Source: Brownstone Institute
by Jeffrey A Tucker
“In 1883, when the Pendleton Act was passed, creating the US civil service, it must have seemed like no big deal. The forgotten Chester A. Arthur was the president. The fear of being assassinated like his predecessor James Garfield convinced him to back the legislation. The case for passage: government needs professionals with institutional knowledge. Technicians were changing the world, so why not government too? … Through two world wars and the Great Depression, and then the Cold War, what landed on the other side was something the Constitution’s Framers never imagined. We had huge governing systems in giant bureaucracies staffed by employees who could not be fired. It was left to them to implement, but really create the operational framework for the whole of civil society. … This year, and mostly because the Trump administration decided to challenge the entire model, the machinery has begun to malfunction and melt away.” (07/13/25)
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-systematic-unraveling-of-the-administrative-state/