The great error of libertarians, as well as many liberals, progressives, etc., is to suppose that the weaker the State is, the freer its subjects are. The opposite is very nearly true. A weak government is a large government—and the smaller the State, the freer its subjects are. Every time you weaken your government, you give it another excuse to become larger.

Essentially, big government is big because it is constantly competing with itself. Restore unified authority, clean the Augean stables, and the great dungheaps which exist only for the sake of themselves are washed out with the Orontes. Ideally, the dungheaps exist only for themselves, but in order to justify their existence they often put quite a bit of energy into molesting the poor customer.

The conclusion is that USG is fatally broken, and needs to be replaced by something completely different. And still the dungheaps grow, the bats flit in and out, the stacks of paper molder. And we notice, with a chill: the whole damned thing is a colossal firetrap.

And I have no solution at all to this problem. I am hardly the first to notice that Washington is broken beyond repair—at least according to this spurious poll, 71% of Americans agree with me. Perhaps this is the simple beginning of wisdom: yes, this thing is broken; no, it is not going to fix itself; no, we cannot fix it, either; and yes, it is getting slowly but surely worse.

Honestly, I am happy just to stop believing in my government. The idea that, just because you are right and the State is wrong, you should be able to do something about it, is a nematode rather than a neuron. It is unique to the democratic era. We are lucky simply that I’m allowed to post these posts, that you’re allowed to read them, that we can both go to Google Books and scroll through politically unacceptable tomes from the 19th century until our eyes glaze over.

If you by some chance agree with what I’ve written here, please avoid the impulse to act on it. Surrender completely to the impulse to think on it. Remember that the inexorable slope of the line is slow, slow, slow. There is no shortage of time for thinking, none at all.

He specifically said he planned to rip apart the constitution by hand? Uhh, based.

But really, this seems like a good bet for something to keep an eye on you understand how things work here. Will this be signed? Will "his" employees put it into practice? Will he be about to fire "his" employees if not? Tune in next time...

Moldbug wrote, regarding a section of this text, that "[i]f the Modern Structure had a manifesto, this might be it." Adams' argument that "it is the student, the man of affairs and the scientist who to-day, in last resort, closes debate and shapes public policy" is a statement that experts had already held the real power. His proposal was simply to formalize and weaponize that influence, using the American Historical Association as the "helve to the axe." This text is, in essence, a blueprint for creating an intellectual Brahminate to act as a check on a degraded democratic process. But what was supposed to be a long-lost strategy for national restoration ended up being merely the petulant fantasy of a scholar class who failed to understand the consequences of their recommendations. A fascinating historical read, especially given hindsight.

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Look at these disgusting foreigners attempt to influence our government's policies. We rebelled against your tyranny and now you think you can just act all chummy and try to bend our laws in a way that "strengthen[s] the commercial relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom"?