A New America: Only After Liberals Break Everything
All of a sudden, I am reading a bunch of attacks on the administrative state.
From American Greatness, Theo Wold on "A Century of Impotency: Conservative Failure and the Administrative State."
From the Daily Skeptic, Eugyppius on "The 'Soft' Tyranny of the Bureaucratic State" in Germany.
And on his Substack, Richard Hanania on "The Humble Capitalist."
Okay. so what is prompting this? The glorious failure of the administrative state during COVID, you think?
Theo Wold revives the age-old theme of conservative failure against the liberal juggernaut. He proposes James Landis as the guy that helped expand the administrative state during FDR's first term, and thus "brought to fruition Woodrow Wilson’s progressive intellectual project: rule by experts, insulated from the popular will."
The various efforts to reform the administrative state have failed. So Wold believes that conservatives must propose deconstruction of the administrative state, and end the "rule by experts."
At The Daily Skeptic Eugyppius details the recent failures of the German administrative state: tinkering with rail fares, EV subsidies, mandatory consumer conversion to heat pumps, imposing bans on school trips in hot summer weather, lockdowns, and mass vaccinations. It's as though the bureaucrats think of their citizens as "Administrative Man" where "everybody is more or less the same, subject to nudging via the same incentives, requiring the same protections from the same risks, and likely to benefit from the same one-size-fits-all solutions."
Richard Hanania has a problem with a conservative outfit, American Compass, that seems to argue that market results can be suboptimal, especially when foreigners are involved. So just assume their "writers know how to allocate resources better than the market can." In fact, even though administrative meddling doesn't work, "most people support big government and central planning, because they're not smart enough to understand the case for freedom."
The problem for conservatives is dealing with the Churchill quote after World War II: "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." For the last century liberals got to write the history, and there is no end in sight. The Great Depression? Evil speculators did it. The New Deal? It saved America from disaster. World War II? It saved the world from fascism. Race relations? Liberals saved us from Jim Crow southerners and now white racists everywhere. Reagan and Thatcher? They gave us neoliberalism that hollowed out the economy. Great Recession? Greedy bankers did it. COVID? Get that Trump behind the tree.
The only way that conservatives get a chance to fix things is after our present rulers actually break America.
And there is another thing that I can mention, as an unashamed sexist, because I never expect to apply for a job again. It is Women.
I noticed, from the start of the late COVID crisis, that women were all aboard masking and lockdowns and social distancing and vaccinations in a New York minute. Why? Because women expect to be protected, and when some manly government shows up and gins up a COVID Pandemic and announces: do what we say or everyone will die, women instinctively do what they are told, and are glad to do so. Because they expect to be protected.
So I declare that nothing will change until America breaks, and not just for white working-class men as at present, but for women and especially educated liberal women.
Then, and only then will we get regime change, and the chance to staff the bureaucracy with our own guys, and then write the history. I volunteer to write the history. It will go something like this.
For over a century, America has suffered under the unjust rule of the educated class, the most unjust ruling class in history. First, it created the Federal Reserve system so it could finance its wars and immediately sent our doughboys to Europe in World War Kaiser. Then it flubbed the Great Depression when its Federal Reserve failed to act as "lender of last resort." Then it sent our GIs all over the world in World War Hitler. Then it was Occupy Earth in World War Commie. Then it wrecked Blacks with World War Welfare, and wrecked women with World War Free Sex. Then it messed up the Middle East. Then it brought on the Great Recession when the Fed failed to act as "lender of last resort" in 2008. Then it ruined small businesses all across America in World War COVID. But then along came our heroic President Trump DeSantis who stopped World War Climate just before it destroyed the whole world, and then in the most decisive battle in history, conquered the administrative state in World War Bureaucrat.
Thank that's a bit over the top? Probably, but if you agree with Curtis Yarvin that there is no politics without an enemy, you begin to see that every politician is looking for a war, especially our educated class warriors.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle
Image: PickPik