"The ultimate effect, and often the explicit intention, was to return power to the person of the ruler.
In this respect, Trump can be understood as part of a global wave of anti-bureaucratic
patrimonialism that includes Vladimir Putin in Russia, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Victor Orban in Hungary. In each case, rule by men requiring unfailing loyalty as a prerequisite for political influence has led to the de-modernization of political authority and a return to personalistic rule.
This explains why social divisions about public health measures are so bitter and enduring: They are rooted in divisions about the nature of political legitimacy itself. The global rebellion against the modern bureaucratic state, and the scientific and professional expertise on which it is built, has degenerated into a zero-sum struggle against any effort whatsoever to impose binding, impersonal rules to defend the public good.... The robust defense of rational, reasonable public health measures to fight COVID-19 can play a useful role in pushing back against patrimonialism, in the U.S. and globally."
From "Why can't we mandate anything?" by Stephen E. Hanson (vice provost for academic and international affairs at the College of William & Mary) and Jeffrey S. Kopstein (professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine) (The Hill).
I added that link on "patrimonialism." And I want to underscore that the authors are saying that mandating things is a way to push back against a system in which power flows directly from the leader. In this view, bureaucracy is a safeguard, and people ought to appreciate it. But how do you get people to appreciate it? One idea that a mask requirement would provide an occasion for speaking persuasively to the people about how "rational, reasonable" experts are working earnestly to preserve good order.
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So-called experts totally botched the handling of Covid except for in Sweden. Experts totally failed in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And, of course, so-called experts are at the core of the CAGW scam.
Over at Powerline, the very experienced former trial lawyer John Hinderaker had a super great post on experts. He’s deposed or crossed thousands of experts.
This fetish about experts only empowers the twits and libs from the Ivy League.
TL;DR: We ought to appreciate having our democratic voice silenced because we benighted voters have no idea how we ought to live and what we ought to want.
includes Vladimir Putin in Russia,
BS
The tide has turned, and while they're trying to demonize those who represent the new direction, it's not going to work.
Civilization came to a really dangerous place. It's still in peril. But hopeful signs are all around. Trump was far from perfect, but he stood up to them, and others have been emboldened.
Sometimes you need a rough man.
One hardly knows where to start with this.
One alternative to the professors' thesis: the opposition to the bureaucracy is the desire of a free people to act in ways that they believe are beneficial to them. Where in our system of government does the Executive Branch derive the power to set up bureaux that make rules, enforce them, and erect tribunals populated by bureaucratic employees who prosecute and judge those who dispute the rules? Welcome to the EPA, the EEOC, the NLRB, OSHA, etc. This is a system set up in the time of Woodrow Wilson with a belief in the efficiency of "experts". Well, we have learned a few things since then, haven't we? Also, Trump presidency wasn't about getting personal power to Trump, it was about using the power of the Executive to undo things that his predecessor had slapped into place at the last minute. How are the "experts" beloved by these cranks doing at the southern US border, in Afghanistan, or dealing with COVID? Last time I checked, their expertise has failed them, and us. They of course try to cover for the failures of the bureaucrats by dragging in Trump. Thanks for nothing.
As to public health measures, the only fair thing is to say that the Trump and Biden administrations have been similarly chaotic in their messaging, and the states have embraced wildly different approaches. Also, private actors (are they in cahoots with political actors?) are squelching debate about the pandemic, treatments, and efficacy of various measures purported to mitigate the effects. Why would they do that? Do they believe there is one truth? There isn't. We might figure out a number of beneficial appraoches if the debate could proceed. I guess maybe those "experts" don't like to answer tough questions.
The efforts of these two soft-headed academics to plead for legitimacy of the bureaucrats is disgusting and divorced from reality. It fails the empirical test.
If it were up to me, I would abolish the civil service and let the executive fire or hire at the president's leisure and discretion. The corruption is already in the current system and with full at will employment at the president's discretion the political corruption will be far lesser. The article is basically saying instead of autocratic paternalism lets have authoritarianism by committee just like the dear old Soviet Union of the 1970's. I would vote for trump solely to greatly diminish the Mandarin Class.
I have never understood how reasonable people can believe "bureaucracy is a safeguard, and people ought to appreciate it. Bureaucrats are as self interested as any person in the private sector. As one economist explained it:
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”
-- Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
"The ultimate effect, and often the explicit intention, was to return power to the person of the ruler.". I think Mr. Hansen might be right about this but I have my doubts. In the US I think the revolt against the bureaucratic state is rooted in Article 1, Section 1 of the constitution: "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.", and a growing unwillingness of the American people to cede that power to unelected officials. And while he claims that the modern bureaucratic state is built on "scientific and professional expertise" he fails to address what happens when that expertise and professionalism is proven to be neither. And Lord knows our current crop of so-called experts, aren't expert in anything other than protecting their bureaucratic empires. You only need to look at the reaction to the COVID virus, the debacle in Afghanistan, and the woke takeover of education to see the failure inherent in the system.
People on the left seem to love dictators, whether it be the unelected people on the Supreme Court, or the CDC, issuing rules to protect us all. They seem to be deeply suspicious of voting and the right to vote.
So, for instance, vast majorities of Americans of all races think there should be Voter ID.
