After Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made a fool of herself by defining habeas corpus as “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country,” Justin Amash, the libertarian former congressman, posted an apt quotation on X:
Since it is the supreme leader who alone determines the ends, his instruments [staff] must have no moral convictions of their own. They must, above all, be unreservedly committed to the person of the leader; but next to this the most important thing is that they should be completely unprincipled and literally capable of everything. They must have no ideals of their own which they want to realise, no ideas about right or wrong which might interfere with the intentions of the leader.
The quote comes from Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek, one of the most important social scientists of the 20th century. You can find the quote in Chapter 10 of Hayek’s invaluable 1943 classic, The Road to Serfdom. Hayek called that chapter “Why the Worst Get on Top.”
That chapter is worth paying close attention to. Let’s start by acknowledging the purpose of Hayek’s book. During World War II, Hayek, who lived and taught in England, sought to counter an argument made by prominent intellectuals, namely, that if central planning works well in war, it ought to work well in peacetime. Postwar economic planning seemed inevitable. ..
Who would relish the chance to round up masses of peaceful “illegal” border-crossers without due process and force them onto planes bound for prisons in El Salvador, South Sudan, or Djibouti? The current U.S. regime will reward people who would enjoy that sort of work.
There is thus in the positions of power little to attract those who hold moral beliefs of the kind which in the past have guided the European peoples…. The only tastes which are satisfied are the taste for power as such, the pleasure of being obeyed and of being part of a well-functioning and immensely powerful machine to which everything else must give way.
Yet while there is little that is likely to induce men who are good by our standards to aspire to leading positions in the totalitarian machine, and much to deter them, there will be special opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous…. [T]he readiness to do bad things becomes a path to promotion and power. The positions in a totalitarian society in which it is necessary to practice cruelty and intimidation, deliberate deception and spying, are numerous. Neither the Gestapo nor the administration of a concentration camp, neither the Ministry of Propaganda nor the SA or SS (or their Italian or Russian counterparts) are suitable places for the exercise of humanitarian feelings. Yet it is through positions like these that the road to the highest positions in the totalitarian state leads.
It’s too late to worry that the worst will get on top. He and they are already there.
Yes, some of the things Trump is doing to undo the prior damage of the feckless progressive/lefty/collectivist/Marxist/socialist/communist/murderers that were in power using the Autopen to commit their fantasies into laws, you know, ”stroke of the pen, law of the land” style ruling. He is now trying to undo those problems. Will he be able to undo the problems? Is he an Autocrat? Were the problems existent before he came to office? Do we, the people, want these problems solved? And finally, when do we want the problems solved, now or almost never?