Coming: Liberty in the Age of Bureaucracy

But first, The New Bossism of the American Left, Installment 1

Author’s note: In three months—sometime in March—I will be releasing in serial form for premium subscribers my new book, tentatively entitled Liberty in the Age of Bureaucracy, which builds upon my previous book, The New Bossism of the American Left. That latter book was written in 2012-2015, well before the arrival of Donald Trump on the national stage. Still, it lays out the foundation of the bureaucratic collectivist state that I feel provides important context to the new work. In short, the bureaucratic collectivist state is more dangerous and pervasive than I thought then, its threat to liberty far more existential and imminent. So, for premium subscribers, each Friday until the new book arrives, I am offering in serial form the forerunner and context for that book, The New Bossism of the American Left. I appreciate your support.

Installment 1:

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.—Thomas Jefferson, 1819

Chapter 1: The Transformation of Government

On an early December day in Washington, D.C., in the waning weeks of 2013, a Georgetown University law professor made his way to the Capitol to testify before a congressional committee about one of his special areas of expertise: the United States Constitution. At the time, professor Jonathan Turley was struggling to get over a bout with the flu, and he wasn’t sure he would even make it. Hopefully, he mused, assuming he would indeed appear before the congressional panel, everyone would interpret the pained expression on his face not as the look of a man about to “lose it” but as one of a man concerned for the constitution and the republic.

No matter the cause of his physical discomfort that day, Jonathan Turley’s philosophical discomfort was real: The professor was and is a man concerned about the constitution and the republic, and all of us can be thankful he managed to give his testimony, not to mention on other occasions when he has raised his voice against what he believes to be the constitution’s desecration by the executive branch of the federal government, and by President Barack Obama in particular. In the Capitol hearing room, before the House Judiciary Committee, Turley might have exposed some to his seasonal bug, but in his testimony he thankfully exposed all of us to the presence of a rapidly spreading and far more serious malady, the blight and might of imperial executive power.

If the weather outside wasn’t chilling enough, his words were: “When a president claims the inherent power of both legislation and enforcement, he becomes a virtual government unto himself,” Turley said. “He is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he becomes the very danger that the constitution was designed to avoid.”

“The very danger that the constitution was designed to avoid.”