People on the left hate voter ID, because one of their tactics is to manufacture votes and destroy votes. Voter ID adds legitimacy to voting and makes it more transparent and honest. The people who want illegal immigrants voting are the same people who are found with boxes of ballots in their cars, and the same people who love it when unelected people on the Supreme Court, or the CDC, start issuing rules to our whole society.
It's ironic but "Democrats" really don't seem to like democracy much, or majority rule. They are anti-populist and anti-democratic. They also hate free speech and treating all people as if we are equal human beings.
Bull fucking shit.
The “bureaucratic state” is NOT something to admired as these guys are suggesting. No. These unelected, federal government teat sucklers are the biggest part of the problem. They’ve ensconced themselves into power in DC no matter which party is the titular head for the current four year presidential term, and no matter which party controls congress from year to year. THEY are the problem. They’re unaccountable, never fired, never responsible for anything, and we the taxpayers are footing the bill. An ever expanding bill.
Whatever happened to a limited federal government?
No, these fuckers need to go. I may consent to be governed (for now) bu I refuse to be ruled!
The ultimate effect, and often the explicit intention, was to return power to the elected chief executive as required by the Constitution.
In this view, democracy is a safeguard, and people ought to appreciate it. But how do you get people to appreciate it? One idea is that unelected, unaccountable, often anonymous bureaucrats can not issue mandates.
Attacks such as those on former President Donald Trump by the 'deep state' turned out to be attempts to subvert the democratic system itself.
The global rebellion against the modern bureaucratic state, and the scientific and professional expertise on which it is built, has degenerated into a zero-sum struggle against any effort whatsoever to impose binding, impersonal rules to defend the public good...
Another way of saying is...
The global rebellion for the modern bureaucratic state, and the credentialed and political expertise on which it is built, has degenerated into a zero-sum struggle for any effort whatsoever to impose binding, impersonal rules to expand the "public good"...
These two are either willfully blind or completely lacking in self-awareness.
The idea of a highly-efficient professional bureaucracy running the day-to-day business of government on a non-partisan basis is a quaint anachronism.
"Attacks such as those of former President Donald Trump on the 'deep state' turned out to be attempts to demolish the bureaucratic state itself. The ultimate effect, and often the explicit intention, was to return power to the person of the ruler."
This is a bit of a stretch conclusion...a very long stretch IMO. Isn't it just as easy to believe Trump's motive was simply to reduce the power of the "deep state" to achieve a better balance between elected officials and the bureaucrats? This as opposed to the bureaucrats having the strong hand regardless of which party is (supposedly) in charge?
"Why can't we mandate anything?"
Have these great minds ever try to open a business, build an addition on a home or heard of Obama care?
JFC, half my life is wasted complying with government mandates.
For Americans who are fully vaccinated, organized political resistance to vaccination mandates is infuriating.
For Progressives, organized political resistance is infuriating.
The resistance to standard health measures is part of a broad global decline in how people see the legitimacy of apolitical, rational state bureaucracies
They are not apolitical. As is indicated by the headline.
Why can't we mandate anything?
Who's "we"?
The whole article is nothing more than an elaborate false choice between authoritarianism and bureaucracy; no middle ground.
From "Why can't we mandate anything?" by Stephen E. Hanson (vice provost for academic and international affairs at the College of William & Mary)
Mandates?? Like wear a mask at the grocery store?
No on can quantify the value of the mask, but it is a mandate........and that's why mandate's don't work.
Mandates? Try Grindr.
Can’t disagree more with this bloke. The Deep State is not simply bureaucracies. Would that it were so! Unfortunately it is made up of those who consider themselves the “permanent employees” of this Republic: unaccountable and impossible to fire for cause. Amongst these drones are the Lt. Col. Vindemins and other self-important slobs who practice treachery against any executive office-holders they oppose, egged on and protected by the Lords of the Swamp in Congress, and then endeavor to subvert the People and the Republic itself when their fellow travelers (or an empty husk like Joe) regain temporary control. They are always working to aggregate power to the State, more control over graft and redistribution of taxpayer dollars. The Deep State enriches its friends and torments its enemies: small government types, conservatives of any kind, skeptics, patriots, anyone suspicious of international bodies, religious people, honest journalists and incorruptible do-gooders and especially anyone who questions whichever “expert” the Deep State elevates to proclaim the lie of the day. Questioning the Deep State is an existential threat to progressives for if they have to rely on persuasion and honest brokering their schemes fail. Only by deception and abuse of power can they maintain control.
The robust defense of rational, reasonable public health measures to fight COVID-19 can play a useful role in pushing back against patrimonialism, in the U.S. and globally.
.....
And who is to offer such defense?
Before during after the mandate?
Will there be any checks on this mandatory power?
Was there a tipping point when wise bureaucratic management turned into something else? Lewis Black used to have a great rant: the delivery of safe potable water to every home was a great accomplishment of both engineering and public health. Just about the time it was pretty well complete, rich and well-educated people started buying bottled water, at least partly because they didn't trust tap water. Modern science alleviates some fears, but it seems to create new ones. The authorities see themselves as managing perceptions, not just telling the truth and acting on it.
