The American painter Norman Rockwell ranks among my favorite artists. Though often dismissed by the art establishment as sentimental or illustrative rather than “serious,” Rockwell’s work deliberately repudiates the disintegration that dominated 20th-century art. As modernist and postmodern schools reduced art to chaos, distortion, and alienation—treating man as a fragmented, helpless being adrift in a senseless universe, Rockwell did the opposite: he portrayed man as whole, intelligible, and capable of purposeful action in a world that could be understood and valued. Rockwell upheld a view of life as coherent and worth living—not absurd, not tragic, but rationally graspable and morally significant.

Rockwell’s art is not only technically masterful but philosophically defiant. He rejected the nihilism masquerading as depth and instead depicted a world where values matter and character shapes destiny. That choice—to stand against the artistic orthodoxy of his age and portray man as a sovereign moral agent—makes Rockwell not a relic of American nostalgia, but a heroic figure in the history of art.

This first installment in my revised series on Rockwell’s greatest achievements examines The Scoutmaster—a restrained yet powerful statement on earned authority, stewardship, and the preparation of future men.

The Scoutmaster

This painting depicts a man standing sentinel over the glowing embers of a nighttime fire while boys slumber peacefully in their tents. The starry blue of the night sky and the dry, rocky soil suggest a remote and secluded location. The man, fit but unassuming, wears a uniform—but he is neither a soldier, a policeman, nor a hunter. He carries no weapon or badge of office. No threat is present, yet he stands quiet watch regardless. His ringed hand rests lightly on his hip, while his other hand gently rakes the coals, with a wisp of smoke curling into the still night air. His face is turned just beyond the frame. We don’t know what he sees. But his expression is calm, almost introspective—his gaze directed inward more than outward.

The boys’ varied hair colors show they are not his own, yet he watches over them as if they were. A small tripod stands over the fire, lashed with a cord whose bitter ends hang loose—knots clearly tied by a novice’s hand. An aluminum pot hangs from the tripod; a coffee pot rests nearby. Rocks and small stumps ring the low fire. Hunger or hardship plays no part in this scene. Instead, Rockwell presents an image of calm assurance—a man standing silently as the trusted guide of future men.

Rockwell’s technical execution in The Scoutmaster reflects a disciplined and intimate understanding of the human figure. The man’s relaxed stance reads as wholly natural, not posed or theatrical. The folds in his uniform fall with convincing weight, and the slight lift of his neckerchief in the night air suggests movement without disrupting the stillness of the scene. These are not accidents of talent but the result of deliberate observation. Rockwell knew how the body moves—and how fabric moves with it. This precision isn’t decorative; it’s essential to making the scene believable, and therefore, meaningful.

But what gives the painting its lasting power is its moral substance. It depicts an unassuming but deeply consequential act: a man who leaves comfort behind to guide boys through the wilderness, teaching them to cooperate, shoulder responsibility, and grow into men of purpose and honor. There is no ceremony or dramatics—just a man living his values and passing them on through action. His authority comes not from rank or force, but from the steady example he sets. Rockwell doesn’t sentimentalize this role; he shows it as it is—demanding, noble, and real. The painting affirms that manhood is not something conferred by age or biology, but something cultivated and earned.

Set this scene in the Middle Ages, and one easily imagines the man as a knight and the boys as his squires—youths who serve their lord. However, here, Rockwell reverses the dynamic: the man serves the boys. This is not an expedition for foraging or war. It is a deliberate mission of instruction, aimed at teaching boys the arts of self-reliance and personal independence. That is why I see this painting as embodying a distinctively American moral premise. In a land of freedom and abundance, the true test is not survival, but self-governance. Rockwell shows us a man preparing the next generation for that task.

In The Scoutmaster, Rockwell captures the steady nobility of those who dedicate themselves to shaping the independent men of tomorrow. The Scoutmaster is not a world-shaker or a revolutionary. But he is something many men can immediately recognize and aspire to: a man who teaches boys how to become men, not by command, but by example. He embodies earned authority, calm strength, and moral presence. In portraying him, Rockwell affirms that greatness often lies in the private acts of guidance and guardianship that make civilization possible.

