“During my 12 years in government I often saw career bureaucrats push their preferred policy passions irrespective of agencies’ rules, federal regulations or the law.”
Read More“Fascism took root in Europe only in nations where democratic government was relatively new, often scarcely older than the peace treaty that ended WWI. But where democracies had deeper roots and could count on popular legitimacy — as in England and France — fascist movements never emerged from the fringe.”
Read More“If anything has been demonstrated by modern experience in these matters, it is that, once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies. If the latter do not themselves determine the means to be employed, the decisions of their agents will be more or less arbitrary.”
Read More“Regulation by agencies is relatively simple to promulgate—it merely takes the time and patience necessary to announce a rule, take comments, and show that the comments were in some way taken into consideration. Navigating bureaucratic procedure and red tape is easy compared with cobbling together a majority (or supermajority) of both houses of Congress and winning the president’s support. “
Read MoreJames Madison stated in Federalist #47, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” In 1933 two laws were struck down on the non-delegation principle, the effective delegation of legislative authority to unelected regulatory agencies. The recent court has prepared to revisit that principle.
Read MoreThis leads to a rethinking of the Administrative State in line with lessons learned and new thinking on how such organizations function. Regulators are OK for executing clear laws, but terrible at designing systems and regulations to advance unproven political theories.
Read MoreThis tension between the limited government of the constitution and the reach of the current administrative state is in my opinion the heart of the reason for our congressional disfunction, and our national division. Democracy is frustrated by regulations from an administrative state beyond accountability to the voters.
Read MoreWhile the Progressives imbued the administrative state with moral and political authority they overestimated its competence. The second false assumption was that this uber-qualified elite would be capable of managing a complex society while trying to fulfill and endless list of social objectives.
Read More“…Trump’s success will likely depend upon his ability to articulate the ground of a common good that is still rooted in the past—a common good established by a government that protects the rights of its citizens in a constitutional manner and establishes limits on the authority of government by demanding that the rule of law replace that of bureaucratic privilege and status.”
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