By Stephen Smoot
One of the most bizarre accusations against the once and future President Donald Trump comes from those extreme Leftists who brand him a fascist. In the context of what could eventually be seen as his signature policy, Trump seeks the opposite goal of any aspiring dictatorial head of state and/or government.
Through his new Department of Governmental Efficiency, Trump has appointed two versions of television’s Dr. Youran Nowzaradan to put the federal government on a strict diet, cut out a lot of what is keeping it from functioning effectively, and force it to shed much of its size.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have received the mandate to slice and dice the size of the federal government, much to the worry and chagrin of those who benefit from the government’s largesse the most.
Frederick the Great was the powerful warrior-king of Prussia and staunch ally of Great Britain in what Americans call the French and Indian War and everyone else refers to as the Seven Years’ War. During the conflict, the Russian Empire seized most of his territory and forced him to make strategic sacrifices to preserve a chance at ultimate victory.
The King’s written orders and personal letters articulate the same conclusion that history remembers as a strategic maxim, “he who defends everything, defends nothing.” He states with this that every nation has limited resources and must employ them in the most effective ways to achieve success.
The United States of America’s federal government is no different in terms of facing limited resources. One could adapt Frederick the Great’s slogan into “the government that attempts everything, achieves nothing.”
While the American system of government has significant basis in Judeo-Christian foundations, the Founding Fathers also took intellectual inspiration from British political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes believed that the main purpose of government lay in protecting the lives of its people. Locke, partly in response to Hobbes, stated that humanity established governments to protect personal property and, by extension, the commerce that comes from trading the product of one’s property for the product of another.
Until 1913 the United States Constitution reflected the mindset of the Founding Fathers, James Madison chief in serving as its designer. To preserve the rights and liberties of the people against a too-powerful central government, the Constitution established a balance between the federal government, state governments, and the people. None of the three would have a preponderance of power over the other.
Then in 1913 came changes that would define the government’s rapid expansion of power and capability. Constitutional amendments allowing for income tax collection and popular election of senators came into effect that distorted the balance.
Prior to 1913, the federal government could not collect income tax. Permission to do so opened the door to the absorption of vast revenues. Even though backers originally stated that only the top two percent would ever pay, the temptation to eat more and more of the wealth produced by the people was undeniable.
Additionally, before that fateful year, state legislatures selected Senators, not the people. The design of the US system rested in part on state governments having a direct method to restrain the President, and by extension, the federal government.
Since 1913, vast sums of tax money have increasingly funded vast extensions of the federal government. Its reach goes much farther afield than the Founders could have ever imagined. Its power dwarfs that of any other institution. While it has the capacity to do much good, a powerful government barely checked by anything has much more power to wrong the people either accidentally or by overt moves against groups out of favor.
In recent decades, the extension of power has turned Washington DC into the Versailles of Bourbon France. It pulls in revenues from the country that would better be spent locally or on the state level. Billions of donations every year go into the non-profits whose goal lies in getting the federal government to do what they or their clients want.
Those are billions that do not go into local community banks, do not support local economies, and mostly pay the salaries of executives, while also funding armies of volunteers and interns to do the work.
If DOGE works as expected, major changes will happen.
First, a federal government cut to its proper size will be unable to do even half of what it tries to do – mostly ineffectively or inefficiently – now. Some powers and policies will return to state government, which is usually in a much better informed condition to make good decisions. Others will return to local government or to the initiative of the people themselves.
The federal government can then return to what it has historically done best, freed from a thousand competing priorities that diluted its ability to do much of anything right. Those priorities include an effective and powerful national defense and a sensible, strong, but more limited foreign policy that focuses less on wasting money to try and solve all of the problems of the world and more on protecting the national interest diplomatically.
Will DOGE succeed? As in Ulysses S. Grant’s campaign to take Richmond, it will require a great deal of tough fighting, pushing forward even after setbacks, and the rock solid support of the President against powerful detractors.
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 included the adaptation of an old Latin saying “I hate a Roman called ‘status quo.’” In this case, status quo means existential threat levels of national debt, powerful bureaucrats building and defending their fiefdoms, federal contractors and others soaking up taxpayer dollars in questionable or even bad faith efforts, and more failures to fulfil the government’s basic and fundamental roles of protecting life, property, and commerce.
America must change its federal government or the consequences will be inescapable.
The fight is worth it because the cause is just. The result, if even DOGE is half-successful, will be a government more focused on helping instead of hurting, a government that can roll back, instead of accumulate, more dangerous debt, a government that lacks the ability to negatively impact lives and livelihoods without good reason, and a government whose power does not terrify the people and lead to fearful hysteria gripping presidential elections every four years.