In a time when manhood is mocked, distorted, or denied, Rockwell reminds us that it must still be taught—quietly, deliberately, and by men who live what they ask others to become. So long as this image endures, so too will the values it upholds.

Future installments:

Part II: The Homecoming Marine
Part III: Lincoln the Railsplitter
Part IV: The Problem We All Live With
Part V: Freedom of Speech

Ayn Rand saw the morality of altruism as the cause of the disaster of the Vietnam War.

The post Ayn Rand on the ‘Philosophical Collapse’ Behind the Vietnam War, Fifty Years Later appeared first on New Ideal - Reason | Individualism | Capitalism.

Seneca, SC: Loco-Foco Press, 2024
324 pp. $7.50 (Kindle)

Editor’s note: This review includes a glossary of terms. Readers unfamiliar with economics may wish to familiarize themselves with the glossary before reading the review.

How is money created, who creates it, and what are the economic effects of money creation? In his book A Black Hole in Economics: Money Creation and Its Consequences, Chartered Financial Analyst Jim Brown answers these questions comprehensively. His book is timely considering that the prices of consumer goods have risen nearly 20 percent since 2021. Yet a reader might wonder why we need another book on this topic. Haven’t economists already discussed this issue ad nauseam?

They have. But most economists, according to Brown, subscribe to a wrong theory. “I believe money creation,” he writes, “suffers from a special kind of ignorance. The ‘black holes’ of outer space are poorly understood because we lack the scientific knowledge to explain them. However, money creation is poorly understood because the correct . . . theory, once widely understood, has somehow been forgotten” (25).

Brown discusses three different theories of the banking system and its role in creating brand new money. First, the credit creation theory says that individual banks create new money in the form of credit when they extend loans or buy assets. Second, Paul Samuelson’s fractional reserve theory claims that the interaction of banks, not any single bank, creates money through a “reserve multiplier” process. When one bank extends a loan, the theory goes, this money gets deposited and reloaned by other banks, creating new money. Finally, the financial intermediation theory (the dominant theory today) denies that banks create money; instead, it claims the money that banks lend comes from the customers who have deposited their savings with them.

The financial intermediation theory, Brown observes, correctly describes how many _non_bank financial institutions operate, but not how banks operate. The correct theory, Brown argues, is the credit creation theory: “commercial banks create money ex nihilo, i.e., ‘out of nothing,’ by issuing promises to pay out cash when demanded. . . . The ability to ‘create money’ this way is fundamental to all banks and has not changed over time. What has changed is the nature of the cash” (33–34).

Brown then explains, in great detail, the mechanics of money creation, analyzing how a bank’s balance sheet changes when it extends a loan or buys an asset. He also explains how modern banking evolved from the practices of European goldsmiths in the mid-15th century, indicating the important difference between two types of money: cash (“standard money”) and promises to pay cash (“fiduciary media” such as credit and checks). Brown explains how commercial banks only have the power to create the latter type of money and how the nature of the two types of money changed when the government abandoned the gold standard.

Although commercial banks create money in the form of promises to pay cash the same way today as they did under the gold standard, the key difference between now and then is that, under the gold standard, the supply of cash was limited because only gold (or silver) was considered cash. Under the monetary system today, central banks—not commercial banks—have unlimited legal authority to create cash in the form of paper bills. Brown points out that in the 1930s, “the government seized the power to control the amount of bank reserves away from the gold depositors and gave it to the Federal Reserve [i.e., the ‘Fed,’ the central bank of the United States], which could easily create new cash reserves in any amount” (52).

Although the power of central banks to create money in the form of cash is unlimited, the power of commercial banks to create money in the form of promises to pay cash is not. As Brown explains, “Commercial bankers face numerous market constraints, such as loan demand, interest rates, a limited pool of creditworthy borrowers, and the expenses associated with lending operations” (74).

