Here is Bruce Thornton on what the latest craziness on the part of the Left really exposes:
Why the Deep State is fretting.
The progressives’ hysterical response to President Trump stripping the security clearance from ex-CIA boss John Brennan reveals the sandy foundations of progressive ideology and its technocratic rule. Trump, of course, was responding to Brennan’s blatant politicization of his office, both while working for Obama, and now as a paid talking head on MSNBC. Like all attacks on Trump, the defense of Brennan is so intense because any assault on the federal Leviathan threatens to expose the false assumptions justifying its concentrated and unaccountable power.
The rush to the barricades on the part of bipartisan anti-Trumpers and deep-state veterans was a harrumphing “how dare you sir” rhetorical misdirection away from the privilege and power enjoyed and abused by the deep state. The fundamental justification for that power is the technocratic expertise its functionaries presumably possess. From the start progressives have rationalized their dismantling of the Constitution’s separated powers, and their expansion of federal offices and agencies, by touting “the beneficent activities of expert social engineers who would bring to the service of social ideals all the technical resources which research could discover,” as progressive theorist Herbert Croly put it.
The practice of letting retired security agency members keep their security clearances is defended on this notion that agency veterans exclusively possess collective skills and wisdom that could be useful for subsequent presidents and agency heads. The problem with that rationale is that there’s not much empirical evidence backing it up. What foreign policy success since World War II could be produced to buttress this claim that a college of “wise men” can be, or has been a helpful resource for policymakers?
Read more: FrontPageMag
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