Gene Healy
Gene Healy
Man, libertarians are a difficult bunch. Give them a government agency tasked with “delet[ing] entire agencies,” and they’ll start yowling about the agency-deleting agency.
The zanier version of John Galt has been set loose on the permanent bureaucracy, invoking Milton Friedman while he throws the US Agency for International Development (USAID) “into the woodchipper.” Yet rather than welcoming the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a lot of libertarians are filled with dread:
“That thing’s operational!”
Is DOGE “just the Deep State by a different name?”
Or is it a modern-day CREEP, Nixon’s dirty-tricks-campaign operation, “on steroids”?
Does Elon Musk think he’s “Dictator of America”? What he’s doing “bears all the hallmarks of a coup d’état”!
“You just can’t please these people,” I can hear our critics on the right saying, “It’s the Movement that Would Not Take Yes for an Answer.” But I like to think DOGE skepticism comes from a good place: Libertarians take “eternal vigilance” really seriously.
Even so, I am unconvinced—to put it mildly—that the agency-for-eliminating-unconstitutional-agencies is a serious threat to constitutional government. DOGE’s legal defects are a far bigger threat to the agency’s bureaucracy-slashing mission than they are to our liberties. And since a lot more than USAID deserves to go into the woodchipper, libertarians should want those defects cured because we want DOGE’s mission to succeed.
The Stuff of Libertarian Nightmares?
Be careful what you wish for, Veronique de Rugy cautions in Reason. When one president “circumvents legal constraints to impose libertarian-leaning policies,” the next can use “the same unchecked powers to expand government.” In the worst case, DOGE could leave us with a “presidency on steroids,” “opening the door to the same abuse when the left is in power.”
That’s sound advice in general, but in this particular case, I’m struggling to come up with true nightmare scenarios. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/libertarians-doge-anxiety-disorder