Brown distinguishes “good money creation” from “bad money creation,” devoting a chapter to each. Commercial banks create money in accordance with the law of supply and demand. This is good money creation, which “results in productive, non-inflationary growth”—increased production without a permanent increase in the amount of money in circulation (98). The reason such growth is “noninflationary” is that, over the life of a loan, no net new money is created. A bank, for example, creates new money (credit) when it extends a loan to a business; when the business pays back the loan, the previously created money no longer exists. But “the new or improved products [that business] created [with the loan] will still be there as an addition to the economy’s reservoir of real wealth” (96). Good money creation in the form of business loans, in other words, fosters prosperity by providing entrepreneurs with the capital they need—not only to create new or improved products, but also to expand production, start new businesses, or devise better ways to serve their customers.

Central banks, on the other hand, are responsible for bad money creation, which is highly destructive. This raises the question: Is bad money creation the same thing as inflation? To answer that, we first must be clear on what exactly inflation is. Brown starts this discussion by analyzing its various definitions. Whereas the most common definition of inflation is a general rise in prices, the Fed defines it more narrowly as a general rise only in consumer prices. The major problem with these definitions, Brown observes, is that they cause all sorts of confusion because they ignore money creation while focusing only on one of its effects (price increases), which can also be caused by other factors.

Brown cites one definition of inflation from the Oxford English Dictionary: an “(undue) increase in the quantity of money circulating,” which he deems essentially correct (110). The implication is that good money creation by private banks is not inflation because it cannot be properly described as undue money creation. So, what is the source of undue money creation? “We are left with the fact that only government intervention in the banking system can enable a prolonged or persistent increase in the quantity of money” (114). Brown concludes with a more specific definition of inflation that he borrows from economist George Reisman: “an increase in the quantity of money caused by the government” (114). Inflation, in other words, is synonymous with bad money creation.

Brown analyzes two major bad money creation episodes, notably the Fed’s “Quantitative Easing” (QE) program from 2009 to 2022. Under QE, the Fed monetized trillions of dollars of government debt (i.e., it created money out of thin air to buy Treasury bonds) while aggressively suppressing interest rates following the 2008 financial crisis. The stated purpose of this policy was to avoid deflation while “stimulating” the economy, but this came with harmful consequences. Because this new money was funneled into the financial markets, QE unjustly favored investors by artificially inflating the prices of stocks, bonds, and real estate. Savers, by contrast, were “the most obvious victims of ultra-low interest rates,” as the rate of interest earned on their savings fell short of the inflation rate, reducing the real value of those savings (134). Brown explains how QE and repressed interest rates have also led to nonproductive investments and stagnant real (inflation-adjusted) wages.

During the pandemic, the Fed launched QE into overdrive, igniting a sharp rise in consumer goods prices. The question is: Why didn’t QE lead to significant consumer price increases before the pandemic? The first rounds of QE, Brown explains, were directed to Wall Street (investors), which inflated only asset prices, but “the Pandemic QE money surge was directed to both Wall Street and Main Street [ordinary consumers]. Thus asset prices continued rising, but now the inflation included the items Main Street spends money on: eggs, cars, rents, and everything else in the consumer price index” (143).

In addition to asset and consumer price inflation, the Fed’s bad money creation has enabled massive growth of the national debt. “By monetizing much of the new debt and sending interest rates to rock-bottom levels,” Brown observes, “the Fed dissolved the customary link between taxing and spending, making the new debt feel painless” (148). Brown examines not only the government’s current debt but also its unfunded liabilities. He concludes that it is simply impossible for the government to meet all its future financial obligations. A sound path forward must include cutting entitlements, such as Medicare and Social Security, as these programs, absent any changes, will comprise an ever-growing share of the federal budget in the future. But this is unlikely to happen for political reasons. Brown quotes former European Commission President and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean Claude Juncker: “We all know what to do. We just don’t know how to get re-elected after we do it” (174).

