The deep state is not a legitimate extension of a “constitutional republic”. It is an infection of said republic with permanent bureaucracy. Didn’t you read the part of the Declaration where Jefferson complaints that England had multiplied offices against its subjects in the colonies? Or the part in DeTocqueville where he expounds on the virtues of centralized authority but de-centralized administration?
What check or balance keeps the deep state in check? The President? He has eight years in office, and they are there for decades, an incestuous cabal no less pernicious than the Russian Nomenklatura. Congress? Bureaucrats promulgate their own “regulations,” which is a fancy way of saying they legislate. The courts? They depend on the deep state to enforce their rulings. The states? They each have their own deep states, and thanks to the 14th Amendment and a century of judicial rulings, also the federal deep state to contend with.
The Constitutional Republic is an old structure, and it has termites.
Love your writing.
And, scoff as you will (I've got flame proof Skivvies), that peril is Bureaucracy, for that, in fact, is what America has become...a Bureaucracy. A body of nonelective government officials, administrative policy-making groups, and government by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority.
The Constitutional Republic is an old structure, and it has termites.
A good spraying of some Schedule F when Trump gets back in is in order.