Say hello to the Christmas tree class
The New Bossism of the American Left, Installment 3
Author’s note: In three months—sometime in late 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 political stage. I would certainly write some of it differently today—but not much—and I still think 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.
Of course, this installment is a day early because I have Christmas-related news scheduled for tomorrow. And anyway, this is also pertinent to Christmas!
Installment 3:
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
Say hello to the Christmas tree class
No matter how powerful it is, it would be wrong to say the bureaucracy can be government of, by, and for itself. It needs willing partners, just as the state capitalists do – special interests who want to help sell the American people down the pike. America has always had its share of special-interest corruption, and in this respect the world of the New Bossism is no different from that of the Old Bossism of Tammany Hall and Franklin Roosevelt.
As one might expect, liberal identity groups and unions make up a large part of the coalition. Normally when libertarians and conservatives talk about the need to downsize government, the focus is on the usual suspects: the out-of-control bureaucrats and their allies in public-sector unions and environmental interest groups, in particular, whose hand-in-hand love affair has detonated government growth at all levels during the past five decades. They are very much the public faces of the New Bossism in America, and their role will be highlighted elsewhere in the book. But they are not the only culprits when it comes to the age of the New Bosses. Take a peek into the private sector and you will see them, too, private special interests who want to thwart free-market capitalism every bit as much as the unions and the bureaucrats want to. Yes, it’s time to talk about corporations that feed at the public trough. It’s time to talk about the crony capitalists.
We’ve all heard about them. Those in and close to the Tea Party, particularly, mention them often. Mostly, conservatives tend to demonize Democratic special interests and their political allies as socialists, while referring to the corporate interests who curry favor from the establishments of both parties as crony capitalists. Both labels are off the mark intellectually, but they are a fair enough characterization politically. In reality, the so-called socialists – the unions, the liberals, and the government-dependency proponents – and the crony capitalists are two sides of the same welfare coin. One side wants to pump tax dollars to the poor and minorities so they can enslave them in benefits’ dependency; on the other side are the bosses of industry who put their companies on the dole.
Heads, you lose; tails, I win …