The Constitution did not establish the Deep State. Instead, it creates a very slimmed-down government: A legislature, an executive office, and a judiciary. Given the British bureaucracy's corruption in the 18th century, the Founder wanted to avoid that situation in America. Now, though, 230 years later, we’ve exceeded the 18th-century British bureaucracy in size and scope and added ideological corruption, which is probably even worse than the financial greed the British showed. However, there is a way out of this situation, and Ron DeSantis made the case for it on Sunday when he appeared on Life, Liberty & Levin.
Early 20th-century progressives were the moving force behind the development of our administrative state. They thought the teeming masses were incapable of the self-governance our Founders envisioned. Indeed, their passion for eugenics arose from their belief that too many Americans—the brown, black, “swarthy,” and Jewish ones, as well as the “feeble-minded”—were corrupting American purity. The antidote, aside from eugenics, was a professional government managed by college-educated Anglo-Saxons.
And so was born a very specific type of bureaucracy, one in which the workers believed that they were not the voters’ servants, but their very superior managers.
Our modern progressives think the same, except that they shift the good and bad actors. Thus, in their view, too many Americans—the white and the ones bitterly clinging to the Bible, whether conservative Christians or Jews—are corrupting American purity. The antidote, aside from eugenics (which is implicit in their increasingly strident attacks on the vice inherent in “whiteness”), is a professional government managed by college-educated People of Color, LQBTQ++ representatives, and suitable woke and self-loathing white people (preferably women).
Image: Ron DeSantis. Rumble screen grab.
What put the modern bureaucracy on steroids, though, in a way the early progressives never imagined, was President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10988, which unionized federal workers. This created an appalling dynamic. In the private sector, when the parties sit down at the negotiating table to hash out salaries, benefits, and worker protections, they have skin in the game. Both workers and management need the business to survive, so both have money on the table.
When it comes to government unions, things are different. The money people—that is, the ones equivalent to the owners—are the taxpayers. Ostensibly, the government represents them, but that’s not how it works. Instead, the government is dealing with “other people’s money,” and it doesn’t want to protect that money; instead, it wants a piece of it.
The government and union representatives negotiate a package for government employees that far exceeds what’s common in the private sector. The quid pro quo is that the union members are expected to return some of that money and a lot of their energy to keeping that same government in power. And when I say “government,” I mean Democrats.
One of the many benefits flowing from this cozy government-union relationship is that it’s almost impossible to fire a government employee. No heads ever roll, no matter how incompetent, dishonest, or illegally partisan the performance.
Near the end of his first term, Trump tried to change this situation using Schedule F. Thus, the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 holds that high-level federal employees with policy-making roles do not have union protections. In other words, they are at-will employees, whom their constitutional boss—the president—can fire.
However, by October 2020, when Trump issued Executive Order 13957, it was too late. It was a good idea, though, and Ron DeSantis hasn’t forgotten. During his Sunday, February 26, conversation with Mark Levin, he raised it as a way to clip the bureaucracy’s wings (starting at 33:35):
I would go further than DeSantis and say that Kennedy overstepped himself. No president can delegate to unions his Article II authority to fire and hire any federal employees. This plenary power over the executive branch of the government can be ended only through a constitutional amendment.
As I’ve pointed out, this same power overrides the ludicrous charge that Trump improperly possessed classified documents. A flunky’s decision to classify a document is not binding on the president. Because he was president, Trump’s taking documents automatically declassified them—unlike Senator and Vice President Biden, who clearly violated national security laws by compromising classified documents.
I’ll vote for whichever strong horse Republican emerges from a hard primary fight. And then, when that person is president, I want him to purge the out-of-control, racist, ideologically corrupt, unconstitutional federal bureaucracy.