Globally, the peak of Covid deaths came in the last month of 2020, and the first month of 2021. One can wonder whether all the government measures of 2020 made much difference. We were told the vaccines would be a game changer. So far it looks like there will still be outbreaks, but they will be manageable, with fewer deaths than earlier outbreaks. If so, it is more and more like seasonal flu, and most of the public health measures ought to be called off. One wouldn't get this impression from the official bureaucratic messaging, which has resembled Orwell's 1984: we have always been fighting the D variant. We have always been fighting the enemies and traitors who refuse to be vaccinated. We have always been fighting ivermectin and people who believe in it. What?
And since attacks on Trump are always involved: is open borders a super-fantastic ideas that wise bureaucrats are compelled by the science to enforce? Wide open trade with China? Endless wars?
He is defending technocratic rule as opposed to actual accountability to the electorate.
The Hill is wrong. Trump is a Federalist. He pushed power down to the states and to the people. The bureaucracy is an unaccountable power that has an agenda of its very own; the first item on its agenda is self preservation. One of Trump's goals was to deregulate life so people didn't have to come to the bureaucracy to ask "Mother, may I?"
The public health authorities have proven themselves to be unfit for power. They promote mask-mandates that have no scientific basis and are ineffective, low-barrier homeless shelters that allow drug and alcohol usage and have only cure 10% of their residents and giving out needles to the drug addicts in homeless camps. King County, WA is a prime example of this.
Vaccine and mask mandates are examples of fascist power. The very core principal of fascism is "you will obey!" Peoples wishes to not take the jab must be punished. Doesn't matter that they are already immune since they had COVID. Doesn't matter that the jab might kill them. The powers that be want to put everyone in their place, which is serfdom. "Obey or we'll make life a living hell." King Jay I of Washington has spoken. Duke Dow "the Incompetent" Constantine and his health minion Jeff Duchin have spoken.
“In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant.”
- Hanna Arendt, On Violence
“Bureaucracy is the rule of nobody and is therefore experienced as tyranny.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture
“We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.“ --Harold MacMillan
"It was a great advantage when tyranny had one head and one neck; but what axe will relieve us from the tyranny of the majority? Foreign conquest was an evil; but it commonly took only our flocks and herds and left ourselves in liberty."
--The Ethics of Democracy by F.J. Stimson. Scribner’s Magazine (1887)
Not like this wasn't seen coming. Even in von Mises' observation in 1947 of the Anglosphere countries moving toward the Zwangswirtschaft (compulsory economy) of the Nazis. We will like see more like this in this moment when the career bureaucrats in the US federal government failed so thoroughly in the Afghanistan withdrawal. And this coming on the heels of the overt subversion of Donald Trump by the bureaucrats.
"[T]he modern bureaucratic state, and the scientific and professional expertise on which it is built" is an enormous threat to personal liberty.
Donald Trump was no libertarian. As ready to print and distribute fiat currency as any other recent President. But his view of the Deep State was spot on - a bureaucratic monster, a government able to dissolve the people and form a new one.
The global rebellion against the modern bureaucratic state, and the scientific and professional expertise on which it is built
Is based on the fact that the modern bureaucratic state does not actually have scientific and professional expertise since it is staffed by mal-educated idiots who despise the people that they seek to rule. The technocrats claim to be disinterested philosopher kings whose only desire is for the welfare of "the people." Turns out what they really value is to feel virtuous without having to practice actual virtues.
The global rebellion against the modern bureaucratic state, and the scientific and professional expertise on which it is built, has degenerated into a zero-sum struggle against any effort whatsoever to impose binding, impersonal rules to defend the public good...
This is bullshit. The global rebellion is because the scientific and professional "expertise" have proven themselves inept at best, and outright malicious at worst. "Two weeks to flatten the curve" became endless lockdowns. Populations were told that masks didn't work, only for the same people to turn around and suddenly declare that they did. The "experts" in foreign policy gave us twenty years of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, while trying to push homosexuality and feminism on a tribal and deeply conservative culture which, surprise surprise, backfired. And those wars were the result of a bureaucratic class which spent decades prior to 2000 creating an increasingly complex network of political, economic, and social connections which required constant maintenance in the face of a changing world. And so here we are, with western countries like Australia turned into prisons, communist China rapidly expanding its influence, Afghanistan taken over by the Taliban, and inflation threatening to blow up the US economy, and thus the world economy.
The problem is that the bureaucracy became a means for midwits good at gaming the system to get well-paid sinecures without actually achieving anything of note. And so they instead resorted to cheap slogans, empire-building, internal politics, virtue signaling, group-think, and reflexively relying on trying the same actions which they've tried before, no matter if they worked or not in the past.
" attempts to demolish the bureaucratic state itself."
The bureaucratic state?? Oh, you mean, Our Rulers? The Masters that RUN the country?
I heard about this dreamy, idealic state that this guy imagined....
a Government of the people, by the people, for the people
Imagine that! Not a bureaucratic state, but a People's Government!
Crazy, huh? The Wild Things people used to dream of
Trump can be understood as part of a global wave of anti-bureaucratic patrimonialism that includes Vladimir Putin in Russia, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Victor Orban in Hungary.
Which one of these is not like the other?
Hint: One of them stepped down after an election was held.
