Some years ago, in an interview with Mike Wallace, conservative commentator Fulton Lewis, Jr. stated that the federal government was run, not by elected representatives, but by the civil service; that policy was made, not by secretaries or assistant secretaries, but by non-appointed officials. He said further that the president should have authority to appoint people to agencies at whatever level policy was made. I saw the original telecast — on February 1, 1958 — and recently found it online, preserved by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
What brought the interview to mind was Professor Angelo M. Codevilla’s recent book, The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It. The author complains of the administrative state, rooted in the New Deal — a federal government in which “bureaucrats make, enforce, and adjudicate nearly all the rules.” He labels as the Ruling Class those who populate the federal bureaucracy, along with elected representatives devoted to big government and hangers-on from the private sector who profit from government or who trade campaign dollars for access and favors. They are the power elite, the statist minority that rules the republic. By contrast, the author refers to the majority of Americans, those who live in the private sector and represent traditional America, as the Country Class.
These two classes represent the fundamental political division across the country. Members of the Ruling Class occupy the “commanding heights of government,” convinced that they own the secret of our deliverance and hungry for power to prove it. This class constitutes a “machine” that transfers “money, jobs, and privileges” to its clients. The results of its domination are an extension of the culture of dependency, an assault on the family, on religion, and on conventional morality. This class has bent science and reason to the service of power. It has placed public schools beyond the reach of parents, filled our cars with inscrutable gadgets, and thrown away billions on economic bailouts. And worse, it has led us into a procession of wars, expensive in blood and treasure but without clear purpose or outcome.
Codevilla covers the spectrum of complaints about big government — the problems of public education, the Kelo decision, the global-warming necromancy, the absurd regulatory minutiae, crony capitalism, alliances with labor unions (especially those of government workers), the abetting of family disintegration, and the complexity and favoritism in our laws.
Still, the author sees hopeful signs. The discontent of Republican voters with their party suggests that the Country Class is getting restless, and the Tea Party movement is stark evidence of its discontent. Many of its members want to “restore a way of life that has been largely superseded.” For Codevilla, the “signature cultural venture” of the Country Class is the homeschool movement. It represents the reassertion of parental prerogatives and, I might add, a back-of-the-hand to public education, which Mises warned must inevitably become indoctrination. But why haven’t Republicans — members of America’s “conservative” party — acted to expose the incompetence of the Ruling Class? Author Codevilla answers — they’re “salivating” to join that class.
That the Tea Party movement elevated the anxieties of the American Left wasn’t surprising, but the response of prominent Republican David Frum to Codevilla’s book was troubling. Reviewing The Ruling Class on Frum Forum, he referred to the author as a “grumpy old man,” neglecting the possibility that there was something to be grumpy about. He faulted the book for being short on substance. But clearly, it was intended to raise an alarm rather than provide a paradigmatic analysis. Frum worries about the Republican Party. He frets over the loss of the young and educated, never suspecting that their education may be to blame — that academics tend to produce Democrats. Professor Codevilla perceives the relationship between the universities, the power elite, and its preferred political home — the Democratic Party.
Why haven’t Republicans — members of America’s “conservative” party — acted to expose the incompetence of the Ruling Class? Because they’re salivating to join that class.
But he isn’t traveling a fresh path. Consider a comment from Democracy in America. In the chapter discussing European governments, de Tocqueville added a footnote, which I quote in part: “As the functions of the central government are multiplied, the number of officials serving it increases in proportion. They form a state within each state, and since they share the stability of government, increasingly take the place of the aristocracy.” Earlier in the same masterpiece, I find the following: “When I arrived in the United States, I discovered with astonishment that good qualities were common among the ruled, but rare among the rulers.” Codevilla refers to the Ruling Class as a bunch of “pretentious, incompetent, losers” — in other words, they lack good qualities.
In Free to Choose, Milton and Rose Friedman warned us of a new power elite: “The new class, enshrined in the universities, the news media, and especially the federal bureaucracy, has become the most powerful of special interests. The new class has repeatedly succeeded in imposing its views, despite widespread public objection, and often despite specific legislative enactments to the contrary.”
Earlier, James Q. Wilson had described the history and development of the federal bureaucracy in his essay “The Rise of the Bureaucratic State.” He identified the fundamental problem — the transfer of authority from elected representatives to an “unaccountable administrative realm.” In the process, client relationships develop between certain sectors of the economy and government agencies. Regulatory agencies gain broad powers derived from the need to make “binding choices without clear standards of choice.” Thus the “new class” forms bureaucratic alliances with and gains power over the private sector. Wilson pointed out the fact that all democratic regimes tend to enlarge the administrative side of government and move “resources” from the private to the public sector. This is the very centralizing tendency in democratic governments that so concerned de Tocqueville.
Perhaps, before we decide on an anti-Ruling Class strategy, it might be a good idea to consult another critic of government, the late John T. Flynn. In The Road Ahead: America’s Creeping Revolution (1949), he foresaw what now so obviously confronts the republic — a conspiracy to increase the size and power of government. Flynn saw the conspirators as American versions of the British Fabian Socialists. He drew up a list of ten imperatives that he believed necessary to halt the drift toward socialism. I present them here without the author’s elaborations, though the latter are well worth consulting. All are contained in the final chapter of The Road Ahead. In the 60 years since this remarkable chapter first appeared, America’s creeping revolution has crept on and on, with much of the country either indifferent to, or benefiting from, the encroachments of government. This, in Flynn’s words, is how to stop them:
I. We must put human freedom once again as the first of our demands. There can be no security in a nation without freedom.
II. We must stop apologizing for our Capitalist society.
III. Not one more step into socialism. Hold the line for the American way of life.
IV. Get rid of compromising leaders.
V. We must recognize that we are in the midst of a revolution — that it is war — and that we must begin to fight it as such.
VI. We must put an end to the orgy of spending that is rapidly bankrupting the nation.
VII. We must put an end to crisis government in America.
VIII. We must stop “planning” for socialism and begin planning to make our free system of private enterprise operate at its maximum capacity.
IX. We must set about rebuilding in its integrity our republican system of government.
X. We cannot depend on any political party to save us. We must build a power outside the parties so strong that the parties will be compelled to yield to its demands.
Any questions?
Sources
Flynn, John T. The Road Ahead: America’s Creeping Revolution. New York: Devon-Adair, 1949. http://mises.org/books/roadahead.pdf
Friedman, Milton, and Rose Friedman. Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. New York: Avon, 1981.
Frum, David. “How the Elites Became Tea Party Enemy #1.” Frum Forum (Sept. 19, 2010). www.frumforum.com/how-the-elites-became-tea-party-enemy-1
Kurtz, Howard. “Conservative David Frum Loses Think-Tank Job After Criticizing GOP.” Washington Post ( March 26, 2010).www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032502336.html
“Mike Wallace Interview: Fulton Lewis, Jr., 2/1/58.” The Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/lewis_fulton_t.html
Mises, Ludwig von. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, 3rd. Revised Ed. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1966.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Trans. George Lawrence. Ed. J. P. Mayer. New York: Anchor, 1969.
Wilson, James Q. “The Rise of the Bureaucratic State.” National Affairs (Fall 1975). www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20080527_197504106theriseofthebureaucraticstatejamesqwilson.pdf