The federal government, according to Brown, will most likely impose a mix of policies that result in “financial repression,” which Brown defines as a “combination of high inflation and low ‘real’ [inflation-adjusted] interest rates” (171). Along with higher taxes, these policies will directly and indirectly transfer wealth from individuals to the government. High inflation will reduce the real value of the government’s debt, but it also reduces the purchasing power of everyone who holds dollars. Given this bleak prospect, Brown devotes the last chapter to discussing investment strategies for defending oneself from financial repression.

The book also has three appendixes, the last of which is particularly important. Brown explains that economist Richard Werner conducted an experiment in 2014. This experiment, according to Brown, “proved the credit creation theory empirically and inductively” (275). Werner simply took out a large loan from a small bank, then analyzed the bank’s balance sheet before and after the loan. Surprisingly, no economist had ever done this before. The result of this experiment, Brown shows, “match only the credit creation theory, and do not match either the fractional reserve theory or the intermediation theory” (290).

I found it odd that Brown relegates this discussion to an appendix. Considering that most people, as he points out, strongly resist the credit creation theory when they first hear it, I think it would have made more sense to include the purported proof of the theory in or right after chapter 2, where he explains the theory in detail.

Another quibble I have is that, when discussing the problems of QE, Brown refers to “unjust economic inequality.” In using this phrase, he says that he is “not referring to the normal differences in income and wealth that occur in a free market due to differing preferences, ambitions, and abilities”; rather, he is referring to the “injustices that occurred due to the central bank’s policy of funneling free money specifically to the investor class” (134). Although Brown correctly identifies the winners and losers from QE, framing this in terms of economic inequality is a distraction. QE isunjust because it coercively benefits some people at the expense of others, violating their rights. Whether this happens to increase or decrease economic inequality is irrelevant.

Despite these minor criticisms, A Black Hole in Economics: Money Creation and Its Consequences is a superb book. Brown cogently explains the various theories of money and banking in a way that is accessible to intelligent nonexperts. Although some readers might struggle with the technical passages regarding bank balance sheets, I think Brown explains this material in the simplest way possible. If you want to learn more about how money is created, its economic effects, the national debt, financial repression, and more, this book is for you.

Glossary of Terms

• Cash (standard money) is the primary form of money. It is accepted as full and final payment and is not a claim to anything further. Under the current monetary system, physical dollar bills and coins are cash.

• A central bank is a government-privileged bank that is granted the exclusive authority to create cash, the primary form of money. The central bank of the United States is the Federal Reserve.

• A commercial bank is a private financial institution that creates new money, not in the form of cash but in the form of promises to pay cash (fiduciary media).

• Fiduciary media are secondary forms of money. Created in commercial banks, fiduciary media are promises to pay cash, such as checks and credit.

• Money is a commonly used medium of exchange, which includes both cash and promises to pay cash.

This article appears in the Summer 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.

Image: Jonah Elkowitz / Shutterstock.com

Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—the vanguard of his stated effort to gut the federal workforce and agencies—claims to cut waste and rein in the reckless spending of the state.1 Trump’s supposed attempt to reform this by presidential decree is not genuine and will not ultimately succeed because it is not grounded in rational principles. Proper reform begins with a fundamental question: What is the purpose of government? The only rational answer is the protection of individual rights. But Trump’s policies neither respect that purpose nor follow lawful processes designed to uphold it. Instead, they disregard the rule of law—and in doing so, they violate the very rights government exists to protect.

The question here is not whether the federal government has abdicated this proper function—it long since has—but whether reform through unprincipled, irrational decrees secures liberty or ensures chaos. Real, lasting reform requires reason, explanation, and a rights-protecting legal process (or the creation of one if it does not exist). In certain cases, it may be necessary to use tools such as executive orders, but this should always be done in pursuit of restoring the proper function of the legal system as quickly as possible. Otherwise, today’s victories can collapse into tomorrow’s reversals—and, even worse, set dangerous legal precedents. For example, on January 20, 2025, Trump issued an executive order renaming the Obama-era U.S. Digital Service as the DOGE Service and unilaterally installing teams within federal agencies to enforce his directives—bypassing congressional approval and oversight.2 This was no reform—it was the opening salvo in Trump’s campaign to rule by decree, not by reference to a proper conception of the rule of law.

