"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.

"Republic, Democracy or Democratic Republic?"

Sydney M. Williams

swstotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Republic, Democracy or Democratic Republic?”

June 11, 2109

“…democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely 

dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.

                                                                                                “Perspectives on the Constitution” 1998

Richard R. Beeman, Ph.D. (1942-2016) 

                                                                                                American historian and professor

Throughout most of the long history of man, the purpose of a life was simply to survive and procreate. Governments were formed as people began to live in communities. Republics and democracies were improvements on what had come before. Both have as their basis “people.” The word “republic” is derived from the Latin phrase “res publica,” the people’s concern. The word “democracy” stems from two Greek words, “demos,” meaning the people and “kratia,” meaning power or rule. Both are defined as forms of government in which ultimate power is invested in the people through a government run by their elected representatives, chosen either directly or indirectly. Both are in contrast to what had been the norm for most people over the millennia – large numbers controlled or enslaved by monarchial governments, which could be benevolent but more often were malevolent and autocratic.

But there are differences between republics and democracies. The latter implies rule by a simple majority, so that minority rights may be abridged, or over-ruled, by majority vote, whereas a republic relies on a written constitution that protects the natural rights of its citizens, including the rights of minorities. While autocracies are tyrannies by a minority, democracies devolve into a tyranny of the majority. Republics are less efficient, which can lead to frustration. If division is broad, the consequence can be the birth of multiple parties, followed by anarchy. Republics, better than democracies, protect the rights of all citizens. Apart from small towns, democracies have never lasted. The first known democracy was developed by Athenians and lasted from about 500 BC to circa 300 BC.  Their history was known to the Founders. In an 1814 letter to John Taylor, John Adams wrote: “Remember, democracies never last long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” Alexander Hamilton wrote, “Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.” Our Founders created a Republic, as the apocryphal story of Benjamin Franklin attests, with its purpose of providing, as our Declaration of Independence reads, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But our Country has begun to doff the mantle of republicanism and don the robes of democracy. In 1913, the 17^thAmendment was passed, which allowed for direct election of Senators, rather than to have them chosen by states’ legislatures. In 2013, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) adopted what was termed the “nuclear option” of eliminating the 60-vote rule on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments, excluding Supreme Court appointees. In April 2017, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) allowed a simple majority to end debate on Supreme Court appointees. Disappointed and in disbelief over the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and Donald Trump succeeded in the Electoral College, Democrats urged the direct election of a President – doing away with the Electoral College, a critical filament attaching ourselves to republicanism. For one thing, the Electoral College provides a defense against regionalism. For another, it pushes parties to build coalitions. Thus far, fourteen states and the District of Columbia, with 183 Electoral College votes, have passed bills and signed a pact that would grant their electoral college votes to whoever won the national popular vote, regardless of how the people in their state voted. (The Nevada legislature passed such a bill, but it was vetoed by Democrat Governor Steve Sisolak.) All these actions have in common one thing – a diminution of minority interests.

Democracies have other weaknesses, one highlighted by Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh: “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury,”…leading to “a loose fiscal policy.” We’re not there yet, but we’re closer. The Tax Policy Center estimates that forty-four percent of employed Americans did not pay any federal income tax in 2018, two percentage points more than in 2017. While those people do pay payroll taxes, excise taxes and state taxes, Professor Tyler’s words serve as a warning to a Western world fixated on increasing welfare payments and benefitting from abnormally low interest rates, rates that encourage borrowings and discourage savings. Governments are inclined to spend – for necessities such as defense, roads, schools and the welfare of the truly needed, but they also want to make life easier for their constituents – to purchase their votes, if you will. Constraints on spending simply do not exist – or will not until the debt burden becomes so heavy that the taxes required cause people to revolt. For the fiscal year 2018, 61.5% of the $4.1 trillion federal budget went to mandatory items, like transfer payments, while 7.6% went to net interest. That left only 31% for defense and other discretionary items, like education, science, veteran’s benefits, transportation, space and energy and the environment. If interest costs were a more normal three percent, interest expense, as a percent of the budget, would be fifteen percent. The Federal Reserve may have temporary control over the cost of money, but ultimately markets win. The fiscal deficit this year is expected to top a trillion dollars. Excessive debt leads, ultimately, to a cheapened currency, higher inflation and higher interest rates. Wisdom born of prudence has been subsumed by greed for political power. Continued government expenditures in excess of revenues, and abetted by artificially low interest rates, are a recipe for a day of reckoning.

Wealthy, coastal elites ensure a majority by including minorities who are dependent on their largesse – minorities identified by skin color, gender, sexual preference or religion. It is segregation of the electorate by identity. It is diversity in all but what is most important – ideas. They are patronizing toward those who disagree with them and hypocritical in passing laws for which they are not accountable. They are not interested in political philosophies outside their slipstream. They have enlisted the aid of universities, who they have helped through student loan programs, which assure those institutions a growing stream of students. Universities have responded by impinging free speech in the name of political correctness. As well, a republic’s and a democracy’s last line of defense is the media, many of whom today, however, have been co-opted by the Left to support their programs. I am a straight, white, male Protestant living in Connecticut; yet, as a conservative in a “blue” state, I am a minority. Am I recognized as such? Of course not. No one has yet prevented me from saying or writing what I want, but I am not so naïve as to believe that as we become more polarized my rights may be denied. Already, I have been accused of being racist and homophobic.

So, are we still a republic, as Benjamin Franklin purportedly told the woman outside Constitutional Hall in July 1787? He said we would be, but only as long as we could keep it. And, as noted above, it is fraying at the edges. I believe we are, but less robust than we once were, perhaps a democratic republic? Our system is fragile. A diversity of ideas is discouraged. Our form of government is not well understood by most citizens. Schools no longer make a priority of teaching civics and history; politicians are self-serving, caring not for “the people,” as they proclaim, but for the next election. Too much hatred fills the air. We should take nothing for granted.Republics are easy to lose and almost impossible to rebuild.