Keeping the Conversation Going with Ben R. Crenshaw
In an era when most political commentary trades light for heat, my ongoing dialogue with Ben R. Crenshaw—spanning three articles now—has been a welcome exception. It began with Crenshaw’s introduction of New Strategies for the New Right in “We the People,” continued with my response in “Occupy the Bureaucracy,” and now carries on in his thoughtful rejoinder, “The Challenge of Conservative Bureaucrats.”
I hope you’ve noticed that it has not been a debate in the typical sense. It has been a conversation—grounded in shared concerns, marked by mutual respect, and aimed at sharpening each other’s arguments. In an age of snark and spectacle, this kind of serious engagement is rare, and I hope others will see in it not only substance but a model worth following. But I digress.
Crenshaw’s initial essay called conservatives to reckon with the legacy of Woodrow Wilson et al.’s administrative revolution, highlighting how technocracy has displaced democratic self-government. My response did not challenge his critique but tried to push the conversation forward: what if, instead of merely complaining about the administrative state, we occupied it? Not in the revolutionary sense, but in the patient, persistent sense: show up, work hard, reform from within. Crenshaw responded again—not with a rebuke, but with caution, candor, and three specific challenges.
Rather than respond point-by-point, I now offer three additional comments to build on what we’ve already said—comments that, I hope, keep the conversation going.
Aggressive Federalism as Strategic Imperative
Crenshaw ends his latest piece with a nod to what may be the most viable path forward: “flood red state governments with conservative leadership and staff in order to return to an aggressive federalism.” Amen. If I’ve seemed too focused on Washington, let me clarify: I am not a veteran of the federal bureaucracy. I speak as an observer, not an insider.
But I have served at the highest levels of law, policy, and politics within state government—and I did so precisely because I share Crenshaw’s conviction that the states are our best weapon against the administrative leviathan. This is no newfound passion. For more than a decade, I’ve been evangelizing for federalism: in draft legislation and policy white papers; in middle school civics classrooms; and on localist websites like Front Porch Republic.
Why? Because, to borrow a phrase from my new conversation partner, our political DNA is local and constitutional. The Founders knew that the surest defense against centralized tyranny was a vibrant and virtuous federation of states, each jealous for its own prerogatives and animated by its own traditions. The Seventeenth Amendment made this more difficult, but if conservatives want to push back against the bureaucratic superstate, there are opportunities—big opportunities—to do so in Nashville, Tallahassee, and Oklahoma City.
The Cult of Expertise Must Be Challenged, Not Feared
Crenshaw is right to warn against the cult of expertise, which he identifies as a second challenge to the vision I outlined in “Occupy the Bureaucracy.” He paints a grim picture of bureaucratic life—one marred by moral compromise and systematized corruption. I’ve seen some of that up close. It’s real. And it’s ugly. But it’s not the whole story.
Even in “swampy conglomerations,” there are pockets of light. There are principled professionals. And more importantly, there are opportunities. Bureaucracy may attract the cunning, the careerist, and the compromised (what some of my former colleagues and I refer to as “survivors”), but it need not repel the faithful.
Sure, the “current bureaucracy primarily draws and rewards those who are materialistic, scurrilous, and cunning,” but faithful conservatives, armed with moral clarity and a playbook like the one Christ himself prescribes in Matthew 10:16, can survive—and, perhaps—begin to turn the Agencies, even if only ever so slightly, toward good government (e.g., the ends of the Constitution’s Preamble) rather than “good” administration, if there even is such a thing.
So long as we continue to train and deploy conservatives to enter the lion’s den with both tactical clarity and moral integrity, then as I argued before, Bezukhov really was onto something when he said that today can be the beginning of something new and good.
Administration: Subordinate but Still Necessary
Third and finally, I want to say publicly that I heartily endorse the idea that administration is a subtask of politics. I couldn’t have said it better. But administration is a task nonetheless.
It is thankless work, much of which can and should be axed and shuttered. As we await the long-term goal of deconstruction and the dismantling of much that is unnecessary, if not outright evil, we must, in the short term, find and encourage conservatives to do the work that must be done—not for the sake of doing it but for the good of America and her people.
I’m no libertarian, but we would be wise to reflect on Ron Swanson’s prophetic wit: “Normally, if given the choice between doing something and nothing, I’d choose to do nothing. But I will do something if it helps someone else do nothing. I’d work all night, if it meant nothing got done.” It’s humorous, sure, but Swanson’s sentiment also captures the essence of what ought to animate conservative bureaucrats.
Yes, Crenshaw is right to conclude that this work is not for everyone. But it is for someone. The leviathan cannot be slain from outside.
A Final Word
Oh, and one more thing.
Though I find myself agreeing with Crenshaw often, his casual declaration that asking Americans “to infiltrate and transform the administrative state is, in a sense, to ask them to lose their Americanness” goes too far.
I think I understand what he means. And I agree with what I think he means. Bureaucracy is so foreign to our founding ideals, so detached from our constitutional order, that it risks corrupting even the best of us. But as things stand, I remain convinced that the bureaucracies, both in Washington and in our own states, must be occupied. Like the founders, we cannot sit idly by.
To put it another way, conservatives, or at least some of them, must refuse to be lured by grandeur, at least for a little while. And though loath to do boring, soul-sucking work, a patient and brave few must be willing to run the machine and steer it toward better ends.
And no plea of pleasure or business, as Theodore Roosevelt once put it, should stop them.
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