These guys' complaint is not with Trump, it's with the people.
Apparently the American people have lost the confidence of the bureaucracy and can only win it back with unquestioning obedience to every demand.
People actually believe that rule by unelected bureaucrats is a good thing?
I can't believe anyone is writing in support of the bureaucratic state so soon after the Afghanistan debacle. The intelligence got the timeline completely wrong; the military evacuated Bagram; State did not evacuate zitizens earlier and gave conficting information during the crisis (Go to the the airport. Don't go to the airport!) Apparently there are still Americans who want to get out but can't.
The bureaucratic state runs on anonymous leaks to the WaPo and NYT. This was visible in some of the blameshifting after the Afghan fiasco.
The bureaucratic state brought you Russian collusion. Members of the bureaucratic state publicly participated in the "Resistance" to Trump's election.
The bureaucratic state avoids accountability because to do so would admit error.
No one will be fired over Afghanistan except the Marine Lt Colonel who criticized leadership; no one will resign in disgrace.
IIRC, there has been one firing and one conviction after Russian collusion was proven a non event.
In California, the bureaucratic state cannot deal with homelessness; thieves, including convicts, stole at least $11 billion from the State's unemployment fund early in the Covid crisis.
The bureaucratic state is the modern equivalent of the Chinese Mandarin class, who advanced through being able to pass tests, not perform competently.
Bureaucratic University or micro-patrimonialism/Trumpism
University of Wisconsin President Tommy Thompson defies Republican legislature on schools’ COVID plans
We are ruled these days by people we can't vote out of office. Now, had this bureaucracy performed well during, let's say this pandemic, there wouldn't be much criticism about it. However, they have performed abysmally. The elected officials in half the country have performed badly, too, but we can vote them out of office in primaries and/or general elections (and hopefully this starts next week with Gruesom). The credility of the Deep State/bureaucracy has suffered a unrecoverable loss. It is over for them being taken seriously on the merits- it is down now only to full on coercion.
Asked and answered.
Why can't "we" mandate anything? I disagree off the bat. We mandate plenty.
Why can't "we" mandate as much as we'd like? Because for too many people doing the mandating, it's not a regrettable last resort; it's the immediate response to a significant number of people refusing to be persuaded. Oh, you don't agree? Well, we'll just have to make you. We don't have time to fool around here.
"Bureaucracy needs to be made more responsive, inclusive and equitable, to be sure — but first it needs to be preserved."
First it needs to be preserved. Ponder that. This is exactly the mindset that leaves Hanson and Kopstein scratching their heads on why the bureaucracy is under attack. Because its first imperative is indeed to preserve itself. (Its second is to grow.) A bureaucracy can be treated by the chief executive as a group apolitical public servants who would never let their own politics intrude on their execution of lawful orders – but then it has to, you know, actually BE that. The moment you have Anonymous saying, Don't worry, y'all, we'll thwart him from within, he's not really calling the shots here, you justify any supposed loyalty oath Trump was accused of administering.
And the moment the public health bureaucracy balances any other consideration against giving its bosses the truth, and the safest way forward, as best they can discern it, they have no right to demand, Hey, why won't these people do what we say? We're the experts! Where would you be without us? Just going to have to mandate it, I guess....
These guys write like they've never heard of the Constitution and wouldn't understand if someone tried to explain it to them. The Constitution doesn't assign all power to "the person" of the President, but it assigns all Executive power precisely to that person. Of course, Congress has power, too, and has much more power to mandate sundry actions than the President does. But Congress is also elected, and thus it can't be trusted to legislate in conformity with the "scientific and professional expertise" of the best and the brightest. What is needed (although the Constitution doesn't provide for it) is some vehicle for the best and the brightest to safeguard the common good by using their scientific and professional expertise to that end (and never, of course, for career advancement or other personal gain), regardless of the uneducated and perhaps corrupted passions of the nominally sovereign People. Power to the proudly antidemocratic bureaucracy!
Uh, It was the other way around: The deep state, including the Justice Dept, FBI and Intel agencies attacked Trump, beginning in earnest in the Spring of 2020 and continuing past the inauguration of Biden and on to this day.
The Wikipedia article about "patrimonialism" starts off with a big warning: "This article needs attention from an expert in Sociology or Political science". Please do not let Messrs Hanson and Kopstein, separately or together, be those experts!
"The global rebellion against the modern bureaucratic state, and the scientific and professional expertise on which it is built, has degenerated into a zero-sum struggle against any effort whatsoever to impose binding, impersonal rules to defend the public good...."
No, it hasn't.
These guys certainly have an outsized regard for "scientific and professional expertise". Do they not know that the ironclad rule of science is that today's certainty is tomorrow's curiosity? That "What we know to be true today" becomes "What people once believed to be true"? That scientists frequently disagree (as they very much do over COVID and the vaccines)?
These guys are saying, "Follow the Science," when they really mean, "How dare you question what we know to be true!"
And then they blame Trump, at least in part. Never mind Trump was elected, in part, because he addressed a public that, in part, was weary of bureaucratic tyranny.
