The Constitution provides for three branches of government, sharing sovereign power. In fact, we have a fourth branch, the sprawling administrative bureaucracies.
The left sees Washington’s administrative apparatus as “rule by experts,” essential for controlling a technologically complex society. Their preference is for the modern equivalent of Plato’s philosopher-kings, people who understand the population’s needs far better than the people themselves.
Conservatives (and populists) place no faith in philosopher-kings and certainly not in mid-level bureaucrats, mostly trained in law school. Conservatives see the engorged administrative state as undemocratic and, hence, illegitimate.
Conservatives see the metastasizing administrative state as violating two fundamental precepts of the Constitution. First, Washington bureaucracies have effectively become an unelected – and poorly controlled – fourth branch of government. Second, their centralized power has slowly, inexorably crushed the federal structure of the Constitution, which leaves most lawmaking to the states.
