Posted on 12/22/2025 9:40:27 AM PST by EnderWiggin1970
As part of its celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence, the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life has published my Provocation, “Government by the Unelected: How it Happened, and How it Might be Tamed.” This full-length essay seeks to assess how the Founders’ principles have fared after 250 years. I argue that government by the consent of the governed has gradually diminished—especially in the 20th and 21st centuries—and has been substantially replaced by the government of a permanent, unelected, and allegedly expert class.
The fuller work traces the history of this development, pointing both to the rise of the Progressives in the latter part of the 19th century and to the role of the federal courts in enabling the Progressive remaking of American government during the 20th century. These phenomena will not be unfamiliar to readers of my scholarly work or that of others in the Claremont Institute’s orbit.
My opening piece in this symposium focuses on the final part of “Government by the Unelected,” which covers the remarkable effort President Trump and his administration are undertaking to restore some semblance of government by consent. While the Left and its acolytes in the media decry this approach as an assault on “democracy,” the administration has, in truth, embarked on the most extensive project since at least the 1930s to reclaim executive power from unelected bureaucrats and judges.
It would be far preferable if we did not have to rely exclusively on the president in the current effort to restore government by consent. In addition to their elected president, the sovereign people are supposed to rule through their elected Congress—and Congress could certainly do much to stick up for its constituents and rein in the bureaucrats and judges....
(Excerpt) Read more at americanmind.org ...
Yes, greasy con artists are running the giverment.
Trump is certainly taming it, but he isn’t asking for congress to go about abolishing anything of the administrative state and thus freeing us from its grasp.
The grasp is still there. The grasp is just less tight. While that is certainly a win, we ultimately need free from the grasp, not breathing room. Breathing room is only temporary.
Its a game of whack-a-mole.
As an example, Trump has taken out the USAID-NGO-Intel-Climate-and-Color-Revolution grift. Very well done, and neo-marxists won’t be able to sow on that territory again
But they will find other channels and opportunities for grift. With Fed.gov at 25% of GDP, and debt at $38 Trillion and growing, there’s a lot of corn for the rats to feed on.
“Yes, greasy con artists are running the giverment.”
Which will lead to greater and greater corruption, which will be next to impossible to undo since the corrupt ones are in power, which will lead to third world status.
And by importing third-worlders we’re accelerating the process since they are experts at corruption as we’re seeing in Minnesota and Maine with Somalis.
The fed can be dealt with very easily. The government can start to print real money. And the money spigot was turned on by the Glenshaw Glass decision which redefined income to be any appurtenance to wealth. So that the requirement for direct taxes to be apportioned into a head tax are now not regulated at all. Find that in the 16th amendment or any other document.
I agree with the general premise of this. The president seems to be doing more & more to offset both what Congress doesn’t do & what they try to do which was definitely not asked for. When the president goes out of his way to possibly accomplish something that may have needed done, then the Democrats put up a fuss about it. At the same time they may have no constructive ideas in my opinion. I do like the idea of America having a two-party system & would even go so far to say that at times maybe even a 3-party system might also work.
“...giverment.”
I like that term, don’t recall ever seeing it before. Yes the out-of-control unelected administrative state is quite the problem and has been for decades and only getting worse. Yet even worse in a way is the Legislative Branch, in addition to buying their seats in re-elections for decades they give the Executive Branch all the money they need for the corrupticians in the Executive. At least the low-life Judicial has getting a beat-down lately.
I agree with the general premise of this. The president seems to be doing more & more to offset both what Congress doesn’t do & what they try to do which was definitely not asked for. When the president goes out of his way to possibly accomplish something that may have needed done, then the Democrats put up a fuss about it. At the same time they may have no constructive ideas in my opinion. I do like the idea of America having a two-party system & would even go so far to say that at times maybe even a 3-party system might also work.
Both sides can't both be right yet the stalemate continues. The Constitution got amended by the winning side of a Civil War . I rather have that convention than see what happens after the Second Democrat-Republican War !
The Trump Administration Is Taming the Administrative State
One of the things I really appreciate about the President’s second term.
My only worry about an Article V convention is how do they control the media? In the original convention the media was banned and the members took an oath not to talk about debates on the floor. Everyone seemed to abide by those rules. I’ve not read about anyone breaking their oathes. Madison’s later work on the Convention was looked at askance as possibly breakng the oath eventhough it was published years later. Today without some sort of muzzle on the media to prevent them from turning it some sort of circus. It would degenerate into sports extravaganza like reporting with play-by-play and instant replay. Of course there would self-agrandizing by reps if they had media types and an audience to perform to. Then there also would be the problem of constant demonstrations who would think nothing of storming the floor. If held in a major city Rat local governments would think nothing of letting the violent intimidation happen.
