Finally, Conservatives Have Workable Plan
There is this thing called the “conservative movement” but it has not had much clarity about its objectives for a very long time, perhaps since the days of 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.
That seems to have changed dramatically since Trump left office three years ago. Reflecting on what went wrong in the Trump administration and seeing events unfold since then, the conservative movement has renewed clarity on the core source of the problem, plus a solution on what to do about it. As a result, there might be reasons for optimism that they will get their act together with a positive contribution to the restoration of American life.
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 is not 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 last five years of astonishing upheaval, is hugely welcome.
What they have 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 creeped 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 is found nowhere in the Constitution. The rise and power of the administrative state has 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 are talking here about millions of permanent job holders and contractors with the federal government that have far more decision-making power than the office holders. The House and Senate could go on a long trip to China, and judiciary along with it, and government would continue on as always. That should not 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 the Second World War, administrative bureaucrats gradually seized control of the operations of government. True, they have 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 have had very little voice. As regards 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 is 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, Donald Trump won the election in 2016. That was not supposed to happen according to the establishment agenda. Every major newspaper, corporation, large foundation, the polling firms, and so on, was 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 their cause to a disgust and horror that the people’s will was contrary to their own.
Second, 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 (WHO). 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 that favor 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 by 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 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.
This all came to a head with the great COVID caper in which 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, Trump 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, Trump 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 is a vast movement in this country and really around the world to end the corrupt government/media/business combine and return control and freedom to the people.
If you want to see what the target is, have a look at the Federal Register that lists 436 agencies, only a few of which can justify their existence according to the words of the U.S. Constitution. Here you have the problem. Here is the core issue. And now we have also the answer to the great question: what then should be done? What needs to be done is wholesale reform and abolition.
This is no easy task. The first Republican president who swore he would abolish the Department of Education was Ronald Reagan. He failed. It is still around today. Symbolically, that is 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. They have found their core and found a mission. It’s now or perhaps never.
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