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Doral, Florida - “The Horror,” say progressives! President Trump is doing exactly what he said on the campaign trail that he would do once he won the election. He and his auditors, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, are exposing the massive waste, fraud and abuse of government spending. DOGE has started by exposing the United States Agency for International Development, and Trump will soon turn DOGE on the Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service and the Pentagon.
From the point of view of woke progressive activists, these measures constitute an assault on their religion of government power and their priests: government bureaucrats. We are in a war not about economics but about theology. Marx was not an economist but a theologian.
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To progressives, the DOGE boys constitute today’s version of the Terror unleashed by progressive revolutionaries in the past. This was the Terror carried out by Maximilien Robespierre and his fellow Revolutionaries in France around 1791, by Vladimir Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks in Russia starting in 1917, and by Fidel Castro and his bearded thugs in Cuba since 1959. This Terror may be coming from the libertarian direction, reducing the scope of government power, but to progressives the source of their Terror does not matter. They are terrified!
DOGE has disclosed the details of improper government spending. For example, progressive causes, publications and so-called Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) always seem to have so much funding. Where has it come from? Part of it has come from George Soros and other well-off progressive donors, who view their donations as the equivalent of Christians donating to their churches. Another big part of their funding, however, has come from the United States Agency for International Development and other sources in the federal government.
Progressives are in the untenable position of opposing obviously improper government spending, because that is what they stand for: unchecked government spending. You cannot call yourself an NGO if cuts in government spending stops your work. Other examples include:
1. Funding an environmental justice NGO tied to Stacy Abrams, the twice-failed candidate for Georgia Governor who was portrayed in some woke movie as Emperor of the Universe.
2. Funding over four million government credit cards with an annual spending of $40 billion.
3. Funding a “sanctuary program” for illegal aliens operated by the Department of Education.
4. Funding trans-sexual surgery and mutilation of laboratory animals.
5. Funding Social Security recipients aged well over 100 years old, much older than your columnist, who is also a recipient.
6. Funding subscriptions to Politico magazine, a progressive publication, and supporting the Associated Press, which publishes a woke stylebook that has gotten it kicked out of the White House press room.
The list goes on, reflecting Congressional failure to exercise oversight over unelected bureaucrats. For their part, however, Congressmen and Senators have done well off the system. Despite their humble public sector salaries, many like former Speaker Pelosi and Senators Schumer and McConnell have parlayed their positions into multi-millionaire status.
Musk is wielding a chain saw presented to him by President Milei of Argentina against progressive government.
Government Accountability
DOGE should be renamed DOGA: Department of Government Accountability, because government efficiency is an oxymoron. In any event, efficient government is almost always tyrannical government. At least the Founding Fathers thought so, and made the federal government somewhat inefficient on purpose.
The big question today is the accountability of the government of the United States to the American people - - to its citizens, taxpayers and voters. Since around 1965, progressives have attempted to import a new people, without the American political culture, less freedom-loving and more disposed to letting government have its way without dissent.
Thus, the question is whether in America government should be, as President Lincoln proclaimed in Gettysburg during 1863, “of, by and for the people.” On the other hand, the competing vision, set forth in Plato’s Republic (the book, not the movie!) since 399 B.C., is that the best government is of, by and for experts, with little or no accountability to the people governed. Those people, this vision says, lack the credentials, pedigree and acclaim of the expert class to operate government effectively, and in order to establish such government, the experts are entitled to lie to the people.
This vision of government by experts has been gaining acceptance in America since the progressive era starting around 1900. Technology was advancing rapidly at that time, with railroads, telegraphs and such, and it was thought that a technology-minded approach was also needed for government. This view got its start during the administration of President Wilson, 1913-21. During this period, they achieved several legislative successes: (1) the Federal Reserve Act of 1913; (2) Amendment no. 16 to the United States Constitution permitting an income tax to be assessed; and (3) Amendment no. 17 providing for the direct election of United States Senators.
They called themselves progressives because they believe that a government of experts can guide us to a secular utopia, if only all the complications of representative government can be suppressed. They seek effective government, regardless of its effect on the liberty of the people governed. This has also been the ideology of the Chinese Empire for over 4,000 years.
During the 1920’s, America returned to conservative government, but then progressive President Hoover and the Federal Reserve Bank turned a short-term financial crisis in 1929 into the beginning of the Great Depression.
The crisis of the Great Depression created an opportunity to respond with expanded government through President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. These programs included the National Recovery Administration in 1933, numerous other alphabet-soup government agencies, and the Social Security Administration in 1935. This was also the year when the federal government started publishing the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations to compile all the regulations that it was issuing.
The next big expansion of progressive government came with President Johnson’s Great Society programs starting around 1965. These programs expanded the welfare state, and thereby tempted citizens to become dependent on government for their food, housing, health care, schooling and more.
These citizens became overwhelming voters for the progressive party of expanded government.
The latest big expansion of government came with the election of President Obama in 2008. This election was thought to be the harbinger of a New Democrat Majority, with continuing electoral domination going forward. Nevertheless, this progressive revolution was blunted by the election of President Trump in 2016, and after a rigged election in 2020, again in 2024 with a decisive victory.
President Obama in effect served for three terms: first from 2009 to 2017 through his own elections, and then from 2021 to 2025 as de facto President behind de jure President Biden. During his three terms, the expansion of government power and spending went into overdrive. New programs like ObamaCare supplemented existing programs like the United States Agency for International Development.
The Obama-Biden administration also brought the ethical practices of Cook County, Illinois to an already ethically-challenged Washington, D.C. They don’t call China Joe the Big Guy of the Biden Crime Family for nothing.
One DOGE to Drain the Swamp
Progressive government un-accountable to the people not only expanded its power at the expense of the people, but also created a swamp of corruption for the waste, fraud and abuse of government spending. That is what President Trump is attacking now with his special auditors: Elon Musk and his team of whiz kids providing tech support.
In America the people are sovereign, not the experts, the party, or even the King in Parliament. DOGE is merely an instrument to help restore that balance, and that is why progressives consider it an agent of the new libertarian Terror.
