Jeffrey A. Tucker argues it is in this Brownstone Institute essay.
The problem is that we are now to a great extent ruled by the administrative state — all of those governmental apparatchiks who work in the huge number of federal agencies. They all believe not in liberty or even democracy, but in government by experts like themselves. They are empowered to make many of the decisions that control us, from covid to communications to labor unions and on and on.
Tucker observes, “this machinery of coercion ruled in concert with a network of private-sector actors, including media and financial companies, that have outsized influence and routinely use these agencies as weapons in their own economic interests at the expense of everyone else.”
We are suffering from the “success” of the progressive vision — replacing freedom with administrative control. This isn’t how America was supposed to work, as Columbia law professor Philip Hamburger in his 2014 book Is Administrative Law Unlawful? Unfortunately, the Supreme Court decided to allow Congress to hand over its legislative responsibilities to administrative agencies and later to defer to those agencies (so-called Chevron deference) when it comes to the interpretation of the statutes that have delegated power to them.
The Deep State keeps growing in scope and power. Stopping that growth and then reversing it is the great challenge that liberals (using the word in its original meaning) now face.