“[This] can be clearly seen in three highly important developments: the shift of power from legislatures to bureaucratic agencies and the courts in domestic politics; the shift of power from democratic nation states to largely unaccountable supra-national bodies from the UN to the European Union, etc; and the development of ideologies that, lagging behind events, serve to justify these relatively new political practices and institutions as legitimate. […]
“To sum up, Tranzi-ism is an ideology that extends regulation over the full range of human activity while exempting the regulators from democratic control by transferring governance from national democratic parliaments to unaccountable bureaucracies in independent agencies, the courts, and supra-national bodies. […]
“The first task for a serious conservatism is to de-mystify the unaccountable bureaucracies that are not only our enemies but also the enemies of the nation-state, religion, small independent businesses, aspiring entrepreneurs, families and married people, and patriotic and self-reliant citizens. […] Our second task is to defend democracy at home and the nation-state abroad. […] Our third general response should be to restrain and obstruct bureaucracies directly. […]
“[W]e should not be afraid of controversy. Persuading the nation, including the media, that such values as patriotism, self-reliance, and enterprise are admirable, and that such policies as choice, competition, and diversity in public services are practicable, is the first step to expressing and implementing them in office. Success is not guaranteed by the controversy; failure is ensured by shrinking from it.
“The advice above may sound familiar. If so, it is because unaccountable power is a perennial enemy of liberty. As Conor Cruise O’Brien points out in The Great Melody
, Burke spent his entire life fighting it. That should give us confidence for the battle. After all, wisdom is more often a matter of remembering than of inventing.”
I’ve been saying the same thing at this blog for some time, no where near as calmly and eloquently of course. (That is John O’Sullivan
Too many of my fellow “conservative” Canadian bloggers, being ambitious (would-be) careerist hacks, are obsessed with Party politics, with ridings and leaders and constituencies and so forth.
None. Of. This. Matters.
No matter who is in power, the Bureaucracy remains intact. The Bureaucracy is the “new boss, same as the old boss” we joke about, not this or that Prime Minister.
The Bureaucracy must be destroyed.
