrative state is far easier than actually doing it. Nothing like this has been undertaken in more than a century of governance. The panic by mainstream media is somewhat justified here: This will fundamentally change life in America, but only in the best possible way.
Good for the conservative movement. It has found its core and found a mission. It’s now or perhaps never.
