On June 24th, The American Thinker posted an article titled, “A Century of Impotency: Conservative Failure and the Administrative State.” I hate that title, but it is true. The article makes the case that Conservatives have failed to restrain the administrative state because they have accepted that it is a necessary governmental innovation required by the complexity of modern society. Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is a long article, but I will quote a few very important points here,

The article notes:

James Landis is widely credited with crafting the theoretical architecture supporting President Roosevelt’s radical reconstruction—and expansion—of the federal government. Landis shrewdly both established and legitimized the regulatory state, including Roosevelt’s creation of new federal administrative agencies, by offering the regulatory state as the solution to the problem of modern governance: the administrative state “is, in essence, our generation’s answer to the inadequacy of the judicial and legislative process.” The Landis premise took concrete shape through Roosevelt’s expansion of the regulatory state, and in doing so, it brought to fruition Woodrow Wilson’s progressive intellectual project: rule by experts, insulated from the popular will

Landis believed the “the administrative process” for which he advocated would “spring from the inadequacy of a simply tripartite form of government to deal with modern problems” because modern problems were simply too large and complex to be entrusted to the system based on the separation of powers instituted by our nation’s founders. Landis framed this innovation as consistent with separation of powers principles because he believed the separation of powers called both for separation but also coordination among the branches, and he saw the administrative state as essential to creating that coordination:

“If the doctrine of separation of power implies division, it also implies balance, and balance calls for equality. The creation of administrative power may be the means for the preservation of that balance, so that paradoxically enough, though it may seem in theoretic violation of the doctrine of the separation of powers, it may in matter of fact be the means for the preservation of the content of that doctrine.”

Please follow the link to read the article for further explanation. I think we have diagnosed the problem. The question is, “What are we going to do about it?”