Kerby Anderson

Ned Ryun begins his article with these questions: What if I told you that the President of the United States doesn’t really run our government? Or that most people in Washington, D.C., don’t really believe in representative democracy? Or that a government of, by, and for the people is just an illusion?

His article and his book, American Leviathan: The Birth of the Administrative State and Progressive Authoritarianism, explains that we have moved from a republic to an un-American administrative state. He calls it a slow regime change or a gradual coup that is undermining our Constitution and our Constitutional Republic. It has undercut the original intent of the Constitution. It has eroded our freedoms. It has undermined our civil liberties.

Back to his original questions. The administrative state calls into question who is governing our country. We have seen this in the last few years of the Biden administration. So many of us wondered who was making the important decisions, since it seemed obvious to most of us that the president wasn’t up to the task mentally.

Ned Ryun provides the history that goes back to the Progressive movement led by Woodrow Wilson. The goal was to build a massive bureaucracy filled with unelected bureaucrats who were separated from political accountability. These elites would govern our country. They rejected the idea of a rights-based government because it was too limited in size and scope. That is why today we have a sprawling federal bureaucracy.

He argues that the president and Congress need to break apart the Administrative State and return legislative powers back to the Article I branch of government. To put it in simple terms, it is time to “drain the swamp.” If this is to happen, we need more than slogans. We need action.