To evaluate a reform effort such as DOGE, we must ask two questions: (1) Does it aim to secure individual rights? (2) Does it use or establish lawful, objective processes to ensure that those reforms endure? Trump’s initiative fails both tests. His goals are unprincipled, rooted in sycophantism and circus-like spectacle rather than justice. And his methods sidestep Congress and due process, not to restore the rule of law but to undermine it.

Trump’s administrations, both past and present, are a tempest of executive overreach, unfulfilled promises, and social-media grandstanding that undermine lasting reform. His 2020 Schedule F order, which aimed to strip tenure for federal government employees and to open the door to politically motivated firings, was swiftly reversed by Joe Biden, reemphasizing the fragility of policies enacted by fiat. In January 2025, Elon Musk claimed that DOGE could slash $2 trillion from the federal budget—nearly a third of 2023’s $6.8 trillion in spending—yet provided no actionable plan to do so.3 By April, Musk had scaled back this ambition to $150 billion—less than 10 percent of the original goal—admitting that $2 trillion was unrealistic.4

For example, DOGE attempted to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is a fundamentally corrupt organization. But the attempt was blocked by a federal judge, who ruled that executive action alone could not dismantle a congressionally authorized agency without violating the separation of powers.5 The judge’s opinion stated, “Where Congress has prescribed the existence of USAID in statute pursuant to its legislative powers under Article I, the President’s Article II power to take care that the laws are faithfully executed does not provide authority for the unilateral, drastic actions taken to dismantle the agency.” Rep. Jamie Raskin echoed this point, criticizing DOGE’s effort as an “unlawful power grab.”6 DOGE’s erratic moves—cancelling contracts, accessing sensitive Treasury data, and laying off thousands, all without clear, evidence-based principles—embody not reform but a reckless spectacle that invites chaos and reversal.7 Indeed, DOGE’s own public “wall of receipts” was riddled with double-counted or outdated entries, including savings from programs that ended during the George W. Bush administration, further undermining DOGE’s credibility.8 After public scrutiny, DOGE removed more than a thousand entries—roughly 40 percent of the total—yet offered neither a clear public acknowledgment of the scale of the misreporting nor a revised total of claimed savings. The revisions further undermine DOGE’s credibility.9

These cases (and many more) reflect a deeper, long-standing pattern of governing by impulse rather than according to rights-protecting principles. This volatility is deliberate, as evidenced by Trump’s use of rapid-fire executive actions and media tactics designed to overwhelm critics and evade accountability. As his former adviser Steve Bannon put it in 2017, the goal was to “flood the zone with shit”—a strategy meant to overwhelm critics with chaos and prevent meaningful scrutiny.10 For instance, reports indicate that Trump’s aides intentionally orchestrated a barrage of executive orders and public appearances to disorient opponents and hinder cohesive opposition.11 But such unpredictability, even if it were well-reasoned and well-intentioned, doesn’t lead to reform; it ensures failure, leaving any gains vulnerable to swift reversal by the next administration. Clear explanations respect people’s minds and add credibility; deliberately avoiding accountability and hiding from criticism detracts from the trustworthiness of the administration and invites failure.

There is a potentially more serious problem, too: The more often presidents use tools such as executive orders in ways that undermine the principles of a free society, the more likely it is that future presidents will do so. (Observe the catastrophic consequences of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s unsurpassed deluge of executive orders—consequences that still are harming Americans today.)12

Although proper political reform may be disruptive in some cases, it is not characterized by disruption but by the enduring protection of individual rights, the creation and/or maintenance of objective law, and fidelity to such law. Trump’s approach ensures that even his best proposals collapse under their own contradictions. Reform not rooted explicitly in the evidence-based principles of a free society can’t and won’t last.