Certainly a bureaucracy can act as an additional check against other branches of government. But where checks and balances are built to thwart "personalistic rule", the bureaucracy itself can become an assembly of insufferable petty tyrants, answerable to almost no one (Anthony Fauci, controller of research grants, comes to mind).
In a world where knowledge is fluid and changing, bureaucracies are conservative, glacial monoliths.
The authors say, "...we need to rebuild public support for the idea of bureaucratic expertise itself." Good luck with that.
This post just might deserve the "Trump Derangement Syndrome" tag.
“In this view, bureaucracy is a safeguard, and people ought to appreciate it. But how do you get people to appreciate it?”
You get people to appreciate it by fixing it. I know a GS-13 who retired in her mid-50s after 35 years of DoD Civil Service. Her annual retirement pay is around 110K which includes regular cost of living increases. Yes, a 110K a year retirement check for a mid-level bureaucrat. Currently there are about 360,000 working GS-13s. Do the math, that’s too much tax-payer money. You get people to appreciate it by firing inept bureaucrats instead of promoting them. Lots of higher ranking bureaucrats engage in what is known in the field as empire building. Build a good loyal empire and you may get a chance for promotion to an SES position in DC. That’s where the real power and big bucks are. A swollen, corrupt bureaucracy is no safeguard.
One idea that a mask requirement would provide an occasion for speaking persuasively to the people about how "rational, reasonable" experts are working earnestly to preserve good order.
Well, that didn't work- since anyone who's studied actual masking studies knows that pushing everyone to wear one is neither rational nor reasonable.
I’m not sure I agree with a single sentence in the linked article. Since I am vaccinated and oppose vaccine mandates, these guys lost in in the first sentence. What a pair of weenies.
They leave out the fact that in democracies/republics the leaders are responsible to the electorate; the bureaucracy is not.
"for speaking persuasively"
Words never believed by the Democrat Party which operates on the "Do As We Command, Peasant" principle.
The great Alasdair McIntyre in his book After Virtue, called bureaucratic wisodm one of the great moral fictions of our time. He was spot on. (https://www.amazon.com/After-Virtue-Study-Moral-Theory/dp/0268035040/ref=asc_df_0268035040/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312721175982&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12210016877993844599&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9004077&hvtargid=pla-450261636841&psc=1)
"Attacks such as those of former President Donald Trump on the 'deep state' turned out to be attempts to demolish the bureaucratic state itself."
I think they failed to support their thesis. The bureaucratic state tried to abolish Trump because it thought it was the legitimate power. While there is value in a consistent delivery of service regardless of who is elected leader, it is still important to realize that someone WAS elected leader and is the one who gets to decide policy. The deep state wanted that privilege for itself. If these guys take their argument one step further, as they should have if they were really thinking beyond "how do we get those pesky anti-vaxxers to submit," they would realize that their argument would lead to conclusion that the election of leaders is superfluous now that we have a well established bureaucracy. As it is, the legislature has abdicated their responsibility to the agencies and the courts seemed to have accepted that transfer (though not all the time.)
The problem with a bureaucratic system is that it is unresponsive to the people it serves and begins to serve itself. Its rules and internal systems are designed to protect its territory, budget, and workers and its primary mission is no longer to fulfill its original mandate.
For that reason it is mandatory that the bureaucracy be completely under the control of the elected leaders. There needs to be some mechanism in place for people to be able redress wrongs.
"The resistance to standard health measures is part of a broad global decline in how people see the legitimacy of apolitical, rational state bureaucracies, we’ve found."
If our bureaucracies were apolitical (not to mention rational) there would be a lot less resistance.
recently SC denied stay till /procedural tangle/ could be resolved.
Mandates don't issue from bureaucracy who merely enforce it.
maybe these professors need to demonstrate clear grasp of procedure before academic broad-brush broadsides
They think it's a zero-sum game, a tug-of-war where the people are the rope. The dictator controls everything, or the bureaucrats do.
We used to have a system called limited government.
A bureaucratic state is just a concise definition of oligarchy, as discussed at length in The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, that indispensable handbook of modern and efficient government freed from the hassle and bother of minor annoyances like accountability to the proles.
There is a class of people that are mediocre, and have no desire to provide any service or any good that anyone else wants.
All they want to do is tell other people what to do.
This group of people ends up in government.
They are generally worthless to society and when they have power they are a pure net negative.
They are also attracted to administrative positions in Universities and HR.
It is time for these people to go.
All of Trump's wounds were self-inflicted.
"Why can't we mandate anything?"
Little Stevie Hanson has watched this a dozen times, and every time it sailed right over his precious little noggin without so much as rustling a precious little hair.
The purpose of the modern university is to create bureaucrats and the people who will obey them.
To repeat a couple of things already said (or implied):
1. Congress has unconstitutionally delegated its law making authority to the executive when it gives executive branch agency rule making authority that has the force of law. This gives the executive more power than it should have and places in the hands of unelected bureaucrats.
2. The people elect the president to enact the president's agenda. The permanent bureaucrat class has the obligation to obey their boss (the president) and not follow their own agenda. It's not their government to do with how they please.
I highly highly highly recommend finding and watching the BBC series from the 80's called "Yes, Minister" for an humorous take on the deep state as seen from a British perspective. I can't recommend it highly enough.
