American Leviathan: The Birth of the Administrative State and Progressive Authoritarianism
By Ned Ryun.
Encounter Books, 2024.
Paperback, 176 pages, $19.99.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks.
In American Leviathan, Ned Ryun offers a cogent overview of the origins, development, and present condition of the administrative or “deep” state in America. He also provides a brief proposal for reining in the authoritarianism that he sees as threatening the country and gives a vision for returning to constitutional democracy. By the end of American Leviathan, the reader will gain a clear understanding of the dangers of bureaucratic governance and the nation’s slippery slope toward authoritarian rule. According to the author, only a dramatic elimination of administrative departments and agencies can restore the constitutional balance of powers that our Founders intended.
Ryun begins by describing the “leviathan” that has overtaken our democracy. It is crucial to understand that the administrative state is not merely a costly and wasteful but essentially innocuous excess of bureaucracy: it is, rather, an “unelected, detached, powerful bureaucracy” that now controls most of our nation’s legislative, executive, and judicial functions, and as such it represents “nothing less than a regime change against and over the Constitution of 1787.” According to Ryun, we now live in a nation in which our representatives in Washington do not so much enact the people’s will as merely exist to fund ever-expanding agencies at the expense of massive deficits. The true power resides in the administrative state, not Congress or the Executive.
Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt and continuing under Wilson, FDR, and Johnson, the administrative state’s funding has expanded from less than one billion dollars in 1910 to well over six trillion in 2023, or over 6,000 times that of the past. Particularly in times of crisis, including two world wars, the Great Depression, the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, and, recently, the housing crisis of 2008 and the COVID epidemic of 2020, the electorate has been willing to cede power to an educated elite. Although such elites promise to address the crisis, they in fact establish themselves as a self-perpetuating and uncontrolled center of governance operating against the interests of the public. This unelected elite claims an unprecedented level of funding and, with it, control over the lives of citizens. As Ryun writes, “no one has any rights except those given to him by the state when considered beneficial for the advancement of the state and society.” In reality, it is not even “state and society” that the state bureaucracies wish to advance but their own wealth, power, and influence. As Ryun makes clear with reference to theorists such as Herbert Croly, it is not just that the American government arrived at this impasse by accident: an all-powerful, unelected deep state was the conscious intent of the Progressive movement all along, and to a great extent the unelected elites have succeeded in gaining control.
As he traces the unchecked power of government agencies, Ryun discusses the importance of the Chevron doctrine (recently reserved by the Supreme Court) in justifying and spurring the expansion of the administrative state. By deferring decision-making to agencies, the Chevron Doctrine transferred legislative power to unelected elites whose policies cannot be challenged through a democratic process. It was just this sort of power that the Founders worked so hard to prevent by creating three separate branches of government, each able to rein in the potential overreach of the others. Now, however, it is clear that there exists an extraordinary amount of overreach, not by any of the three branches but by departments and agencies operating essentially without oversight. It is vital to see just how dangerous this overreach actually is, for “until the administrative state, the deep state, the surveillance state (mostly the same) are forcefully confronted and dismantled, everything else is pointless.”
Ryun is passionate about the dangerous growth of authoritarianism in America—as he should be. Under an administrative state with the power to extract ever greater funding, to regulate at will, and to exert power via law-fare and deployment of armed agents, America appears to be evolving toward the enslaved condition of previous authoritarian states, including twentieth-century fascism and communism. The administrative state has swept aside constitutional protections of privacy, private property, and free speech—basic rights that Americans have treasured and passed down for generations. With targeted IRS audits, unreasonable marginal tax rates, and manipulation of social media, Progressives have displayed little regard for such rights. “Like every other adherent of statism,” Ryun writes, “from communism to fascism, Progressive Statists were very much for either controlling or redistributing wealth and property, all in the supposed aim of creating a more just society, which is very conveniently shaped to benefit the ruling elite.”
In a chapter aptly entitled “When Threatened, the State Strikes Back,” Ryun details how the deep state exerts force, particularly against anyone, including a president or presidential candidate, who intends to restrict its power. As the bureaucracy gains control of legislative, executive, and judicial functions, what arises is “consolidated power and eventually government thuggery.” Certainly, we have seen evidence of such thuggery over the past several years, and it does not require a great deal of imagination to envision what might follow: lawsuits, audits, and even re-education for those who oppose the deep state. The most egregious example so far was the 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, although that action will almost certainly be viewed as moderate if the administrative state is allowed to expand without opposition. As Ryun puts it, “It’s becoming more and more apparent that the DOJ and FBI are nothing less than the administrative state’s Praetorian Guard, the ruling class’s personal bodyguards, intelligence gatherers, and intimidators.”
It should be obvious that American Leviathan is highly relevant to the current political climate, what with President Trump’s promises to restrain spending and the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency intent on slashing the annual deficit. Indeed, even before Trump’s re-election, Ryun included a list of specific ideas that read like a DOGE prospectus for controlling the administrative state, though, with his assumption of a “feckless” Congress, Ryun’s proposals center on what might be accomplished by the executive branch under a conservative president. Ryun would begin with “mass firings” via Reduction in Force provisions exercised within agencies. There are currently some two million federal employees, 800,000 deemed non-essential. In addition to firings, the president could employ voluntary early incentives and reassignment “to a remote location,” which would result in further reductions.
In addition, Ryun suggests that a president who wishes to curtail the power of the administrative state might use the Office of Personnel Management to set limits on pay and benefits and to convert “Career Reserved” senior executive service positions to general positions. One might also limit the power of the Office of Management and Budget by eliminating the president’s annual budget, which, Ryun feels, serves little purpose in any case. Numerous other actions would be required to bring the administrative state to heel, including reforming the National Security Council, reinstating Civil Service Exams, and exerting force by way of Schedule F, which allows the firing of lower-level bureaucrats. In addition, the FBI must be drastically reformed; the Consumer Financial Protection Agency closed down; and the Department of Education and HUD shuttered. And this, of course, is only the beginning.
Ned Ryun has taken on an ambitious topic, and in most respects, he has made a strong case for greatly reducing the size and power of the deep state. For most persons outside Washington, it seems obvious that there is a great deal of waste and abuse within the federal government and that the government needs to be downsized and reformed. Ryun would, of course, go much further: he suggests eliminating many agencies and significantly reducing staff at others. In American Leviathan, he makes a credible case for just such actions.
Regardless of the extent to which one shares the author’s concerns, American Leviathan is a thoughtful and well-informed account of the rise of the administrative state and its current power, providing a road map for eliminating its influence. Ryun has written a forceful and highly relevant study of the rise of authoritarianism in the United States, one which most readers will, I suspect, find quite worthwhile.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Support the University Bookman
The Bookman is provided free of charge and without ads to all readers. Would you please consider supporting the work of the Bookman with a gift of $5? Contributions of any amount are needed and appreciated!
