"The Deep State and the Abuse of Power"

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Deep State and the Abuse of Power”

October 8, 2020

 

“The essence of government is power; and power,
lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”

James Madison (1751-1836)

Speech, Virginia Convention

December 2, 1829

 

We should forever be thankful for the brave and wise men who fought our revolution and created our government, between the years 1775 and 1789. They defeated the world’s foremost military power. Their experience with Parliament and the King made them wary of governmental power. They knew enough about human nature to recognize that power was an aphrodisiac. In February 1775, Alexander Hamilton wrote in “A Farmer Refuted:” “A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.” They recognized that warning applied to them – and their political heirs.

 

Later, looking back on those years, Madison, in the same speech quoted in the rubric above, spoke to the risks of different forms of government – that monarchies can become despotic and aristocracies may sacrifice the rights and welfare of the many to the demands of the few. In republics, he added, “the great danger is that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.” It was because of the failings and risks of other forms of government, along with the fallibility of man, that the Founders created a government based on a written Constitution, which emphasized the natural rights of individuals that must be protected. It clearly stated that power would be diffused through three equal branches, with the legislative branch being bicameral – a lower chamber reflecting the population of the nation and a Senate representing each state equally. It further stated that powers not delegated to the federal government, nor prohibited by it, are reserved for the States or the people. Freedom for the individual came foremost; governmental abuse of power was the great internal risk.

 

In 1789, the federal bureaucracy consisted of employees in three departments – State, Treasury and War. Today, the Federal Register lists 454 departments, agencies and sub-agencies.  Excluding members of the military, approximately three million people are employed in the federal government, plus about four million federal government contract employees – the fastest growing segment of the federal workforce. 

 

While there is concern over balance between the three branches of government – that Congress has abdicated some of its responsibility to an Executive with a “pen and a phone,” and a Judiciary that has become activist – the biggest worry lies with an unelected bureaucracy that is unaccountable, yet wields power. Like employees everywhere, federal workers want to see growth, as it provides personal opportunities. Not unnaturally, they prefer the Democratic Party, as it favors bigger government. Roughly 90% of funds raised in 2016 from government employees for political campaigns went to the Democratic Party. While the Hatch Act is supposed to restrict federal employee participation in certain political activities, that has not stopped the politicization of some departments, agencies and employees and their weaponization by unscrupulous elected politicians.

 

During the Obama Administration, we saw the IRS’s Lois Lerner target conservative non-profits. We saw the Energy Department steer stimulus payments to Solyndra, a company whose executives were Obama donors, but which subsequently went bankrupt. We saw farmers prosecuted by lawyers for the Environmental Protection Agency for violating stringent “navigable water” rules (regulations later relaxed by courts and the Trump Administration). We watched as Attorney General Eric Holder named James Rosen, a reporter for Fox News, a criminal co-conspirator and flight risk. As Kimberley Strassel wrote in the October 2 edition of the Wall Street Journal: “…voters had watched the swamp take over – IRS targeters, self-righteous prosecutors, zealous regulators – armed with stunning powers and a mentality that they were entitled to make the rules, to tell the little people what was best for them.” 

 

But the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, and which may cascade voters disillusioned with American politics into the Trump fold, has been the Russian probe. It is (and was) unlikely that Putin would have preferred the unpredictable Donald Trump, whom he did not know, to Hillary Clinton, whom he did. In his memoir Red Notice, published in October 2015, Bill Browder, the man behind the Magnitsky Act, wrote, “…ever since Barack Obama had become President, the main policy of the U.S. government toward Russia had been one of appeasement.”  On March 13, 2017, I wrote a TOTD, “Trump, Russia and Lies:” “It has always beggared belief to conclude Putin would have preferred Trump (a political unknown and cited as mercurial) to Mrs. Clinton, a woman who had been part of an administration that had given him little pushback in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria.” Now we know the only collusion that existed was between the Clinton Campaign, employing Fusion GPS and a British agent with Russian ties, and the FBI. Will we hear mea culpas from Senators Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) who for four years promoted this Russian hoax? Not likely. Nor will we hear or read apologies from mainstream media. More likely, they will bury themselves deeper into the filth of corruption and lies that has become their milieu.

 

But I drift from the main point, which is that too much power resides in the hands of arrogant and unaccountable bureaucrats; it was that which motivated Mr. Trump to run for President – to drain the “swamp” that had become Washington. It was a job that only an outsider would dare take on. In January 2017, before the inauguration, Senator Schumer warned Mr. Trump about taking on the intelligence agencies: “He’s being really dumb to do this… Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” So, is the answer to let those agencies continue to accrue unrestrained power? In her op-ed quoted above, Ms. Strassel wrote, “…don’t underestimate the number of Americans who fear a return to that world.” These are people who do not respond to polls, but who love and respect the United States, its history and what it stands for. They live fearful of the power that now lies in supercilious and unelected hands – a power that frightens even those like Senator Schumer, as his warning to Mr. trump made clear. These people thank God Donald Trump ran and was elected. Apparently, he was “too dumb,” too naive or too brave to fear the denizens of Washington’s swamp. He does what he promises. He has taken them on. And his foes, in Washington, Hollywood and the media, are scared silly.

 

In November 1943, Friedrich von Hayek wrote his English publisher Routledge a letter: “we shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may prevent its use for desirable purposes.”[1] In this age of COVID-19, some governors have taken the crisis as an excuse to accrue more power, preferring lockdowns to the common sense embedded in the Great Barrington Declaration[2], which recommends people be allowed to live normally while protecting the vulnerable. Madison foresaw this risk – that the rights of the many can be sacrificed to the demands of the few.