"merely enforce"? Have you ever tried to get even a building permit? Some of these clowns have so much fun they ought to be paying the government for the privilege.
Blogger Howard said...All of Trump's wounds were self-inflicted.
Including those by Andrew Weissmann who holds the record for Supreme Court reversals at 9 to zero in the Arthur Anderson case.
Hanson performs in his article the journalistic act of completely reversing cause and effect, an act made famous by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web column under his heading, "Fox buttgerfield, Where Are You?" Butterfield famously wondered why prison populations were increasing in the US, "despite" decreasing crime rates.
Hanson decides that removing the authority of unelected executive branch bureaucrats to create law via regulations is somehow empowering the head of the executive branch. In other words, the government is being made less powerful "despite" the head of the executive branch removing power from his regulatory bureaucrats. He has the cause and effect exactly backwards.
Trump attempted to remove power from beaureacrats. That power didn't magically flow to Trump. It vanished, at best, or at worst returned to Congress where it belonged.
Heydrich and the members of the Wannsee Conference were good bureaucrats.
What's most remarkable is the vaulting arrogance of these people, arrogance to the point of all-consuming stupidity. Do they really believe they can hatch and mature their treasonous cabals so openly, that we aren't reading and listening? Evidently, they do. Mafia dons, a group not known for their refinement and erudition, are at least smart enough to conduct their conspiracies with discretion.
Aaaand it's Roger Sweeny for the home run.
I used to BE a college instructor. The entire system outside of some STEM training that largely should have been completely in high school was busy work to justify buckets of bucks for the administrators, or agitprop ... to justify more buckets of bucks for more administrators.
If we learned one thing from Trump's four years, it's that you can't trust the bureaucracy, at all. They will try to subvert the election. The civil service system has ceased to function.
The next Trump will know that. The head of the FBI needs to go, just as quickly as the Attorney General. The CIA and NSA also. And they need to be replaced by people loyal to the incoming president.
Trump was blunted because he trusted them too much, not too little. He listened to establishment Republicans too much, not too little.
He was also blunted by his inability to hire good, loyal people. Cf Jess Sessions. We can hope the next one is better at that.
"The ultimate effect, and often the explicit intention, was to return power to the person of the ruler."
No, the ultimate effect and explicit intention, was to return power to the elected officials who are accountable to the voters, not the corrupt and worthless bureaucrats who are accountable to no one and nothing
Blogger Howard: "All of Trump's wounds were self-inflicted."
What a strange, child-like lie.
So like your political and intellectual bookend buddy, pro-marxist LLR-Chuck.
Peas in a pod.
The period of time from February 2020 until the present day gave the bureaucracy and the bureaucratic expert class an opportunity to shine. They were tested as they had not been tested since VJ Day.
And they failed, completely, utterly, and decisively.
Now Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein, both denizens of the academic community, apparently want us to overlook the bureaucracy's mistakes and outright blunders, and the number of times that people like Anthony Fauci didn't merely lie to us but later admitted that they had outright lied to us -- but purely for our own good, don't you know? -- and not push back against the bureaucracy.
The second paragraph begins with the sentence An abundance of clinical evidence shows the authorized vaccines are both safe and effective.
Really? If the vaccines are effective then why do people need to mask despite being fully vaccinated? Did we receive placebos instead of true vaccines? Do we trust the government VAERS system to accurately report the number of people who have died or suffered severe health problems from the vaccine? That people are asking the question provides the answer, doesn't it?
The authors close with some unsupported assertions. Beyond this, we need to rebuild public support for the idea of bureaucratic expertise itself. Bureaucracy needs to be made more responsive, inclusive and equitable, to be sure — but first it needs to be preserved.
Are they really the experts? They are expert at climbing the bureaucracy, building empires, and knifing better people in the back, that goes without saying, doesn't it? Having lived for a while in the academic world I can understand how that would excite the admiration of academics, but is that what we really need in a crisis? Moreover I would ask the question of whether bureaucracy even can be made "responsive, inclusive, and equitable" unless it faces an existential threat. Absent incentives to become responsive, why would anything change?
Will J. Richardson writes, "Bureaucrats are as self-interested as any person in the private sector."
And how does one become a bureaucrat? One is hired into the bureaucracy by a senior bureaucrat. Once in you can never be fired, thanks to the civil service laws, unless convicted of a heinous crime.* But fellow bureaucrats do the investigations, the arrests, and the prosecutions, so that's not likely to happen. So you stay in power as long as you like, as long as it amuses you. Then you appoint your successor and retire on an obscenely congenial pension.
Michael Palin as Dennis the anarcho-syndicalist in the MP&HG clip I linked to earlier, denounces self-perpetuating autocracy. Bureaucracy isn't exactly autocracy, but it is just as self-perpetuating, unaccountable, and immovable. And just as hostile to the concept of self-government.
Well, revolutionary clouds are roiling on the horizon. And when traitors like Hanson and Kopstein find themselves uncomfortable passengers in tumbrels, like Louis XVI they'll wonder why the plebs weren't as grateful as they expected.
