Turns Out the Elites Like the Administrative State Better than Democracy
big gov
Tags:
Bureaucracy and Regulation,
Capitalism,
Cronyism and Corporatism,
Democracy,
Law
04/09/2026
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Mises Wire
•
William L. Anderson
If there is a mantra among progressive American political and media elites, it would be “our democracy,” usually preceded by what they believe to be a threat from the Right. For example, progressives deemed the recent reversal of Roe “a threat to our democracy” because it removed laws regulating abortion from Supreme Court jurisdiction and returned the issue to democratically elected legislatures.
It would seem inconsistent to invoke the democratic electoral process to deal with a contentious issue like abortion, but progressives are nothing if not inconsistent. But even in challenging logic on political issues, progressives at least try to stick to the language of democracy, and especially the language of “our democracy.”
However, occasionally progressive elites demonstrate their contempt for democracy because they realize that the democratic process is not going to have the desired progressive results because voters and their representatives do not want to knowingly harm themselves.
Recently, the New York Times, in a progressive moment of truth, reacted to the US Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA, in which the court ruled that because carbon dioxide is not among the pollutants regulated by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, the Environmental Protection Agency could not enforce CO2 emissions rules for electric power plants.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/turns-out-elites-administrative-state-better-democracy
