The Snake That Ate Us

The administrative bureaucracy has been expanding geometrically in the U.S. since FDR in the 1930s and it has now eaten the American body politic. We kid ourselves that we are still a government of laws and not men. Dealing with government anymore is like fighting with fog - you are subject to the interpretative whim of a bureaucrat and can never find where the buck stops and get a real decision based on a clearly stated law. Yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court decision on Obamacare eliminated any doubt of this when it ratified the IRS making it up out of whole cloth when the law, as written by Congress, was plain but stood in the way of where Obama and the army of bureaucrats wanted to go. 

The evolution of English and American law has been a long struggle against the law being whatever the king said it was. That objective was realized in the Constitution that talked about such noble ideas as due process, equal protection, and a host of other foundational rights. An independent judiciary was instituted to foil a grasping Executive Branch seeking to establish it's right to do whatever it pleased. A thoughtful piece by John Davidson looks at the impact of yesterday's Court decision from this perspective and says that the modern fight has been against bureaucratic prerogative and it is now lost.

Davidson summarizes the thesis of a book by Columbia Law School professor Philip Hamburger on this theme and says:


" ... the American founding was the culmination of centuries of struggle against prerogative. A large part of this struggle was not only the development of legislative bodies but also of an independent judiciary, both of which achieved full realization in the U.S. Constitution. The lurch back toward prerogative and away from these institutions began with theories about administration at the turn of the last century, many of which were put into practice by Wilson and his progressive heirs. And now here we are. The Supreme Court has upheld an IRS rule that blatantly rewrites a section of poorly designed law in order to achieve a policy outcome desired by the administration. We overcame royal prerogative in the late 18th century only to replace it, in modern times, with administrative prerogative."

"No longer must elected representatives of the people hammer out compromises and pass actual laws. It’s enough, now, for Congress to express a desire for a policy outcome and leave the details to a vast unelected bureaucracy — even when those details involve billions of dollars in taxes and spending, strict mandates and penalties, and government control over vast swaths of the economy."

No longer are Americans free men and captains of their own destiny, but rather we exist for the feeding and amusement of the gigantic bureaucratic snake. Just practice saying, "Yes, your Majesty!" and all will be well with you.
www.nationalreview.com/article/420337/king-v-burwell-and-triumph-administrative-state