The Rule of Law and the Price of Arbitrary Power

Federal spending soared to $6.75 trillion in 2024 (23.4 percent of GDP, well above the historic average of 20.3 percent), and a $1.8 trillion deficit pushed the national debt to 97 percent of GDP.13 (These numbers aren’t meaningless; they largely explain why your grocery bill has doubled or tripled since 2019, why your retirement portfolio likely is down by 20 percent or more, why some cars cost 50 percent more than they did ten years ago, etc.) America’s spending crisis is not merely a fiscal problem measured in trillions; it is a moral failure: a government evading responsibility and looting its citizens’ futures to serve politicians’ short-term interests. A government that spends beyond its means sacrifices the nation’s future freedom and prosperity—and vastly more so when the government spends vast amounts of money on rights-violating activities. What America needs is not argument over the size of government but widespread recognition of its proper role—the protection of individual rights—and rational, principled debate over how to restrict it, permanently and responsibly, to that role.

“MAGA” loyalists cast DOGE as a principled effort to restrain government, excusing its failures by framing any opposition as evidence of deep-state subversion; Trump, too, embraces this particular deep-state narrative.14 For instance, during his 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference speech, Trump declared his intention to “totally obliterate the deep state,” portraying entrenched federal agencies as adversaries of his administration.15 There is good evidence that drastic action is needed to reform the federal government into a more rights-respecting entity. But Trump represents a uniquely dangerous kind of counterfeit reformer; he names a legitimate problem, wraps himself in the language of the Founders, and then pursues actions that undermine both. Attempting to reform government without the clear, principled intention of protecting rights is futile—and dangerous. Indeed, it discredits the very ideals that many Trump loyalists claim to uphold. (Of course, such intention requires understanding what rights are; few, if any, politicians today appear to.)

Vivek Ramaswamy, former coleader of DOGE, has framed the initiative not merely as a push for efficiency but as a mechanism to purge the federal government of those who obstruct Trump’s agenda. He thanked Trump for putting him and Musk “in a position to start the mass deportations of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of the D.C. swamp.”16 The language is cartoonish, but it reflects a real ambition: to convert the civil service from a rights-protecting institution into a tool of ideological enforcement. That ambition is central to Trump’s reinstatement of Schedule F, which reclassifies tens of thousands of federal roles into at-will positions, making them easier to terminate.17 Indeed, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 explicitly proposes using this power to install a “trusted cadre” of loyal staff across federal agencies.18 We’ve already witnessed the spectacle of Trump’s cabinet meetings, where officials engage in orchestrated praise, each vying to outdo the other in sycophantic admiration of the president’s leadership. Extending this culture of obsequiousness across the entire federal bureaucracy would prioritize loyalty to an individual over competence and adherence to rights-protecting principles, undermining the very foundation of a merit-based civil service.

Conservative activist Rod Martin echoes Ramaswamy’s sentiment, asserting, “Deep State bureaucrats have been living like KINGS off your money. But Elon’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) just exposed BILLIONS in fraud! Now they’re draining the swamp!”19 These claims fuel rhetoric that dismisses critiques of DOGE’s methods as complicity with a corrupt system, straw-manning those who mount principled opposition to both Trump’s excesses and to the reckless, rights-violating government spending he claims to be combating.

When badly needed cuts are driven by tribalistic spectacle instead of adherence to rights-protecting principles, the result isn’t reform—it’s chaos, and that chaos becomes a gift to the opponents of limited government. Historically, when reductions in government services are implemented without a clear plan rooted firmly in a proper conception of government’s role, they create unpredictability and even poverty, which statists then exploit to advocate greater expansions of government power. A notable example is the United Kingdom’s “austerity measures” in the early 2010s. The government sought to reduce its spending through deep cuts to social services and local government budgets, but these changes were executed hastily and lacked broad legislative support and a structured transition plan.20 As a result, homelessness surged, food-bank reliance grew, and public backlash prompted later governments to increase spending and expand intervention. Rather than curbing government overreach, these unprincipled and hasty austerity measures led to increased dependence on state support, thereby entrenching the very welfare state they aimed to diminish. DOGE’s approach, as championed by Musk, Ramaswamy, and Martin, mirrors this risk, as its unverified savings claims and abrupt directives—such as the failed attempt to shut down USAID—have already sparked confusion and legal challenges, weakening DOGE’s credibility.

