Happy Independence Day from all of us at the Daily Caller.
The Fourth of July has long been seen as a day of celebration. We take the day off work, spend time with friends and family, often with barbecues and beers. That's not a bad thing in itself. But the historical significance of this holiday is often forgotten in the shuffle. We play patriotic music and salute the flag, but we rarely think about America's birth as an independent nation, free from tyrannical rulers. Still, who can blame us for focusing on the bright side of things?
The Founding Fathers, who declared independence, built a nation on the principle that “all men are created equal” and that they possess “unalienable rights,” including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This was a fundamental shift in values ​​from past political forms. But the rights the Founding Fathers secured have been largely lost in modern America, usurped by a perpetual, unelected, unaccountable ruling class.
Today we can celebrate getting them back. With the collapse of the Chevron principle in last Friday’s Supreme Court decision, we declare our new independence and celebrate our liberation from the very modern tyranny of the rule of experts. (Related article: Rep. Harriet Hageman: The Supreme Court's latest Chevron decision is a major win for America — what's next?)
The Chevron Doctrine 1984 Supreme Court Case, Chevron Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. Although the central dispute was over the Environmental Protection Agency's interpretation of the Clean Air Act, the Supreme Court's decision established a landmark new principle in administrative law that will guide judicial review of all future bureaucratic orders.
The Supreme Court has ruled that when Congressional statutes are “ambiguous,” courts must defer to agencies' reasonable expertise. But it is up to the bureaucratic experts themselves to interpret where the gaps in the law lie, and in effect establish the scope of their own authority. Whether it's the EPA, FDA, CDC, or IRS, the almost universally left-leaning “experts” who serve these agencies are Full discretion They tried to fill the gaps in the law with their own interpretations of the law, and the courts were powerless to do anything about it.
This continued for 40 years, cementing the tyranny of experts that exists today. With nearly unlimited power and discretion, they constructed a regulatory environment that governs every detail of our lives, often laundering their ideological preferences as specific expertise. They told us to “trust the science” while restructuring society around climate change, anti-racism, and transgender ideas.
But expert rule existed long before Chevron was founded in 1984. The Supreme Court's decision merely gave legal recognition to a cultural trend that had long been latent in American life: Since the beginning of the Cold War, America has come to trust and depend on expert rule.
Political theorist James Burnham predicted this development in his groundbreaking book, The Managerial Revolution. The book foresaw the Chevron Doctrine more than 40 years before it was implemented. Published in 1941, Burnham saw the political winds shifting in the run-up to war. He foresaw the decline of the traditional power of capitalism and democratic participation. Neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat would be able to control the future.
Instead, a new ruling or managerial class of administrative bureaucrats gained power through the increasingly centralized political control necessary to run a modern society. Ran Big corporations and governments will have all the power. They are the only ones with the know-how to keep the system running, and without them, corporate owners and elected leaders will be effectively powerless. With all the power in their hands, they will increasingly reshape society in their image. Individual rights and democracy itself will disappear as every decision is made with efficiency and the administrative needs of the group in mind.
Most controversially, Burnham predicted this would happen on a global scale, with both the United States and the Soviet Union converging in the same direction.
That's exactly what happened when the Cold War began.
Leftists rightly argue that the USSR never offered “true communism,” but that was probably by design. Instead, the Soviet system was managerial, with a small group of party bureaucrats at the top and everyone else suffering beneath them. Managers were in charge of the economy, national security, scientific research, education and training — all in an effort to keep up with America's more open and competitive system.
Not to be outdone, the United States increasingly emulated the Soviet Union. It relied more than ever on scientists, engineers, and other technical experts. Their innovations in everything from military technology to space exploration became existential as the nuclear arms race escalated. The complexities of Cold War geopolitics also led to the rise of think tanks like the RAND Corporation, which provided the government with strategic analysis, policy recommendations, and long-term planning. In the process, they transformed traditional state management and decision-making into a science. The CIA and Department of Defense, established in 1947, began the creation of the vast, centralized federal bureaucracy needed to grow the corps of experts to run all the programs needed to compete with the Soviet Union. (Related article: Americans are already fighting back against permanent bureaucracy just days after landmark Supreme Court decision)
By 1984, Chevron had merely acknowledged in law what Americans already accepted: the need for expert rule. It was a classic example of the law operating downstream from culture and always lagging behind. Now, with the Supreme Court overturning the Chevron decision, those same forces are arising again.
The practical advantages that technocracy brought in the race against the Soviet Union have already disappeared. technocracy is only possible if decision makers are completely objective and “follow the science.” Genuine Science will define the course wherever it leads. Science only works if the experts are actually experts, the best and brightest people who have earned their status through skill alone. And even then, it only works if the experts are committed to serving the nation.
Currently, none of these conditions are met. There is no neutral ruling class of scientists, there is a class of stupid ideologists. As Dr. Fauci has declared: Himself Too often, self-proclaimed experts, like Rachel Levin, assistant secretary of health and human services who claims that science and women don’t exist, use their authority to advance left-wing causes.
Even if they stay in their field, the public is not sure what they are talking about. In an era of affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion, the people at the helm are not necessarily the best and brightest. Skills, talent, and accomplishments are secondary to identity checkboxes.
Most importantly, the entire bureaucracy is above narrow nationalistic interests. They are “global citizens” and fight for the interests of all peoples, not just America's. That's why they import millions of people from the Third World, fight wars for democracy in far-away countries, and eviscerate our manufacturing industries for a more efficient global economy. What's good for the world is good for America.
Our ineffectual managerial class cannot last forever. Chevron's culture had begun to fragment in the mainstream psyche by the time Pat Buchanan challenged it in the 1990s, but it endured in the legal world for another 30 years. The law is finally catching up again with the culture, acknowledging the simple reality that the corruption of the profession has long ago rendered them ineffectual and totally unfit to govern. This recognition, too, is decades overdue.
With the Supreme Court's decision to put an end to Chevron, just in time for Independence Day, we are free from the tyranny of experts. While good lawyers will try to find workarounds to maintain the control of experts, the precedent means that courts no longer need to make bureaucrats the arbiters of their own authority. That's good news for Americans who still believe in the principles of our nation's founding.
But the decision also recognizes a deeper trend, parallel to what Burnham so astutely discerned so long ago: the world is moving in an entirely new direction. Whether it's the overwhelming victory of the right in the European Parliament or the collapse of faith in one-party rule in the United States, we're moving away from stifling centralized bureaucracies as the organizing force of political and economic life. The left is probably wrong: we're not moving toward a green, multicultural utopia. But the traditionalist right is also wrong: in the age of social media and burgeoning AI, we'll never get back to the pre-management world.
The bureaucracy is dead in spirit, if not entirely in practice, and now in law. Who knows what will happen next? But it will take a new generation of truly brilliant and bright minds to make the bureaucracy work for America's recovery.