Maybe do it remotely through a national secure video meeting. The reps sit at their state capitals. Sit listen to the arguments for/against the proposed amendments. Vote yay/nay write up the passed package send it Congress for certification. Then the amendments go to the states for ratification.
Worth noting a small but important step....
"The Department of War is calling for an ethics inquiry into Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., over business deals he and his brother — retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — struck in Ukraine while Eugene was simultaneously part of a State Department-funded inquiry into Russian atrocities in Ukraine.The Pentagon's General Counsel Earl Matthews sent the November letter to House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., as well as to the leaders of the House Armed Services and Oversight Committees.
The letters urged an ethics-related inquiry into the efforts undertaken by Eugene — elected to Congress in 2024 — and by his brother Alexander as the brothers each worked with U.S. defense companies and the Ukrainian government to pursue potentially lucrative contracts in the war-torn country at the same time as Eugene was also being funded by the State Department for Russian war crimes work in Ukraine. [ more... ]
Pentagon wants ethics inquiry on Rep. Vindman’s Ukraine business deals Just the News, 21 December 2025
What is curious to me is how the Congress can limit Presidential authority to exercise powers not authorized to Congress under Article I Section 8.
Specifically regarding the Fed, only Congress is to coin money. So how does that deserve special distinction unless it is pursuant to the Bankruptcy of the United States, Inc. in 1933?
He should incentivize all department heads to “downsize” their departments with a $1,000 / seat elimination bonus.
Gonna take 2-3 presidential terms to undo Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Obama, and dementia auto-pen pedo.
An Article V COS would be a failure for the very same reasons Congress is failing right now.
Our voters are all dead asleep, apathy is everywhere.
An Article V COS was a wonderful idea during the Tea Party era when conservatives were actually active, up and doing things, and we had photographs to prove it.
Right now I would never support an Article V COS because of the apathy.
Apathy, apathy, apathy. What can we do to wake our voters up to do more than just sit around and waiting for election day?
At this point one of the biggest problems we face is our own voters. They won’t hold the GOP to account, they won’t hold Congress to account, and they won’t defend the Constitution. We can’t survive this apathy.
bump
From https://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue93/Ellerman93.pdf
In a remarkable post-WWII passage, the Conservative thinker, Lord Eustace Percy, put the fundamental task as follows:
“Here is the most urgent challenge to political invention ever offered to the jurist and the statesman. The human association which in fact produces and distributes wealth, the association of workmen, managers, technicians and directors, is not an association recognised by the law. The association which the law does recognise – the association of shareholders, creditors and directors – is incapable of production and is not expected by the law to perform these functions. We have to give law to the real association, and to withdraw meaningless privilege from the imaginary one” (Percy 1944, p. 38).
Justice Thomas says the Congress does not pass laws but instead creates legislators.
Here is the letter to the editor I send annually on this subject.
Supreme Court 9, Administrative State 0
On April 14, 2023, the Supreme Court struck a blow supporting our Constitution and individual liberties. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, our citizens began losing many freedoms through administrative edicts. Appeals of regulations had to be submitted to courts within the agency which has already found the person guilty. Such power harks back to discretions of English kings, unrestrained by Parliament, found in such places as King’s Council and the Star Chamber.
The Supreme Court acted to reassert the jurisdiction of district and circuit courts and the legislature as established by the Constitution. All power was to reside there, so Americans could avoid the sad experience of English citizens. Justice Kagan delivered the unanimous opinion of the court saying, “One respondent attacks as well the combination of prosecutorial and adjudicatory functions in a single agency….They maintain in essence that the agencies as currently structured, are unconstitutional in much of their work”.
You and I could relate too many examples of frustrating experiences facing government bureaucrats. Their sufferings cause me to reflect on a passage where Fredrick Douglass describes overseer duties. I only substituted for the words slave, overseer, and master.
“No matter how innocent a citizen might be it availed him nothing when accused by the bureaucrat of any violation of a regulation. To be accused was to be convicted and to be convicted was to be punished….To escape punishment one was to escape accusation….few citizens had the fortune to do either under the overseership of the agency.”
Supreme Court 9, Administrative State 0
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4145682/posts
The History and Danger of Administrative Law
https://constitutionclub.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/the-history-and-danger-of-administrative-law/
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