In just one week Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated, and he will commence his second term in the White House. What he began back in 2016 will now continue, as this Washington outsider takes on the swamp and all that it entails: bloated bureaucracies, radical leftists who hate America, most of the media which is also complicit in the leftist war on the United States, corruption on so many levels of government, and so on.
It is a massive task, and it takes someone like Trump to even attempt to do a major shakeup. The administrative state has gotten increasingly entrenched and out of control, not just in America but much of the West. The vision of the American Founding Fathers for a free, prosperous and godly state with limited powers has all but been lost, as those who share little of that original vision have slowly taken over all the institutions of power and influence.
With year after year of cultural Marxism white-anting the state from within, and with plenty of external enemies still threatening the survival of the US, Trump has certainly got his hands full. He will need plenty of help and plenty of prayer to bring about real, substantial and lasting change.
Many have noted that America has been in a deep decline for decades now. Numerous important works exist that chronicle the decline and fall of this once-great nation. One recent book is well worth being aware of in this regard. I refer to American Leviathan by Ned Ryun (Encounter Books, 2024).
Although a rather brief read of some 150 pages, it packs a punch in what it describes and documents. The subtitle informs us of what it is about: “The Birth of the Administrative State and Progressive Authoritarianism”. The gradual takeover of the American government and other key parts of the nation would be sending the country’s founders into a tailspin. It has become unrecognisable.
A few quotes from the book can help to give us a pretty good feel for the sorts of things Trump will be up against in his second term. Early on Ryun says there are two goals involved in the book’s writing:
The first is that people understand in as concise a way as possible the story of how we got to where we are as a country in the 21st century. It’s a story that begins well over a hundred years ago, but one that needs to be understood for people to fully grasp where we are in America today. My hope is that there will be a shift in how people view their current government and that they will in essence put on another “pair of glasses” through which they view the world and, awakening from their slumber, realize that what we are experiencing in this country today has very little to do with the American Republic as originally intended.
Another goal was of course to move the Overton Window on the un-American Left, who tend to use the term “Progressive” as a positive. It shouldn’t be seen as a positive, ergo my intentional and consistent use of the appellation Progressive Statists. Every Progressive is an adherent to and believer in the “progress” towards a powerful and eventually invasive and authoritarian state that will enforce equity and social justice and, they naively believe, achieve the perfection of humanity. It must be understood, as the noted Progressive Herbert Croly stated, that the Progressive ideas of democracy rise and fall on the perfectibility of man, on human nature’s being elevated to a higher plane. Progressive Statists justify their massive state apparatus by this belief and then attempt to do a kabuki dance and color over the invasive authoritarianism that such a massive state entails with various and vapid platitudes about democracy and bettering all human beings. However, there is no denying they adhere to the all-powerful state as the ultimate solution—and are either unwilling to admit it, or are being completely disingenuous in admitting the truth in hopes they in fact will be the Ruling Class as everyone else is forced to bow the knee to them and to the state. (xi-xii)
He says that “at the heart of Progressive Statism is the belief that the state is God in this world.” (p. 63) The opening chapters of the book look at how all this started to develop just after the Civil War. And things really hotted up a few decades afterwards:
If you boil down the essence of Progressive Statist thought, it comes to this: progress is to be achieved by the creation of a massive bureaucracy, completely separated from politics and political accountability, filled with an educated elite who are then to do the actual governing for the country. To loosely quote Wilson, this educated elite would consist of “the best boys from the best colleges,” who would be trained and educated in administration and applied science from a burgeoning series of colleges and universities.
That’s why many of the new universities and colleges founded in the late 1800s and early 1900s by Progressive Statists were done so for a unique reason: the explicit goal of importing Hegelian Prussian Statism into America and training a new generation of “administrators” for the administrative state. For example, Johns Hopkins, founded in 1876, was “established for the express reason of bringing the German educational model to the United States and produced several prominent Progressives, including Wilson, Dewey and Frederick Jackson Turner. These new administrators would then, with as little hindrance and oversight as possible from politicians (i.e., the duly elected representatives of the people), do the actual governing and help direct the course of the nation in the most efficient way to achieve progress for all. (p. 43)
The modern bureaucratic state with excessive regulation and power has been assisting by transferring governance from the legislative to the executive branch. This is so far removed from what was originally intended:
Our Republic, built off the fundamental understandings of human nature and inherent rights, always intended a constitutional form of government to be limited in size and scope to provide for the “bounds of ordered liberty”; regulation would have a light touch, allowing the widest amount of space within which human freedom could flourish. It was also meant to protect humanity from the worst impulses of imperfect human nature. Never trust imperfect human beings with consolidated power. Allow freedom to flourish. Allow human beings to pursue their God-given talents while limiting as much as possible of the worst traits of humanity.
In an administrative state, however, government is not meant to be limited at all: if the state filled with an educated elite is guiding society in the upward climb to perfection, it is producing humanity’s salvation. And if you believe that and accept it as valid, there should be no limiting of the size or scope of government, because who would want to limit salvation? Only an unenlightened troglodyte would. (pp. 93-94)
The false god of Statism must be challenged. The Christian gospel is a major threat to it:
Transcendent truth that serves as an objective standard and stands outside of finite time is always the enemy of the state, especially a state that has no desire in advancing the interests of the people. Why? Because truth is a constant reminder of the arbitrary nature of the statist authoritarianism, since truth doesn’t change. As Francis Schaeffer pointed out, one of the reasons Christians were killed in the Coliseum in ancient Rome was that, unlike the myriad of religions floating around the Roman Empire at the time, Christianity believed in objective truth, and “no totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions.” This has always been a problem for authoritarian states: truth can’t change. Truth is the truth no matter the time, no matter the place.
But truth is also the enemy of the state because it liberates. The words of Christ still echo down through time: the truth shall set you free —spiritually, but also physically if truly followed. If laws do not align with absolute, natural higher law, those laws are illegitimate. The same is true for terms: if terms and definitions do not line up with transcendent higher law, they are lies. (p. 102)
Because truth is so vital, openness, transparency and accountability are essential for any properly functioning state. But that is something the progressive State detests: “The administrative state doesn’t want transparency because with transparency comes accountability. If there isn’t a free and fair press shining the light on government, accountability can’t exist; we certainly won’t find it among our modern corporate propagandists and stenographers of the deep state.” (p. 144)
So all this is an age-old battle that needs to be fought and then fought again. Ronald Reagan had sought to do this in the 1980s. Trump sought to do this in his first term. Whether he and the American people succeed this time around is an open question.
In good measure, it will be up to us. As Ryun says as he concludes the book:
America was the first ever constitutional republic in the history of the world. Perhaps it can be the first to shake off the shackles of bureaucratic statism. Yet this will only happen if the American people discover the truth and see the world as it truly is: that is the ultimate question that must be answered. Can we return to the original vision of the Founders? Can we restore the Republic? The answer is quite simple, albeit monumental in application: Break the State. Drain the Swamp. Restore the Republic. (p. 145)
The complete opposite of this would have occurred had Kamala somehow managed to win on November 5, 2024. Thankfully the American people were smarter, more moral, and more concerned to allow this to happen. So Trump now has another chance to do some major housecleaning.
Whether he is able to accomplish a lot in this regard will depend on various things: how much opposition he gets from the Dems, and media, and other elites; how much the American people will stand with him; and if there is the merciful hand of God in giving this once great nation a major reprieve.
At the very least, we all must keep praying about these matters. Trump will need every prayer he can get.
