It's the Bureaucrats, Stupid!

It is hard to know whether Congressman Mike Kelly knew that his delicious diatribe on the House floor would be the perfect follow-up to Obama of Roanoke or not. But it was.

Yes, bureaucrats, bureaucracies, red tape, endless and mindless regulations are the real cancer that is sapping the freedom from not only our economy, but also our very lives. As many are beginning to find out, and as Mr. Kelly so passionately described, red tape and bureaucrats cripple or destroy potential business deals on the surface every minute. But the more ominous impact is that below the surface, this dynamic depresses and numbs the human spirit of the would-be self-starting entrepreneur. And do not think for a minute that this is by accident.

Yes, rig the game so that honesty and hard work and innovation are merely coins of a foolish realm. Rig the game so that the little microbial rules become more important than the game itself -- thereby elevating the little humans who sit in government cubicles 40 hours a week with no risk above the dreamers who work 100 weeks and who are willing to risk everything.

Excellent essay, as usual, C. Ed.

Chuck Colson, in an essay for Christianity Today in 2007 described the problem by referring to a book by Jacques Ellul:

"Have we finally succumbed to what Jacques Ellul, the eccentric French Reformed thinker, prophesied in the 1960s—the politicization of all aspects of life? Ellul foresaw the Information Age and the media's need for a steady flow of information to feed the populace. Media would therefore gravitate to covering centers of power. Politicians would be willing accomplices, because they'd gain fame and clout. All of this has happened, creating what Ellul's prophetic book, The Political Illusion, predicted: the idea that every problem has a political solution. This, he warned, leads to increasing dependence on the state by ordinary citizens and decreasing citizen control of government.?"

If you haven't read him already, I would highly recommend Ellul. More clearly than any other writer I have ever found, Ellul describes what you call, "the very foundational nature of this insidiousness." And most amazingly, he did it 50 years ago.

The book does describe the politicization of all things, resulting in the political class you so vividly describe. He also goes to the heart of why that occurs. My takeaway from The Political Illusion has long been this point: Any bureaucratic organization, regardless of the nobility of the principles upon which it was founded, reaches a point where its primary reason for continued existence is its own survival. In that scenario, the founding values (i.e. the Declaration, Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc,) are jettisoned in favor of marshaling the means to maintain and increase its power.

Ellul argued it was mistaken to think that this process was organic, but I am not so sure. Eventually, unrestrained government power becomes a Beast, turning those to whom it is supposed to be subject, into its subjects. Anything that competes with it becomes an enemy to be destroyed. What the Beast seems never to realize is that in destroying the entrepreneurial class it is devouring the very thing that gives it life in the first place.

Ellul's magnum opus, TheTechnological Society anticipated the dynamic underlying the information age (which is the same dynamic behind the political illusion). Way ahead of his time, I think he is under-recognized as a thinker, perhaps because his writing style is so encyclopedic, it requires perseverance to stay with him. But it is rewarding.

Most interesting about Ellul, though known as a sociologist, he was also a lawyer and a theologian. In fact, most of his sociological works are paralleled by a theological study of the same themes in separate works. He began his career as a Communist, but like David Horowitz he was an early "re-thinker." I have little doubt you will enjoy the read.

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