Just because you can get the machine going in the direction you want doesn’t mean it won’t run you over after the next election.
Just because you can get the machine going in the direction you want doesn’t mean it won’t run you over after the next election.
A t a George Washington University Law School Federalist Society–sponsored event earlier this week, Conor Casey of the University of Liverpool, an Adrian Vermeule ally, made the conservative case for a robust administrative state rooted in natural-law theory and the common good.
At the gathering, speaking at a high level of generality, Casey eloquently contended that rather than inefficaciously trying to tear it all down, conservatives should exploit the levers of the administrative state for their own noble ends. The premise behind his assertion is that modern bureaucracy’s specialization and expertise is a potent but ultimately “intrinsically neutral institutional technology,” as Vermeule put it, that will inevitably be endowed with substantive content, explicitly or implicitly, whether we like it or not. This is why he believes that the Right ought to stop being afraid of its own shadow and seize the reins of the state, as the Left has done time and time again since the New Deal era, rather than shying away from them the next time a conservative administration controls the executive branch.
Admittedly, there’s something persuasive about this line of reasoning, especially for those of us on the right who feel we have lost most of the major cultural and political battles of the last half-century, with at least one major exception. Casey seems to provide embattled conservatives the tools to turn back the tide of an ascendant progressivism that increasingly resembles the values of a Brahmin Left, aloof to the concerns of the plebeian masses. He assures us that, equipped with this newfound power, conservatives can begin wielding it rather than just talking about it. Unfortunately, Casey’s proposition is assuredly a fool’s errand.
For starters, the modus operandi of Casey’s idealized bureaucracy remains amorphous. He talks about “natural law” and the “common good” as if they were readily knowable, accessible, and apparent to everyone. His view of the former is rooted in Augustine’s conception of lex naturalis. Augustine posited that law should reflect the “eternal plan of the world, reason, and the divine will, where the divine order respects the divinely created natural order and is inscribed in the human soul.”
But what about the “common good”? Everyone from Aristotle to Aquinas to Locke to Rawls had their respective definition of what’s in the ambit of the common good. Who’s to say Casey’s description is any better than theirs, with which he certainly has his qualms? Casey’s method of elevating his own approach as distinct and superior is less airtight than he might think. Even when working with the Augustinian conceptual framework, “natural law” remains somewhat indeterminate, as evidenced by legal scholar Hadley Arkes, whose employment of identical concepts leads him to a remarkably different place than Casey.
Therein lies the problem with Casey’s administrative utopia. Thinking only of how he and his friends might use central administrative authority, he fails to consider what might arise when opposing forces reassume control of it. Casey and others like him would say that the Left is already doing this. But they would be failing to consider how a complete conservative abandonment of limited government would only make this escalation game worse over time, at the expense not only of people and ends they care about but also our overall civic health. Nor does Casey adequately address the current abject state of the civil service that staffs the federal leviathan, or consider the possibility that an administrative state centered in Washington and depriving power from representative parts of government is inherently left-wing in creation and character.
A common-gooder might find this argument defeatist. He might claim that the inability of many conservatives to miss not only the advantages, but the necessity, of embracing the administrative state stems from an incomplete metaphysical understanding of the human person and obstinate ideological calcification.
Those of us on the right who are wary of taking up the banner of statism share an understanding that people are not solely defined by their level of material prosperity. We know that genuine fulfillment is attained through familial and communal obligation and spiritual refinement. Where we diverge from our fellow travelers is in their faith in centralized, national, and especially administrative government to ameliorate the problems confronting post-liberal man.
Our friends seem to be far too sanguine about the prospects of a top-down, government-engineered conservative renaissance while ignoring historical realities. Civil society has become a luxury good precisely because of the heavy-handedness they champion. Government’s record in effectuating or promoting healthy norms does not inspire confidence; if anything, it is more often than not counterproductive. There would be no “bowling alone” phenomenon had it not been for the state’s pulverization of civic institutions and the bourgeois norms they cultivated. And in a democracy, victories are often ephemeral. Just because you can get the machine going in the direction you want doesn’t mean it won’t run you over after the next election. This is why conservatives are better off sticking to limited government — not merely as a defensive crouch, but as a weapon against the Left’s excesses.
Far from stale, the ideas at the bedrock of our republic are among the most novel and profound ever articulated. We are merely urging fidelity to these principles. A government that confines itself to its enumerated functions is one worth striving for still.