Some argue that we no longer live in a society in which principled, limited government can be restored through ordinary political channels—and that the crisis of statism now demands executive boldness, even if it means bypassing the law. In some extreme cases, this argument has merit. When all relevant legal channels have been corrupted or foreclosed, and the state becomes oppressive, extralegal action may become morally necessary. But such action must aim explicitly to restore objective law and the protection of individual rights—not to bypass them.

This is not what Trump is doing. His actions are not principled efforts to reestablish a rights-respecting legal order—they are arbitrary purges that elevate personal loyalty over justice and chaos over proper reform. Emergency powers, used as Trump is using them, do not correct nonobjective law—they entrench and perpetuate the very arbitrariness that principled reform must reject. The true test is not whether reform is legal or extralegal but whether it is grounded in the objective moral purpose of government: the protection of individual rights.

A striking historical example of how rights-violating methods of governance fuel tyranny is the Weimar Republic’s abuse of Article 48 of its constitution, which allowed the president to rule by emergency decree.21 Presumably meant for rare crises, it became a routine tool to bypass democratic processes. In 1933, Adolf Hitler exploited this precedent by persuading President Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree, violating rights and legalizing mass arrests.22 This led directly to the Enabling Act, which empowered Hitler to override the Weimar constitution’s core provisions and legislate without parliamentary approval—consolidating his dictatorship under a veneer of legality and neutering the constitution while keeping it nominally intact.23 What began as a “temporary necessity” ended in totalitarianism.

This danger is not confined to history. The same dynamic can play out whenever reforms are implemented contrary to the evidence-based principles of a free society. Poorly executed reductions in government services often create social disruption, which politicians then use as a rationale for even greater intervention. Instead of shrinking the state, such chaos becomes a pretext to entrench it further. Trump’s recklessness risks handing his opponents a ready-made excuse to expand the very bureaucracy that reformers seek to dismantle.

The lesson is clear: Reform that abandons proper principles in the name of expedience may win short-term victories, but it lays the groundwork for long-term disaster. To secure a free society, reform must be grounded in reason—patient but never passive. It must pursue lasting change through intellectual clarity and (whenever possible) through persuasion, not by emulating statists. Anything else guarantees not liberty but reactionary failure.

To prevent backlash, we must recognize that once the government seizes control of industries that properly must be private, it cannot simply extricate itself overnight. Improper government agencies must be wound down in a deliberate, structured way that minimizes chaos and denies statists any opportunity to exploit the transition. Reform must be designed such that once these agencies are dismantled, they stay dismantled. Otherwise, the long-term result will not be a leaner state—it will be an even more bloated and dysfunctional one.

A lack of such planned and structured reform will lead to greater inefficiency, more uncertainty for businesses, and a self-perpetuating cycle in which bureaucrats grow more entrenched with each swing of the wrecking ball. If Trump truly wanted to permanently limit government, he would work with Congress to pass structural reforms that could withstand political shifts. Instead, his reliance on executive orders guarantees failure, ensuring that virtually every move he makes will be wiped away soon after he leaves office.

Separation of Powers and the Need for Congress

The Constitution vests Congress, not the president, with the authority to create, modify, and dismantle federal agencies. Trump’s push to dismantle bureaucracies via executive action alone—as DOGE demonstrates—likely is unconstitutional. In 2023, his team suggested that they should attempt to dissolve departments such as the Department of Education without legislative backing, a move courts would likely halt, as they did parts of Trump’s 2017 travel ban.24 From the Supreme Court curbing Truman’s steel seizure to recent checks on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, judicial precedent demands proper constitutional grounding for the use of executive orders and similar tools.25 In the case of DOGE, what is presented as administrative streamlining is, in practice, a presidential power grab.

