TAM,The Annoyed Man wrote:In the era of the administrative state, is the ballot box enough to force a return to Constitutional government? I certainly hope so, but I am prepared if it is not. You mention divine purpose and careful study. I absolutely agree with you. Those things are necessary. But in a culture this heavily sexualized and hedonistic, and with a purposefully dumbed-down education system which produces people who are historically and civically illiterate, can WE reverse the downward spiral of society which is both the cause and the result of an administrative state? I do not thing WE can.
I do think God can. As a Christian, I have to turn to Biblical scripture; and scripture tells me that God is in control, and we are not. The Bible is replete with stories of faithful remnants, but it is not replete with stories of faithful remnants who lived to see Him restore righteousness. People in the Church are often fond of quoting 2 Chronicles 7:14.........but they forget that this was not a prophesy for a future United States of America. It was a statement by God to Solomon, for Solomon, concerning Israel, during Solomon's reign. What happened as soon as Solomon died? Israel forgot everything and descended into division and chaos. There may be a lesson in it for us, but it is not a prophesy for us. WE — the people of the United States — are not God's Chosen People.......and yet, so long as we benefitted from the blessings of liberty, it certainly seemed like we were. This nation has been singularly blessed.......and historically, it has been a blessing to other nations/peoples.if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
We were blessed because we understood and hewed to the principles of Liberty. So long as we had government which understood and protected those liberty principles, we continued to have blessings and to bless others. That government is dead, replaced by the administrative state. We elect people, and what do they do? They become administrators. Even the ones who we thought would be better than that. Anybody want the evidence? It's right there in front of our noses.
When was the last time that Congress passed a law—any law—in which Congress decided the details of how the law would be administered? Decades ago, maybe? What happens today is that Congress passes a law mandating "X" and then leaves it to the bureaucracy which will manage "X" to determine the actual regulations of how it will be enforced. In other words, Congress, waving its collective royal scepter, says (for example) "we need to reduce carbon emissions by 50% over the next 10 years". They call it something like "the Carbon Reduction and Pollution Act" and pat themselves on the back about having "sent a message" to the polluters. The CRAP Act goes to the President's desk—who has promised all the eco-terrorist groups who raised money for his election that he would take down the coal industry—who gleefully signs it and turns it over to the EPA (which is filled with people HE appointed) to determine what the objectives are and also how they will be enforced. Then the EPA, engorged by its new mandate, requests and gets funding for an EPA SWAT team so that it can raid dairy farms for CRAP Act violations.
THAT is how Congress works. It passes a "law", willy-nilly, and then it completely abdicates responsibility for that law's actual regulations and enforcement. Worse yet, it is a law that will personally affect members of Congress, they then exempt themselves from that law (Obamacare). THAT is not governance. THAT is administration. Pass a law, turn it over to the administrators to decide exactly what the law contains. Pass it, to find out what's in it.
Republicans and democrats are both guilty.
So, can The People turn this around? Yes........maybe, but not likely, and certainly not in my remaining years. God is in control of all of it, and that is what I take my comfort in. But The People are too stupid, ignorant, entitled, and indolent to change. That too is a product of the administrative state. You have an uphill battle, my friend. You can't have a return to true governance without a complete reeducation of the population, in a system where the administrative state controls the education system and has a vested interest in promoting administration over government, and which said system controls the "education" of the vast majority of students. I hesitate to call them "students", since most are merely time-servers and don't study anything because they have the intellectual curiosity of a gnat. So we do not produce people who are worthy of or even understand the blessings of liberty. These cattle love the administrative state, and they want more of it.
First of all,
Your post made me do some Googleing and I found an article on the Heritage site that explains the "administrative state" as you put it, and its origins and theories behind the implementation of it. As someone who deals directly with a government "administrator" as my job I see the problem where a bureaucracy makes the law, enforces the law, and judges my compliance with their law.
Apparently the separation of powers was a major stumbling block for progressive liberals in the early part of the 20th century. The "New Deal" may have been their crowning achievement, but Woodrow Wilson was the architect. I personally cannot see us moving back to the Constitutional government our founders created without a revolution that would be fought by the administrators who are entrenched in D.C. For those who wish to read more on our current system of government, not the idealized one this country was founded on which still acts as figurehead of a government like the Queen of England, here is the link and small snippet from Heritage.org.
http://www.heritage.org/research/report ... government" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.heritage.org/research/report ... government" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;The fundamental assumption behind the vast discretion that Progressives wanted to give to administration was a trust in or optimism about the selflessness, competence, and objectivity of administrators, and thus a belief that the separation-of-powers checks on government were no longer necessary or just. If the Framers of the Constitution had instituted the separation of powers out of fear of "the abuses of government"--fear that the permanent self-interestedness of human nature could make government "administered by men over men"[16] a threat to the natural rights of citizens--then the advocates of administrative discretion concluded that such fears, even if well-founded in the early days of the republic, no longer applied in the modern era. Thus, administration could be freed from the shackles placed upon it by the separation of powers in order to take on the new tasks that Progressives had in mind for the national state.
