Happy Independence Day from all of us here at the Daily Caller.
The 4th of July has long been reserved as a day of revelry. We take off from work, spend time with friends and family, often around the BBQ and a case of beer; there’s nothing wrong with that. However, the historical significance of the holiday does tend to get lost in the shuffle. We’ll play some patriotic music and salute the flag, but little thought goes into the birth of America as an independent nation, free from its tyrannical rulers. Yet who can blame us for focusing on the brighter side of things?
In declaring independence, the Founders forged a nation on the principle “that all men are created equal,” and possess the “unalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” — a radical departure in values from past forms of government. But the rights the Founders secured have all but been lost in modern America, stolen by an unelected and unaccountable permanent ruling class.
Today, we can celebrate taking them back. With the fall of the Chevron doctrine in a Supreme Court ruling last Friday, we declare a new Independence and celebrate our freedom from a very modern tyranny: the rule of the expert. (RELATED: REP. HARRIET HAGEMAN: The Supreme Court’s Latest Chevron Ruling Is A Big Win For America — What’s Next?)
The Chevron doctrine was established in the 1984 Supreme Court case, Chevron Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. The central dispute was over the Environmental Protection Agency’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act, but the Court’s ruling established a transformational new principle in administrative law to guide judicial review of all future bureaucratic edicts.
The Court ruled that if a Congressional statute is “ambiguous,” then courts must defer to an agency’s own reasonable expertise. But it is the bureaucratic experts themselves who interpret where the gaps in law lie, effectively establishing the scope of their own authority. Whether it’s the EPA, FDA, CDC or the IRS, the near universally left-wing “experts” staffing these agencies had carte blanche to fill in the blanks of legislation with their own statutory interpretations. And the courts were powerless to do anything about it.
This went on for 40 years, empowering the tyranny of the experts that exists today. With nearly unlimited authority and discretion, they built a regulatory environment to rule the minutiae of our lives, often laundering their own ideological preferences as specific expertise. “Trust the Science,” they tell us, as they rebuild society around climate change, anti-racism and transgender ideology.
But the rule of the experts dates back well before Chevron was established (fittingly) in 1984. The Court’s ruling was simply the legal acknowledgement of a cultural tendency that had long sat latent in American life. Since the beginning of the Cold War, America came to trust and depend on expert rule.
Political theorist James Burnham predicted this development in his landmark book, “The Managerial Revolution,” which foresaw the Chevron doctrine over 40 years before it was implemented. Published in 1941, Burnham knew the political winds were shifting in the lead up to the war. He saw a decline in the traditional power of capitalism, as well as democratic participation. Neither bourgeoisie nor the proletariat would control the future.
Instead, a new ruling class of administrators and bureaucrats — the managerial class — were gaining power through the increasingly centralized political control that was necessary to run the modern world. The technocrats who actually ran big businesses and government would come to hold all the power. They were the only ones with the know-how to keep the system running, and business owners and elected-leaders would be virtually impotent without them. With all the power, they would increasingly remake society to fit their own image. Individual rights and democracy itself would melt away as all decisions came to be made with efficiency and the administrative needs of the collective in mind.
Most controversially, Burnham saw this happening on a global scale, with both the United States and Soviet Union converging in the same direction.
Which is exactly what happened once the Cold War kicked off.
Leftists are right that the Soviet Union never offered “real communism,” but that was perhaps by design. Instead, their system was managerial, with a tiny cabal of party apparatchiks at the top and everyone else suffering underneath. The managers handled the economy, national security, scientific research, education and training — all to keep up with the United States’ more open and competitive system.
Not to be outdone, the U.S. came to mirror the Soviets more and more. Our reliance on scientists, engineers, and other technological experts grew like never before. Their innovations, on everything from military technology to space exploration, became existential as the nuclear arms race heated up. The complexity of Cold War geopolitics also led to the rise of think tanks like RAND Corp., which provided strategic analysis, policy recommendations, and long-term planning for the government. In the process, they turned traditional statecraft and decision-making into a science. The CIA and Department of Defense, both established in 1947, kicked off the massive, centralized federal bureaucracy required for a growing cadre of experts to operate all the programs necessary to compete with the Soviet Union. (RELATED: Americans Are Already Sticking It To The Permanent Bureaucracy Just Days After Landmark Supreme Court Ruling)
By 1984, Chevron merely acknowledged in law what Americans had already accepted: the necessity of the rule by experts. It is a prime example of law operating downstream from culture, always late to the game. Now, with the Court’s overturning of Chevron, the same dynamic is happening once again.
Whatever practical benefit the rule of the experts offered in competition with the Soviets has long since evaporated. Expert rule is only possible when those calling the shots are wholly objective, “following the science” — the real science — wherever it may lead. It can only work when the experts are actually the experts, the best and brightest who achieved their station through skill alone. Even then, it can only work when the experts are committed to serving the nation.
Today, none of these conditions are fulfilled. We don’t have a neutral ruling class of scientists; we have a benighted class of ideologues. Whether it’s Dr. Fauci declaring himself the science, or Assistant HHS Secretary Rachel Levine insisting there’s no such thing as a woman, the self-appointed experts too often use their authority to push for leftists aims.
Even when they stay within their lane, the public cannot be confident they know what they’re talking about. In the era of affirmative action and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the person at the helm is often not the best and brightest. Skill, talent and accomplishments come second to identity check-boxes.
Most importantly, the bureaucracy as a whole has moved beyond the parochial interests of nationalism. They’re “global citizens;” they don’t fight for America’s interests, but the interests of all. It’s why they import millions from the third world, fight wars for democracy in far off lands, and gut our manufacturing for a more efficient global economy. Whatever’s good for the world, is good for America.
A managerial class as bereft as ours cannot go on forever. It had a good run; the culture of Chevron began to splinter in the mainstream psyche by the time Pat Buchanan challenged it in the 1990s, but it chugged along in law for another three decades. The law is once again finally catching up to culture, acknowledging the simple reality as it exists: the corruption of the experts has long since rendered them ineffective and wholly unfit to rule. Again, this realization comes a few decades late.
Appropriately timed with Independence Day, the Supreme Court’s decision to put an end to Chevron sets us free from the tyranny of the experts. Savvy lawyers will certainly try to find a work-around to keep expert rule in place, but courts will no longer be required by precedent to make bureaucrats the arbiters of their own authority. This is good news for any American who still believes in our founding principles.
But the decision also recognizes a deeper trend, parallel to what Burnham so acutely saw so long ago. The world is heading in an entirely new direction. Whether it’s the right-wing sweep of the European Parliament or America’s broken faith in the uniparty, we are moving away from stifling, centralized bureaucracy as the organizing feature of political and economic life. The left-flank probably has it wrong; we are not headed toward some Green, multicultural utopia. But the traditionalist right is wrong too; the pre-managerial world can never be recaptured in an age of social media and burgeoning AI.
The bureaucracy is dead, in spirit and now in law, if not fully in practice. What comes is anyone’s guess. But it will once again require the true best and brightest of a new generation to harness it toward America’s restoration.
