Have you ever wondered why leftists can push their agendas in government even when they’re flagrantly against the will of the majority? How do they get away with this? In a representative democracy, it shouldn’t work that way, but “shouldn’t” and five bucks gets you a cheeseburger. Excessive centralization helps them impose their will on the public.
Entryism
The birthplace of the Frankfurt School, the Communist think tank that subverted the American universities
Infiltrating organizations has long been a leftist strategy, most famously with the “long march through the institutions” concept. Not only have they used this tactic to absorb rival factions, they’ve used it to subvert cultural institutions and even governments. When they get appointed to prominent positions, they’ll fight tooth and nail to get their like-thinking buddies in at all levels. Once critical mass is achieved, anyone with a different ideology can forget about getting a job there.
This is also why conservatives in social sciences faculty departments are pretty rare. After the indoctrinated Baby Boomers became professors, they promoted their comrades and excluded everyone with other viewpoints. (The only way for others to get in is to hide their views throughout their academic career until achieving tenure, which takes years of method-acting.) That’s also how leftists got control over Boards of Directors of huge businesses and imposed a left-leaning corporate culture. Quite likely, this is how they took over philanthropic foundations, while their Gilded Age founders are turning in their graves about the way their money is being spent.
What can be done about it? As for government agencies, the bureau certainly won’t reform itself. With painstaking effort, those who abused their power could be rooted out, as Joseph McCarthy tried to until the media shut him down. The simpler way is to abolish the agency. As for corporations, the best that can be done is to get the word out and stop buying their products. As for universities, we should send our children only to the few that haven’t been pozzed out yet. Also, we can set up parallel institutions, as I proposed with the art scene, though that’s obviously a long-term effort. We can stage our own Long March, though that will require much time, effort, and organizing.
If an institution is retaken, will the apparatchiks find themselves in the same position as all those Rust Belt factory workers who were shit out of luck after their jobs were sent overseas? Quite likely, it won’t be hard to find another cushy gig where they can push their politics. They can scurry off to find another agency to infest, or find themselves a high-placed position in some activism outfit, or get into another leftist racket like journalism; in either case, they’ll benefit from all the connections they’ve made.
Surely there must be a better way. Pinochet had his methods, though as for the USA, returning things to the way they were designed would go far.
Federalism
Thomas Jefferson, President and architect of the US Constitution
The USA was designed as a federal republic, with the states retaining considerable autonomy. Even in the early days, there was tension between the Federalists, desiring more autonomy by the states, and the Anti-Federalists desiring greater centralization. The Federalist position prevailed for nearly a century.
The states are nominally sovereign, with the potential to act as countries of their own; thus they’re called states rather than provinces. This consideration was a major factor for why the former colonies, newly independent, agreed to enter the USA’s federal government in the first place. The Tenth Amendment says:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The Supreme Court, though, hasn’t been taking it too seriously. For example, the United States v. Darby Lumber decision pretty much treats it as a nonentity:
The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.
Subsidiarity
Pope Pius XI, author of the Quadragesimo Anno encyclical
The Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity is a good idea, whether or not it’s your brand of religion. The basic principle is that a function should be handled by the smallest body competent to handle it. The only exception is when the designated body runs into trouble and needs assistance from a higher body. Otherwise, greater authorities take a back seat and leave well enough alone.
Thus, if education can be handled at the state level, then the federal government should let them take care of it. Note that states always provided for education—this was what they did all by themselves traditionally—and centralization came in with the Department of Education. Also, since families are capable of raising children, then the government should butt out unless a family runs into trouble. Government dependency is an abnormal condition, but has become a way of life for a large part of the public.
Big government opposes this concept, of course. A funny example is when Al Gore proposed a government agency to provide news on traffic flow. Then a commentator pointed out that private business already does that, which Gore would know if he turned on the radio in his chauffeured limousine instead of listening to whale noises.
Benefits of local control
Capitol building in Topeka, Kansas
When power is held at the local level, the people are more involved in public life. You’re still one fish in a very large bowl, but on a national level, you’re one fish in an ocean of hundreds of millions. It’s a lot easier to get an audience with a mayor or city councilman than with the President or a Congressman. Also, public morale benefits when people have more accessibility and input to a local government that wields the actual power.
It’s been said “you can’t fight City Hall”—more accurately, it’s an uphill battle. Even so, it’s practically impossible for an individual to stand up to Washington, short of having millions for lobbyists, lawyer fees, or “campaign contributions“. Decentralization means that people are more in control.
Further, greater power for local government allows things to be run according to the sensibilities of people living there. The Northeast and the Left Coast can have liberal policies, and “Flyover Country” can have conservative policies, and everyone is happier that way. Those who don’t like it where they are can move to another state, which is a lot easier than moving to another country. Also, federal social programs should be brought back to state level, as the Constitution doesn’t provide for things like Obamacare (despite what the Supreme Court said), AFDC, etc.
Each state will represent a unique experiment; the one providing the best societal outcome, the greatest responsiveness to the public, and the greatest efficiency will be a model that other states can copy. This should be more efficient, since huge bureaucracies suffer from diseconomies of scale (more layers of top-level highly-paid administrators, more difficulty coordinating meetings, etc.) Other than that, Washington waste is legendary: sweetheart deals, huge stockpiles of spare inventory they don’t need, and so forth.
