OPINION:
SAVING THE REPUBLIC: THE FATE OF FREEDOM IN THE AGE OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE
Foreword by Victor Davis Hanson,
Edited by Roger Kimball
Encounter Books, $25.99, 400 pages
Roger Kimball, editor and publisher of The New Criterion, a monthly magazine named for The Criterion, a British literary magazine edited by T.S. Eliot in the 1930s, is also the publisher of Encounter Books, which took its name from the literary magazine founded by Irving Kristol and Stephen Spender.
Mr. Kimball, an art critic and social commentator, is a contributor to a variety of newspapers and journals, and author of several influential books, among them “Tenured Radicals” and “The Fortunes of Permanence.” He’s also served as editor of books central to an understanding of American conservatism, one of which, “Athwart History,” a William F. Buckley Jr. omnibus, was coedited by my comrade, colleague, and co-author, the late Linda Bridges.
Mr. Kimball is in many ways a throwback to what many think of as a better time, when life, literature, art and values were all interrelated, and the best that had been thought and said played a central role in the way we governed ourselves. This, we believed, was what was intended for our republic by the Founders. And when our government veered off course, it was the job of critics and commentators to correct the misdirection.
That’s Mr. Kimball’s task in “Saving the Republic,” a collection of essays that first appeared as monographs in Encounter Books’ Broadside series, short polemical books written during and after the 2016 Trump campaign and election.
The contributors include Jay Cost, Philip Hamburger, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, David B. Kopel, Greg Lukianoff, Andrew C. McCarthy, Jared Meyer, James Piereson, Claudia Rosett, Avik Roy, Robert L. Shibley, Michael Walsh and Kevin D. Williamson. The topics include cronyism, the media and Donald Trump, gun control, Islam, freedom of speech, the U.N., education, Democrats, and progressive cities, with an emphasis on Detroit, a prime example of the results of the unchecked growth of the administrative state, what essayist Kevin Williamson calls “a case of the parasite having outgrown the host.”
The foreword and overview are contributed by Victor Davis Hanson — classicist, military historian of note, prolific writer (his pieces appear in The Washington Times, among other publications), California almond farmer and fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute.
The wide range of topics treated here, writes Mr. Hanson, “is justified by the multifaceted pathologies that are eroding constitutional government.” But unifying the essays is “a common historical approach of charting the relentless and insidious explosive growth of the administrative state in the late twentieth century.”
The essays conclude with “warnings that the finite resources of the state are now nearing exhaustion as the demands put upon them continue to escalate.” As a result, Mr. Hanson writes, “the administrative state has made the current U.S. government almost unrecognizable to what the Founders envisioned.”
The remedies, as prescribed in these essays? Mr. Hanson summarizes: “Always trust the individual over the state. Assume that human nature is neither malleable nor can be recalibrated by elite minders in education, health and the media. Ensure that state administrators are accountable to the people.”
“Equate government bureaucracies, more regulations, and larger entitlements with the Democratic Party, which must win over new voters with promises of hiring, paying, and giving always more. Government programs can be judged only by the degree of incentives and self-reliance they offer the individual.”
Finally, advises Mr. Hanson, “treat the loud cynic and bothersome critic as invaluable in modifying, changing, and ending a program — not as the near treasonous dissenter who acts out of material and psychological selfishness.”
Roger Kimball is neither loud nor bothersome, but like Bill Buckley, his friend and mentor, can be fierce in defense of those permanent things that undergird our system. Liberty and democratic capitalism are principles to be defended, as is the culture they’ve given rise to.
Through his magazine, books, articles and essays, Mr. Kimball provides us with cogent arguments that challenge constitutional threats and defend the values that define the heart and soul of our nation.
In “Athwart History,” the omnibus that Mr. Kimball and Linda Bridges edited, there is this from Bill Buckley: “The historical responsibility of conservatives is altogether clear: It is to defend what is best in America. At all costs. Against any enemy, foreign or domestic.”
That’s the charge that Mr. Kimball, Mr. Hanson, and the contributors to “Saving the Republic” have taken up and are carrying out, often with eloquence and always with clarity and reason.
• John R. Coyne Jr., a former White House speechwriter, is co-author of “Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement” (Wiley).”
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