I don’t recall the collapse of the republic or the constitutional system, just decades of growing prosperity and rising standards of living culminating in the 1950s, the era everyone is desperate to return to.

For economic reasons unrelated to what was going on in the legal system. But the mid-20th century also saw a gutting of the constitutional system the founders had created, and replacement thereof with an unelected administrative state.

You might want to read the room. Not just in the US, but across Europe as well, people are angry about their democracy having been stripped from them, and rule by unelected, unaccountable experts.

Anti-intellectualism is nothing new, we’ve always dealt with spasms of it and the current one will pass. When you say unelected experts what you’re referring to are non-crony public servants who aren’t subject to the spoils system of party politics. No modern democracy could function without them. Extremists hate them because they offer a competent buffer against the chaos they hope to unleash.

It's not about "anti-intellectualism." I think cognitive elites, of which expert bureaucrats are a part, are critical to running society. But they have a moral obligation to stay in their lane. Elites must use their capabilities to do what the public wants them to do. Both in the U.S. and Europe, they have not been doing that, but instead have been abusing their authority to impose their own ideologies.

Consider the 2016 "Resistance" by federal employees to the election of Donald Trump. The public had clearly voted against immigration and free trade. At that point, the job of the federal bureaucracy was to put aside their own views about whether immigration and free trade were good things, and use their skills to implement the agenda of their duly elected new boss. Instead, they publicly and vocally declared their insubordination, both to the President and the public who elected him. Likewise, during the 2020 George Floyd riots, you saw public health experts allow their moral ideology to affect their expert recommendations--treating religious gatherings as somehow being different from social justice gatherings.

My belief is that these things directly led to the debacle of the pandemic, when people refused to trust experts on vaccination--despite Trump telling them to take the vaccine. My dad spent his life working as a public health expert in the third world, and what happened was, while disappointing, not a surprise to him. A huge part of public health work is getting people to trust you. And you must earn that trust by putting the job first. If you go into a village in Bangladesh and people don't want to be treated by a woman doctor, you provide them a male doctor. You don't chastise them for their "sexism." My dad actually worked for a Planned Parenthood affiliate in Bangladesh. At least back in the 1980s, they were providing family planning services consistent with local beliefs, and not trying to impose western ideals on the public--something that would have swiftly destroyed trust.

Most people who aren't that smart understand that and are deferential to their betters. But they also have an intuitive and accurate sense of what's an exercise of expertise, and what's a moral or political judgment. And when experts step out of their lane, they destroy the trust that's critical to doing their jobs.

> Elites must use their capabilities to do what the public wants them to do.

It’s of course ridiculous to expect the city bus driver to take a public opinion poll before they do their job. Public servants get their orders from their managers who are appointed by public officials. That’s their “lane.”

People have a problem with this because they expect that when they elect radicals, the entire state apparatus immediately becomes as radical as the demagogue they managed to get in office. The fact it doesn’t work this way is a feature, not a bug.

> It’s of course ridiculous to expect the city bus driver to take a public opinion poll before they do their job.

"Their job" is to shut up and drive the bus, according to the routes selected by the duly elected government. They don't get to use their position to push back on the government because they think they should be driving somewhere else. And they should be fired if they do so.

> People have a problem with this because they expect that when they elect radicals, the entire state apparatus immediately becomes as radical as the demagogue they managed to get in office. The fact it doesn’t work this way is a feature, not a bug.

That is exactly what it should mean. If the people elect someone who promises radical change, a functioning democracy should be responsive to that! Resisting the policy agenda of the elected government is not a legitimate function of the bureaucracy. And it's absolutely a "bug," not a "feature." I can't think of any constitutional system that envisions the bureaucracy serving as a check on the policy choices of the elected branches of government. Certainly, there is no such concept in the U.S. Constitution, which lays out a comprehensive system of checks-and-balances.

What you're saying is exactly the anti-democratic power grab I'm talking about. It's experts thinking that their education somehow validates their policy preferences, and that the point of elections is simply to provide some sort of signal to the permanent bureaucracy to evaluate according to their independent judgment and discretion.

> "Their job" is to shut up and drive the bus, according to the routes selected by the duly elected government.

Ye… You have never seen an incompetent manager that will draw a route of a bus through a brick wall, and yell over the phone ‘why haven’t you driven through it?’

More broadly, do you hate the idea of employees having opinions and their own initiative? Is your boss tells you to set the company building on fire, will you do it? If you are told to drive over a child, will you do it?

I feel like you are being an ideologue and you like how things work in your head, without realising that if everyone did exactly what their boss tells them, society would collapse within a week

> More broadly, do you hate the idea of employees having opinions and their own initiative?

I hate the idea of people working for the federal government resisting the policies it’s their job to implement, because they have policy disagreements with the duly-elected leaders.

There are ample policies and procedures for dealing with insubordination. Was there something in particular with the “resistance” you can point out? I never heard of any it amounting to anything other than some occasional clickbait.

I can’t remember at the moment precisely which old British Lord said this in the context of Indian independence but the quote goes something along the lines of democracy is only going to last if the program voted in isn’t a complete revolution, there has to be some continuity reflecting the demos, and expecting a complete overturning and revolution by votes is going to destroy the system.

Of course Government of India Act was not a great system at any rate and you’re probably not a fan of the UK one either.

[delayed]

You should probably read Stewart Alsop on the decline of the WASP Elite

> The public had clearly voted against immigration and free trade. At that point, the job of the federal bureaucracy was to put aside their own views about whether immigration and free trade were good things, and use their skills to implement the agenda of their duly elected new boss.

You mean a new boss put in place by an Electoral college, which didn't represent the majority of the people? Majority of the country didn't vote for the 2016 President

You mean the guy who won the only contest that anyone was trying to win? You can complain that San Francisco would have won the Super Bowl if field goals were only two points but we have no idea who would have won under different rules.

Trump won the vote that determines who represents the people in the federal government. There was no other vote. You can add up the individual state votes, but that is a meaningless number because nobody is trying to win that. Fun fact: Trump also would’ve won under the rules used by most other advanced democracies for selecting the executive, because his party won both the most seats and the most absolute votes in the House. But that counterfactual also is irrelevant.

The general issue with your comment is _just_ the president was donald trump.

He's not the governor of a single state so when those states issues stay at home orders conflicting with his direction that's just federalism in action. And then you need an act of congress to override the states like with slavery.

I’m not talking about the Covid lockdowns. I’m talking about 2017 when federal employees declared their “Resistance” 59 their duly elected boss.