Angelo Codevilla’s examination of the American
political class in The American Spectator of July this
year will surely take its place among the seminal texts of American
conservatism. It brings into clear focus the great danger to the
American settlement that has arisen during the course of the last
century — which is the slow, steady confiscation of political
decisions by a self-defining elite. The cost of those decisions is
borne by the people; the benefits accrue to the elite and to those
who share its lifestyle. As a result the American political process
is beginning to resemble the political process in Europe, where
only unimportant matters are discussed in elected legislatures, and
where the real decisions are taken behind closed doors, among
members of the political class. This class includes a few elected
politicians, or at any rate politicians who have at some point been
elected to some office that may or may not still exist. But elected
politicians form only a small proportion of the elite, most of
whose members are in any case unelectable. Far more important are
the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, the “captains of industry,”
the trade union barons, the favored members of the professoriate,
and the people who, for whatever reason, are owed favors by the
ruling party.
In a lecture delivered at the University of Munich in 1918, just
after the defeat of Germany, and before the new order of German
democracy had begun, the great sociologist Max Weber spoke of
“politics as a calling” (Politik als Beruf). He drew
attention to the inevitable consequence of democracy, which is that
while some people will live for politics many more will
live from it. The democratic process is open to capture by
cohesive groups who, in the course of one parliamentary session,
can build institutions and tax-flows that grant a permanent rent to
their members, regardless of whether they have been elected to
government, and regardless of whether they have ever been honestly
and gainfully employed. This capture has been achieved by the trade
union elites in France and Germany, by the utilities companies in
Scotland and France, by the motor and aerospace industries in
Britain, and by all those who live from the welfare state — which
means, primarily, not the teachers in schools or the doctors and
nurses in the hospitals, but the bureaucrats who control them, and
who are in a position to demand an ever larger share of the public
revenue.
Until recently the British Parliament made spasmodic efforts to
retain control over the use of tax revenue and to account for
legislation to the people. Gradually, however, the political class
has triumphed over politics: most legislation, and most political
decisions, are now governed by bureaucrats who enjoy lifelong
security of tenure and who need never account for what they do. And
the decision-making powers of local government and civil
associations have been transferred to “quasi-autonomous
non-government organizations,” staffed by tried and trusted members
of the political elite. The Labour Party has been particularly
energetic in creating and financing these “quangos,” so that there
are now nearly 900 of them, consuming a tax-funded income of £170
billion a year. Many of them have legislative or quasi-legislative
powers, like the Health and Safety Directorate, which has
encumbered our society with absurd regulations and imposed
crippling expenditures on business. Some even have powers of
policing, like the Commission for Racial Equality, which regularly
prosecutes people, usually without success, for racist
thought-crimes. Their officers are shielded from the normal
consequences of decision-making while often receiving salaries that
can be matched in the private sector only by CEOs. Two hundred
quangos have been added in the last two years alone, including the
“Herbal Medicines Advisory Committee,” the “Thames Gateway
Development Corporation,” and the “School Food Trust,” funded to
the tune of £63 million in order to explore ways of improving the
meals served in schools.
Such protected spheres of influence provide an unprecedented
breeding ground for the political class. There is now a
well-trodden career path from the politicized NGOs of the left, via
the left-leaning quangos, to high office in the Labour Party and
thence to the lucrative bureaucracies of the European Union. The
Parliamentary Labour Party now consists almost entirely of career
politicians who have spent their lives spending other people’s
money and providing ideological reasons for stealing more of it. An
astonishing example is Baroness Ashton, the first ever “foreign
minister” of the European Union — and therefore my foreign
minister, who negotiates on my behalf with all the governments of
the world.
I know a lot about Baroness Ashton’s career. But I don’t know
anything else about her other than that she is having to learn
French for the first time. When our country had control of its
foreign relations, a knowledge of French was the first requirement
for any position in foreign affairs. Now, it seems, you can reach
the very summit of European politics with no qualifications at all.
Lady Ashton began as a secretary in the most destructive of all the
left-wing NGOS, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a KGB-funded
pressure group that nearly succeeded in preventing the deployment
of cruise missiles in Britain, at a time of real and pressing
Soviet threat. She moved to the “Central Council for Education and
Training in Social Work,” a leftist quango devoted to the
maintenance of the welfare state’s most hopeless victims. From
there she moved smoothly to the National Health Service, became
chair of the Health Authority in Hertfordshire, and was finally
appointed vice president of the National Council for One Parent
Families. She entered the House of Lords at the behest of Tony
Blair, and in accordance with his policy of filling the upper house
with leftist apparatchiks. She became a European Commissioner by
appointment, the choice being Gordon Brown’s, and foreign minister
likewise, as a result of a deal worked out by the European
political elite. Never once has this woman ventured to propose
herself for election to anything. Instead she has been carried from
office to office by a class whose interests she can be guaranteed
to represent, and whose agenda she will never question.
IS AMERICA SAFE FROM the European disease? Surely the principles
of federalism, built into the Constitution by the great men who
devised it, will prevent the final confiscation of political
decisions from the people whom they serve? Surely we shall never
see in America the emergence of a government machine of the kind we
see in Europe, where the most important decisions are taken behind
the closed doors of the European Commission, by bureaucrats who
have never been elected and who keep no minutes of their
meetings?
True, things are unlikely to go that far. But the American
president has expressed his approval for the European superstate,
and American politicians talk and act as though people like our
“foreign minister” really are entitled to speak for us. Moreover
the political class in America has discovered its own way of
bypassing the people, legislating through the Supreme Court rather
than through Congress, and creating government agencies that give
permanent rents and regulatory powers to its members. Just how far
the ruling class can proceed in the European direction is
debatable, but this fall our bravest member of the European
Parliament, the English conservative Daniel Hannan, is publishing
an important book that spells out the dangers, brilliantly
summarizes the state of play, and shows exactly why the American
Constitution both deserves and needs protection from the new ruling
class. The New Road to Serfdom (Harper), which takes its
title from the famous anti-socialist tract published by Friedrich
Hayek, is subtitled A Letter of Warning to America. And no
reader of this magazine should be without a copy.
Hannan shows just how easy it is to remove powers from the
people and to transfer them to professional politicians; he
documents the process as it has occurred in Europe and identifies
the warning signs in America. And he utters a passionate plea to
the American people, as the last representatives of the freedoms
for which the English-speaking people have given so many lives. It
is time, he tells his American readers, to wake up to what is
happening, and to rescue their Constitution from the new ruling
class. His book, along with Angelo Codevilla’s article (which he
has expanded and is now
available in book form from Beaufort Books), should be on sale
at every Tea Party.