All this is how federalism was supposed to work. Finally, decentralization takes power away from unaccountable Washington bureaucrats. SJW types can take over a federal agency, but they’ll have a much tougher time infiltrating fifty state capitals. If they try, citizens will have an easier time opposing them.
How federalism was abrogated
The beginning of the end for federalism. Next stop on the way was the FDR administration and the Supreme Court from Warren onward.
The Civil War set the ball rolling for further centralization. The Fourteenth Amendment, a Reconstruction-era measure, includes the “equal protection” clause. Its intention was to prevent Southern lawmen from turning a blind eye to crimes committed against freedmen. Successive judicial “interpretations” of this effectively gutted autonomy by states. The Fourteenth Amendment also allows for anchor babies to be US citizens, whereupon their illegal alien families can get welfare benefits. Other than that, the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause has been abused as a catch-all means for Federal power-grabbing.
Liberal Supreme Court members get away with this stuff through the “living document” doctrine. (Note the clever framing tactic.) Although the Constitution does have some gray areas intended to be filled in by precedent, they took it much further. Early on in the Marbury v. Madison decision, the Supreme Court declared itself the final authority on what the Constitution says.
Since the Warren court, time and again they’ve abused their power to legislate their politics from the bench and rationalize it after the fact. The “living document” concept means the Constitution is whatever they say. The tortured word-salad of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision is Exhibit A here, which abrogated the laws of all fifty states about a matter not mentioned by the Constitution. A series of 1970s decisions allowed pornography to flourish. These are two examples of many that profoundly transformed the American political landscape.
Up through the 1950s, the government more or less still paid lip service to the Federalist principles of the Constitution. For example, the interstate highway system was sold as a defense project. Congress didn’t have the authority to set up a national road system only for public use, but defense projects are covered as a delegated power under the Constitution. Much more recently, the threat of withholding Federal highway funds was used to blackmail states into accepting laws (such as the former 55 MPH speed limit) which normally would be a matter of state law.
The effects of leftist bureaucratic control
Generally speaking, if the people working at an agency like you, are indifferent to you, or don’t like you makes the difference as to whether your request is handled immediately, you go through the normal gauntlet of red tape, or you’re given an endless run-around. If you’re well-connected, that significantly greases the wheels of bureaucracy. This is pretty important for businesses needing licensing and permits to operate. Major operators that make heavy political contributions will have doors opened to them; small businesses trying to break into the game are in unfamiliar territory and have to play “hurry up and wait”. It shouldn’t work this way, but remember what I said earlier about “should”.
A pretty flagrant example was the IRS scandal during the Obama administration. Conservative groups applying for 501(c) nonprofit certification got stalled for years; other groups got their requests handled promptly. There was a Congressional investigation of that, surely at great effort to obtain. The results, though, were that the IRS top dogs all clammed up, and nobody confessed. Abuse of IRS powers was one item in Nixon’s Articles of Impeachment, but The Lightworker got no consequences. The only fallout was one IRS official quitting and two others retiring. Other than that, Donald Trump’s taxes have been audited every year—coincidence?
Whether or not the bureaucrats like you makes a big difference with social services too. One of my girlfriends fell on hard times and tried to apply for government aid. She got the runaround for being White. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Leftist effects on education
An actual handout in some schools
Centralized control of education has had profound effects. It’s pretty disgusting that educrats would use their position to indoctrinate students, especially those who are too young to make up their own minds. My first exposure to political propaganda in school was when I was in second grade. My third grade social studies text was full of bias, though I didn’t realize it then. No doubt those were innocent times, as indoctrination happens in kindergarten these days.
The worst example is evangelizing transsexuality in schools. Some of these kids will be persuaded to screw up their bodies with puberty-blocking drugs, and even get surgery, before they really know what they’re doing to themselves. Note that when Gyorgy Lucaks instituted an in-your-face sex education program in Hungary to attack traditional morality (he actually called it “cultural terrorism”), the Hungarians rose up and overthrew Bela Kun’s Communist regime. I guess they’ve done a better job of “boiling the frog slowly” here.
Title IX forbade sex discrimination in federally funded institutions. It’s an example of a law that sounds like basic fairness, but got used for other purposes that the public didn’t anticipate. Funding for athletic programs must be equal for both men and women. Since men are more interested in sports (including participation) than women, this means that many men’s programs ended up getting cut while women’s programs (even in fairly obscure sports) flourished. It also worked that way for high schools, even though they don’t receive direct federal funding.
More recently, the Obama administration used Title IX to institute extrajudicial tribunals to adjudicate sex on campus. Any noncompliant college will lose federal funding. It’s little wonder that false accusations have become a big problem lately. Whenever a crime really occurs, it should be handled by the municipal police; that’s their job. These tribunals don’t have the legitimate authority to administer law, or (as designed) have due process protections.
So this is what happens when the government places strings attached to billions in funding. The Common Core curriculum also got lots of criticism. This wouldn’t have happened if the Department of Education didn’t exist.
In summary
Centralization is how unelected bureaucrats hijack government functions. For this reason, putting things back to the federalist design by the Founding Fathers must be a key step in draining the swamp. This won’t be easily, especially since Antonin Scalia—one of the Supreme Court Justices worthy of the title—got the Breitbart treatment, but it must be done.
Read More: The Battle Of Berkeley Signals The Arrival Of A True Right-Wing Movement
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