Dear Friends,
It seems to me, before any real understanding or agreement can be made, before the discussion can really start in earnest, the topic of discussion must be stipulated. In the discussion of progressivism, that key understanding is absent. Even progressives themselves have a lack of understanding exactly what it is they stand for, they might have some absurd notion they want to feed the poor, while others want the poor to starve, or they might accept the progressive party seeks communism, which is partly right, or any of a number of things, but they all miss the mark, because the progressive party seeks administrative government, as far from the ignorant masses as possible… pure and simple.
Administrative government is bureaucratic government or government by bureaucracy. That is where bureaucrats write the laws, enforce them and have administrative proceedings to adjudicate them as well. All of what we in the US call the Three Branches are combined into one. Instead of an executive and legislature agreeing on a law then passing it after public debate, as in our old form of government… under an administrative government, law would be passed by the stroke of a pen, by an anonymous person at a desk, in some cavernous office building. Knowing the People would have a problem if the new laws passed by bureaucrats, were called laws, they instead called them… regulations. In the US, the regulation has more power to coerce action, than the law.
Imagine, a government where thousands perhaps millions of office workers go to work every day, writing laws that effect every aspect of our lives, behind the heavy curtain, that is bureaucracy. Every day they write more regulations because that is what they do. The amount of our lives becomes ever more tightly regulated, every day, many regulations most people are ignorant of, until they run afoul of them. Eventually, under any and all administrative governments, the burden of regulations becomes so onerous the whole thing collapses, the economy, social cohesion, and even the government itself.
Administrative government is at the core of the European Union and has metastasized in the body of the US, Canada and every other even remotely Western government. We call it bureaucracy. As the number of things legislators in their hubris and presumption thought they should control grew, so did their need to delegate some authority to the executive branch. After all, tea parties and mixers take up so much time, and oh so much gets done there… The Legislature’s eyes for legislating became bigger than their ability to legislate, so they delegated some authority to the executive, who relished getting more power. In that way the Bureaucracy was illegitimately born of the legislature’s presumption and the executives lust.
Those who seek administrative government must, as a matter of precedence, believe in the honesty, integrity and fairness of a bureaucrat over that of their fellow man. Of course such a notion is absurd but that doesn’t stop progressives from basing much of their world view. Obviously, a bureaucrat is one of our fellow man, or woman, and so, is just as fallible as your most hated enemy. Absolute trust in government is a foundational idea in progressivism. They will deny it, as they always do the facts, but their every action proves the thesis more eloquently than I could ever pontificate.
The progressive’s blind faith in administrative government makes sense in a distorted way. Most progressives have a college education. As such they identify with others who have a college education, they were similarly schooled, were taught the same curricula with the same progressive tilt. Progressives form the core of the new class. They consider themselves smarter and better educated, and so why shouldn’t they regulate what us ignorant, racist, lazy, red necked, clinging to their guns and religion, climate change denier, hoi polloi do?
“Isn’t it better someone with the best education, who is probably brighter than us, evidenced by their being better education than us, decide what side of our bread the butter should go on? Or would it be best to have limited government?” That is the discussion we should be having… because that is the real discussion, everything else is mud tossed into the water to obscure the real argument.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