* Donald Trump's greatest error was his failure to appreciate the obdurate nature of the bureaucracy. He was too accustomed to the perform or perish fluidity of the business world, the world that gets things done as opposed to the deep state that gets things mired in printed gibberish like mastodons in La Brea asphalt. He discovered too late that even presidents can't fire enough GS-15s to make a difference. But presidents can command them to do almost anything ostensibly lawful. What he should have done was reassign them to other, more worthy tasks involving big orange bags and sticks with nails in them.
All of Trump's wounds were self-inflicted.
Says the servile worm with amnesia.
"merely enforce"? Have you ever tried to get even a building permit? Some of these clowns have so much fun they ought to be paying the government for the privilege.
W.J.Richardson: "Bureaucrats are as self interested as any person in the private sector." In addition to which:
..they are not accountable to the electorate; and
..they possess the sovereign power to deprive the electorate of property, liberty, and life.
Still feeling comfortable with the Deep State?
The authors want vaccine mandates. As good Brahmans, they want a lot of other mandates too. They blame libertarians and conservatives for undermining public faith in government. But it is the actions of government itself that have undermined public faith in government. For the latest example, see Afghanistan.
Michael K: "Including those by Andrew Weissmann who holds the record for Supreme Court reversals at 9 to zero in the Arthur Anderson case."
Uh oh.
Now you've done it.
LLR Chuck is NOT going to like your criticism of one of his most beloved heroes, Andrew Weissmann.
Stand by for incoming.....
Talk about TDS. Being a professional victim of others failures is a feature of Trump's preferred genre of hype. I was just ringing the dinner bell for a Lapdoggian response. Science!
Biden is the Bureaucracy. How's that working out?
It is not the one guy who has to run for reelection every 4 years, and is only able to serve 2 terms, that I am worried about. It is the unelected, entrenched apparatchiks that are there for life, that voters seem to have no way to fire, and that think of themselves as our rulers that worry me. I want the Federal Government reduced in size to the point that it does not matter so much which party wins the Federal government, because the power is at the state level, where it can be controlled better, and where if it gets out of control, you can move out from under it. I want my federal republic back.
So the Environmental Protection Agency in its wisdom declares Carbon Dioxide to be an air pollutant. Did Congress grant it that authority? I don't think so, but it took it anyway. And how about the FBI under Hoover? Or the experts in the Pentagon who favored continuing the war in Afghanistan indefinitely? Did the CIA really believe Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction" in the literal sense of that phrase (i.e. either nuclear or biological)? Etc., etc., etc..
And by what right does the Justice Department get to decide when and whether to enforce our nation's immigration laws? And isn't it an unconstitutional derogation of duty for the President to allow that to happen? Or is the oath of office -- "to see that the laws be faithfully executed" -- an empty formality?
This isn't about Trump. This is actually an example of dragging Trump into an argument in an attempt to cloud men's minds so that they can see nothing but Trump (apologies to Lamont Cranston. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?). It is about a couple academics attempting to defend the federal bureaucracy as benevolent and beneficial to the country. Judging from the comments they have failed.
Howard: "Talk about TDS. Being a professional victim of others failures is a feature of Trump's preferred genre of hype. I was just ringing the dinner bell for a Lapdoggian response. Science!"
Whenever Howard gets caught out posting something stunningly stupid which is impossible not to notice, which is quite often, he always reverts to the "hey, it was all just a test to see what everyone else was going to do" and "I meant that".
Again, quite child-like and just like his Althouse lefty bookend, LLR Chuck.
Mandates ebb and flow with the same tide that wants to remove the filibuster…
Howard said...
All of Trump's wounds were self-inflicted.
To expand that for Howard, since he's being a bit terse today:
1: Trump's policies were awesome, and made America a better place for Americans
2: Trump's major mistake was not firing every single person hired or promoted under Obama.
Comey should have been fired on day 1, as should have Rosenstein. Every General promoted under Obama should have been told his / her career was over. And that anyone who didn't resign would be investigated, charged, convicted, and have his / her security clearances and pension ripped away. (You don't seriously think that people like Miley aren't corrupt, do you?)
Trump's biggest wounds were caused by personal, he did not understand that "personnel is policy", and it hurt him, and us.
The next Republican President won't make that mistake. And if he gets majorities in the House and Senate, action 1 should be the total dismantling of "Civil Service", and all Civil Service protections for the incompetent and political hacks infesting our nation's bureaucracy
"The global rebellion against the modern bureaucratic state, and the scientific and professional expertise on which it is built, has degenerated into a zero-sum struggle against any effort whatsoever to impose binding, impersonal rules to defend the public good."
Please. The modern bureaucratic state is built on "Who sent you?", and "Who do you know?", and "Do you know who I am?" It's only "impersonal" if you don't have "pull."
An interesting piece at the Atlantic points to a Bangladesh study that shows masks do work against the Covid-19 virus as long as they are surgical masks or better, not cloth. The villages that implemented pro-masking policies saw a 34 percent decline in COVID-19 among seniors.
Pro-masking intervention in this study determined that free distribution of masks was important and paying for reminder programs to promote mask wearing worked but talking about altruism and protecting the community made little difference. Direct payments to wearers had little effect as well.
Michael K said...
Blogger Howard said...All of Trump's wounds were self-inflicted.
Including those by Andrew Weissmann who holds the record for Supreme Court reversals at 9 to zero in the Arthur Anderson case.
