The Price of Freedom
Surprise: It's bureaucracy.
The so-called Deep State™ isn’t actually about curbing your freedoms (not even the one that says you can open carry a firearm and discharge it in a crowded place if you feel threatened). Bureaucracy is about creating a system of rules which constrain and direct administrative agencies: it’s about how agencies operate within those rules to create outcomes that maximize the benefits of their decisions. (Pause here to credit John Stuart Mill and the Utilitarians.) MAGA has twisted the concept and turned it on its head, and Elon Musk and DOGE took a wrecking ball to institutions that have lasted for generations because they personally didn’t like the outcomes or the regulatory restraints that apply to everyone.
The Supreme Court and Chief Justice Roberts handed out an unconscionable, unthinkable, and quite frankly unconstitutional get-out-of-jail card to a convicted felon, and worked hard to return him to office. They are completing the last steps in their drive to a maximalist “unitary executive” — where all power rests with a single individual, where expert advice within administrative agencies is unwelcome because the president makes all the decisions. Personally.
There are plenty of reasons not to empower anyone in such a way. Look for one example in the whipsawing of the financial markets when the executive usurps the authority to impose tariffs, and does so arbitrarily. (I lost count when the tariff schedule changed fifty times in the first few days.) Imagine now how the world regards United States foreign policy, trade policy, monetary policy…. if it can change so quickly, on the whim of an individual, what does that say about the stability of the nation, its government, its economy, its alliances?
Yes, bureaucracy and bureaucratic institutions exist to constrain the executive, even though they are under the executive branch of government. They also exist to enable the chief executive to focus on things that are of greatest importance — not to him personally, but to the national well-being. (I will try to limit my lecture on the dangers of endowing a raging narcissist with any power at all; it should be clear to everyone that he will do nothing that does not benefit him, personally — and financially.)
Far from being constraints on individual freedoms, the Deep State™ also serves to insulate The People from the whims of a rogue president, and from the excesses of government. (It also serves as an institutional memory that helps prevent repeated mistakes by people who can’t be bothered to learn history.) Cherish it, in other words. Because without it, we lose everything.