Kyle HughesWe are presently living through the worst-case scenario of the administrative state given to a bad actor. It gives me great pause. Is there any way forward without dismantling it?
If hardening our democratic institutions meant becoming a Pocket Constitution person and advocating for the rights of gun ownership, could you do it?
Jose@kyle Some of us were already there before all this started :P
ETA: And *dismantling it* is the goal of the current administration, so saying that's the default is essentially admitting defeat, no?
@j_s_j No, dismantling the administrative state was the goal of the majority of American conservatives pre-MAGA, advocating that this exact scenario could happen (and was in the process of happening to them, so not always right). The current administration pays lip service to that but their actions say they want to maximally leverage the administrative state (see: FCC leaning on ABC). This is exactly what those conservatives, who knows where they are now, were talking about.
@kyle It might be semantics. Whether or not the "administrative state" exists is secondary. So-called conservatives want their modus operandi and if leveraging the state gets them there, that's what matters.
@j_s_j If the FCC didn’t exist and the power went back to Congress there would be no leverage for the Executive, in the example I gave. I think that is fundamentally different.
Another way to phrase what I am saying: if the benefits we got through the FCC required a philosopher king at the helm of our administrative state then maybe we didn’t have anything at all except a phenomenon.
@kyle That "phenomenon" was called the rule of law. Long before 45, but Emoluments really drove it home. Then the impeachments. Aileen Cannon.
Now he has his own cryptocurrency.
So while your point is valid and well received, it's predicated on something that looks like laws and the observance of laws according to the actual definitions of the words in those laws.
It feels rather academic. We're past that.
@kyle We're talking about the power of something moving from the Executive to Congress while the Executive has essentially annexed entire swaths of Congressional authority, to say nothing of the overreach of DOJ.