The LA Times has many good things to say about Andrew Weissmann.
Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein at some pains to list the institutions which still function, fulfilling their original mandate.
Which institutions are captured and no longer functioning?
Guys, there is nothing wrong with Howard that a good course of Ivermectin wouldn't cure.
The Progressive Ideal was that a bureaucracy (of necessity protected from the rough-and-tumble of electoral politics) could be populated by Wise Experts, who would then rule dispassionately as philosopher-kings.
The gulf between the ideal and the actual has, time and again, proven to be immense. The reality has been arrogant bureaucrats who need answer to no one and who have seldom proven to be anywhere as smart as they think they are. Is it necessary to point out that the Vietnam and Afghan Wars were managed by ‘experts,’ or that that great exemplar of a Progressive, empowered bureaucrat- New York’s Robert Moses- led to a revolt of those subject to his bureaucracy’s whims?
The important thing about an empowered bureaucracy is that it doesn’t need you, and therefore will roll over you to satisfy its purposes, and when that happens you will have no recourse. Yet after a century of repeated failure, this remains the Progressive ideal??
The bureaucracy is not an independent branch of government. It is not part of the checks and balances.
In each case, rule by men requiring unfailing loyalty as a prerequisite for political influence has led to the de-modernization of political authority and a return to personalistic rule. This explains why social divisions about public health measures are so bitter and enduring:
So the average Joes out there are only saying they don't want the vaccine because they're afraid of displeasing Trump and ruining their chance at political influence? Ridiculous. Never mind that Trump has come out and told people to get the vaccine and been booed for it by his fans.
People don't trust bureaucrats because the bureaucrats have lied to them so much and been wrong so many times yet they haven't the slightest humility. What kind of an idiot would trust someone like that?
The Poor Man's LLR Chuck, gadfly: "The LA Times has many good things to say about Andrew Weissmann."
LOL
Breaking: Leftist rag praises corrupt leftist.
Gee, that's revelatory...........
Of course, the facts are stubborn things: Andrew Weissmann remains the record holder for 9-0 reversals at the Supreme Court, and it doesn't matter how many leftists line up to praise his corrupt behavior in LA or elsewhere.
Shorter article: "Oh, those pesky checks and balances. Can't we bureaucrats just tell you what to do?"
I also find it curious that they deplore the rebellion against "the very idea of binding, impersonal legal rules and procedures" but have no apparent problem with the executive branches at the state level issuing diktats to enforce lockdowns, mask mandates, and required vaccinations.
"All of Trump's wounds were self-inflicted."
Whether they were or weren't is beside the point. The actual topic (since some people seem to have missed it) is whether or not the modern bureaucratic state is compatible with liberal democracy. That would seem a much more interesting topic than the flaws of a New York billionaire. I freely admit my judgement on this matter is colored by the fact that I don't have Trump living rent free in my head.
Wait a minute--conservatives and libertarians undermined faith in the bureaucracy??!! Those bastards! How are we going to survive without superior people giving us orders?
dwshelf (1:35pm):
"The head of the FBI needs to go" - that can be taken two ways. It might in fact be good to leave the rest of him in his fancy armchair, with his elbows still leaning on the top end of the main FBI conference room table, pour encourager les autres. Probably have to pickle or stuff him first, to keep the smell under control. But well worth the trouble and expense!
This is an absurd thesis. The rise of the administrative state is a well-worked theme in the history of the Progressive movement (1900-1920). And that time is when the thing itself and the idea of it first emerged fully in American political debates. It was absolutely not a force against presidential authority at all. It was in fact meant to be a buttress of presidential authority over against the legislative branch and the messy partisan politics of the broad masses. TR brought it forth, but it was Woodrow Wilson who most clearly endorsed its end-running of what he very explicitly regarded as an outdated Constitutional order of checks and balances. Madison's vision of the state as a system in which "ambition would check ambition" was to be replaced by all-knowing and supposedly impartial expert social engineers. It has grown and grown. Now it is true Obama and Trump and now even more so Biden have engaged in arbitrary power grabs a la executive orders (Obama's DACA being the most egregious example). But it is the administrative agencies -- EPA, FDA, the CDC, plus the intelligence agencies, etc., that have metastasized, power-grabbed and threatened Constitutional order far more than the presidents alone.
You know, I really can’t let this thread close without pointing out that it was the Deep State that attacked Donald Trump, practically on Day 1. Not the other way around.
Stephen E. Hanson (vice provost for academic and international affairs at the College of William & Mary)
Guy with a paper-pushing nothing job at Jen Psaki U.
The bureaucratic-regulatory state is still around. Trump never demolished or even threatened it. He shook it up a little in hopes of loosening its grip a bit.
The "patrimonialist" thesis is nonsense. Trump was an outsider. He was always asking "Can I do that?" because he didn't know how far his powers stretched. If he was told, "No you can't do that," he didn't do it. More experienced politicians and bureaucrats don't ask and don't take no for an answer.
In that sense, Trump wasn't quite the "get it done" guy he thought he was, but in his own way he did have respect for "norms," and likely more respect than some others in politics have, "norms" being understood as the way things are supposed to be done, rather than the way Washington DC does things in practice.
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