In 1787, Benjamin Franklin responded to a question about the new Constitution with the phrase “a republic, if you can keep it.” Our Founding Fathers envisioned a country with a weak central government and strong state governments. In the early 1900’s a number of things happened that paved the way for a strong central government and weak state governments. The year 1913 was a banner year for those who wanted a strong central government—federal income tax was passed, the federal reserve was created, and the direct election of U.S. Senators was passed. The direct election of U.S. Senators meant that the Senators were no longer subject to recall by their states if they did not represent their state. If a Senator sponsored a bill that would harm his state in some way, the state legislature would recall him. Woodrow Wilson was President when these three things happened. Signing these three things into law significantly shifted the balance of power in America from the states to the central government. The Inflation Reduction Act would never have passed the Senate if Senators were appointed by their states rather than elected. One illustration of the growth and centralization of government is the fact that in 2023, twenty-five percent of all jobs created were government jobs. We are also in a situation where the majority of our laws are not laws—they are regulations passed by unelected bureaucrats. Any law passed by Congress was probably written by lobbyists. Our tax code is a shining example of what lobbyists can accomplish. According to the Tax Foundation, “There’s the literal statutes that Congress has passed (Title 26 of the U.S. Code). The Government Printing Office sells it spread over two volumes, and according to them, book one is 1,404 pages and book two is 1,248 pages, for a total of 2,652 pages. At perhaps 450 words per page, that puts the tax code at well over 1 million words. (By way of comparison, the King James Bible has 788,280 words; War and Peace runs 560,000 words; and the Harry Potter series is just over 1 million words.)”
The bureaucracy that has been ensconced in America in the past one hundred years or so does not want to give up the power it has co-opted. The biggest current threat to that power is President Donald Trump. He won’t be able to undo a hundred years of unconstitutional behavior in four years, but he will be able to make a beginning. President Trump is a serious threat to our own entrenched bureaucracy, and they are not going to give up their power easily.
President Trump has been accused of being a ‘threat to our democracy.’ First of all, we are a Republic–not a democracy. Secondly, the only threat that President Trump poses is a threat to the entrenched bureaucracy that has perverted the ideas that our Founding Fathers tried to enshrine in our government.
