Image

Wikimedia

When the president’s chief strategist used the phrase “deconstruction of the administrative state” in his speech at the February meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, he was signaling what’s ahead in this administration. The phrase represents an ideology designed to undo 150 years of progressive achievements to establish a social safety network. It stands in contradistinction to the basic progressive belief that government at its best is a catalyst for social good.

What does each side represent? Labor and its progressive political allies have challenged government to address the ills of corporate greed from the 1890s, when the robber barons of industry proclaimed the divine right of business, to the modern hedge-fund profiteers of today who would privatize or diminish every institution that attempts to advance the cause of middle class working men and women. These Ayn Rand-type libertarians view any government attempts to secure economic dignity for working people as an evil that coddles the unwashed lazy masses. It’s the old Abraham Lincoln question: Should government do only the things that the people cannot do themselves or should government do the things for people that it can do better than the people can do for themselves?

Libertarians put severe limitations on the role of government; progressives support an expansive, enfranchising approach to government.

Which side are you on? Consider the following points: Early laws aimed at protecting and advancing the interests of the common people were often ignored by the masters of industry. Progressive labor advocates such as Louis Brandeis, who went on to become a Supreme Court justice, used the courts as a legal wedge to force industrial malefactors to live up to legislative mandates. Cries of foul and overregulation were the rallying calls of the old guard, who charged that their property rights were being violated by working people’s quest for a better deal.

Who will win out in this unending contest? Let’s review historic gains for laboring people enacted through government action: the 14-hour workday became the 12-hour, 10-hour, 8-hour workday; child labor laws, protection of women in the workforce, safety rules following the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the progressive income tax, the National Labor Relations Act guaranteeing collective bargaining, Social Security, women’s right to vote, the GI Bill of rights, civil rights and voting rights laws, Medicare, Workers’ Compensation, defined-benefit pensions, the Environmental Protection Act, the American Disabilities Act, sexual orientation rights, the Affordable Care Act, and so much more.

Government, Andrew Jackson once said, should confine itself “to equal protection and, as heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor.” That has been the historic goal of progressives throughout our history.

Now we have an administration that would work to dismantle or deconstruct the achievements of decades. It is akin to the “starve the beast” tactics of Newt Gingrich and his ilk. Knowing that certain programs such as Social Security, Medicare and aid to public education were too popular to abolish outright, they decided it would be tactically better to severely limit funding for such popular public institutions and then continually blame them for any failures in an ongoing process of destruction. That was their insidious incremental means to an end.

Now, with the overtly proclaimed deconstruction of the administrative state as government policy, we see upfront and clearly the unvarnished goals of libertarian philosophy. Their ideological intentions are made clear in the two cabinet appointments that affect us directly. The secretaries of education and labor are poised to work against the long-standing mandates of their respective departments to promote the interests of public education and of organized labor. These folks are prepared for the long haul. Their grinding away at government and regulations is designed to unleash once more the essential self-interest that is basic to the raw, unseen hand of early capitalism.

The biggest obstacle they face is us; we who believe that government at its best is a catalyst for social good. And we are prepared to fight to preserve and advance our 150-year history of progressive achievement.