In the American system, institutional stability isn’t meant to perpetuate bureaucracy—it’s what makes lasting change possible. Without checks and balances, Trump’s gains are inherently unstable, as Biden’s swift reversal of Schedule F shows. Real reform in the United States must go through Congress, where policies are debated, refined, and enacted with broad support. Yet Trump’s allies, while decrying bureaucratic bloat, embrace the instability his actions cause—ensuring that any “reform” collapses as quickly as it was imposed.

The Moral Case: Reform or Wreckage?

Eliminating government waste is vital, but it must be done using reason and for the purpose of protecting rights, not as a way of enacting vengeance. Trump’s approach—prioritizing loyalty over competence, as seen in his past pressure on officials such as James Comey—suggests a purge, not proper reform.26 Cutting agencies without first ensuring that their roles are obsolete or well-primed for transfer back to the private sector isn’t efficient—it’s disruption for the sake of political showboating.

Consider air traffic control: In 2022, air traffic controller staffing shortages, especially acute at high-volume facilities such as New York TRACON, which operated at just 54 percent of its staffing target, contributed significantly to widespread flight delays, with more than 170 “staffing trigger” incidents in that facility alone directly forcing reductions in operations.27 Abrupt mass layoffs or defunding of such agencies—absent a rational transition—only exacerbates such problems, endangering both safety and productivity.

A dramatically better model for reform is being demonstrated by Argentinian president Javier Milei, who also battles state excess. Facing triple-digit inflation, a collapsing peso, and an entrenched bureaucracy, Milei implemented sweeping economic reforms using both executive decrees and the legislative process, including passage of a comprehensive 2023 omnibus bill that slashed subsidies and regulations as part of his clearly explained pro-market vision.28 Crucially, his binding executive orders were later ratified by the legislature, giving them lasting legal force—in sharp contrast to Trump’s unstable, fiat-driven approach.

Displaying a deep intellectual commitment to limited government, Milei draws from Austrian economists and thinkers such as Ludwig von Mises, whose Human Action he described as a “true revolution” in his thinking.29 Though also a showman who revels in provocation, he is an intellectual giant compared to Trump, grounding his reforms in coherent theory rather than impulse. And unlike Trump, Milei has delivered real results. Argentina’s monthly inflation, which had soared to 25 percent in late 2023, fell to 2.4 percent by February 2025—the lowest in four years.30 His administration posted the country’s first fiscal surplus in more than a decade, all without triggering the collapse that many critics forecasted.31 Milei has negotiated durable cuts and navigated public protests, such as those over pension reductions, with a strategy grounded in principles, not tantrums.32

Despite his severely austere approach to government spending, Milei retains substantial public support, with approval ratings around 43 percent—an impressive number for a president slashing subsidies and public-sector privileges.33 It signals that the Argentine public, at least for now, is willing to reward rationally principled, coherent reform. Most important of all, Milei has achieved these gains without a congressional majority—responding to mass protests with calm determination and a consistent economic vision. He proves that lawful, disciplined reform grounded in rational principles can shrink the state—even under pressure.

Lawful Change or Fleeting Fiat?

Trump’s DOGE initiative is not grounded in principle but in personal loyalty, spectacle, and force. His actions invert the proper order of reform, sacrificing individual rights to whim and lawful process to expedience. By contrast, Javier Milei demonstrates that disciplined reason—rooted in liberty—can achieve lasting reform even under pressure. In a free society, it is principle that defines purpose, and lawfulness that gives that purpose endurance. Reformers today face a clear choice: uphold the moral foundation of constitutional government or surrender to the unstable theatrics of unchecked power.

This article appears in the Summer 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.

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