Scott J. Lawson

June 19, 2024

Before the Progressive Era in the early twentieth century, the President of the United States was thought of more as an administrator tasked with faithfully executing the laws as passed by Congress per the Constitution. While power struggles and disagreements over the extent of Presidential authority occured quite early in the young Republic, the Progressives and the New Dealers successfully shifted thinking about the Presidency away from this Constitutional role alone, adding the notion of the President as more of an unofficial “chief legislator” to the role as well. Coupled with the rise of the administrative state that these same people also championed, the President and his bureaucracy today operate from an assumed duty akin to steering the direction of the country and molding policy to their own preference as much as possible.

Many Republicans today do not like this new reality too much but nevertheless have been forced to politically go along with it. The natural antipathy Republicans have had to this notion – because of a faithfulness to the founding ideas, preserving checks & balances, the separation of powers, etc. – has stifled conservative policy in other areas over the decades. Democrats, on the other hand, love the growth of government and consolidation of power at the top that has come with it. All this is in line with their more coercive ideological mode of operating. With every gain in government power in this manner they feel a sense of victory. Of course their agreement with this trend will only exist so long as it is in line with their vision. If the same power is wielded by a conservative president and a conservative administration in an effort to better accomplish their agenda, the hypocrisy inherent in the Democrat position is exposed.

Case in point, the current Democrat freak out over the conservative planning effort called Project 2025.

According to the project’s organizers, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, “Project 2025 is more than 50 (and growing) of the nation’s leading conservative organizations joining forces” seeking “a new generation of Americans to answer the call and come to serve.” The goal is to “assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.” The project is built on four pillars. Pillar I is an organizational document called the Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, which is an attempt to form a consensus view of “how major federal agencies must be governed and where disagreement exists brackets out these differences for the next President to choose a path.” Pillar II is the creation of a “personnel database that allows candidates to build their own professional profiles and our coalition members to review and voice their recommendations. These recommendations will then be collated and shared with the President-elect’s team, greatly streamlining the appointment process.” Pillar III is a “Presidential Administration Academy,” which is “an online educational system” taught by experts from the coalition. Pillar IV is called “the Playbook” which consists of agency teams that will draft and implement “transition plans to move out upon the President’s utterance of “so help me God.””

To hear the Leftist media tell it, Project 2025 is a “Far-Right‘ “authoritarian” “dangerous takeover” that “will see the rise of Dictator Trump” and puts “the Bible ahead of the Constitution.” Read the content at the above links for examples of their hysteria. For your consideration, Politico has a decent article that surveys the Project and discusses some of the motivations and challenges identified by the authors themselves. It is a worthwhile read. Turning to social media however, complimenting the talking heads at the Leftist outlets, Democrat and Progressive political pages are working overtime making posts warning about the project, insisting their followers read about Project 2025 to stop it from “destroying democracy.” This effort has been pushed consistently for over a year in the Leftist blogosphere and will no doubt intensify as we get closer to the 2024 election. Clearly, there is a coordinated effort to craft a narrative in the minds of voters about this project to portray it as some sort of evidence that a conservative boogeyman is scheming behind the scenes to end America if a Republican is elected and takes office in 2025.

It would be great if the audience of these Leftist panic-pushers did take their advice not only to read about Project 2025, but to go further and actually read the Mandate for Leadership the Conservative Promise document, which can be downloaded for free. Perhaps the propagandists know that not too many in their audience will bother to do that, thus leaving what will be read and consumed about the Project for them to manipulate. Of course, their take on the Project is not only hyperbolic, but often it is downright false and illogical. There is a famous quip Libertarians like to throw out about their political ambitions; “Libertarians are diligently plotting to take over the world and leave you alone.” Project 2025 may not be going that far because it still rests on the existence of using a realistic framework for government based on Constitutional authority. Given the orientation of the entire effort however, it would be illogical to conclude any result of such a Conservative effort to reduce the size and scope of the Executive Branch bureaucracy could result in a more authoritarian or coercive government, as the Leftist propagandists insist. On the contrary, that is exactly what the organizers of the Project are trying to prevent by returning government to a more Constitutional scope and operation.

It must be stressed again that this situation is all the result of the very dangerous game started by the Progressives and New Dealers of the early twentieth century. When they shifted away from limited, constitutional government towards a never-ending, expansive, top-down administrative state they opened a can of worms that cannot easily be contained. Each of these “worms,” is another agency and another bureaucrat in a role with a purpose. We cannot kid ourselves that they will all be competent and acting with our best interests in mind, nor can we ever agree upon the merits of the efforts in which they are undertaking. That acknowledgment is reflected in the wisdom that sought to limit the size and scope of the Federal government and restrain it with separation of powers and checks and balances in the first place. We should not be content with being doomed to perpetual red tape, administrative rules, and petty dictates within massive agencies. Despite this, we have become a nation governed largely by administrators empowered by Congress to carryout the functions with which they couldn’t be bothered. Such a loose and all-encompassing delegation of authority is arguably improper, even if the Courts have allowed it, but given that it has become the norm, how can one political “side” (Democrats and Progressives) complain when the other “side” (Republicans and Conservatives) obtains power and attempts to completely shift the personnel and focus of the administrators to clean up the mess created by the bloated government in the first place? After all, if one “side” can use such power to start such a shift, the other “side” ought to be able to use the same power to reduce it. If this is an action to “end America as we know it,” then what should we call their actions that created the mess in the first place?

“Personnel is policy” is true whether applied to a more limited system like the one our Constitution demands, or a more top-down authoritative one like that which has emerged in America. The early advocates for such a shift recognized the importance of administrators as “propagandists” for larger social causes. Herbert Croly, in his extremely influential early twentieth century work, Progressive Democracy, described how administrators in his preferred, extra-Constitutional system are more than just experts carrying out their assigned tasks;

”Although the kind of administrator that I am describing must obtain the standing of an expert, he must also be something more than an expert. He is the custodian not merely of a particular law, but of a social purpose of which the law is only a fragmentary expression. As the custodian of a certain part of the social program, he must share the faith upon which the program depends for its impulse; and he must accept the scientific method upon which the faith depends for its realization. Thus with all his independence he is a promoter and propagandist. As long as he remains in the government service, he should not carry his propagandism further than the official social program justifies him in carrying it; but he should carry it as far as he can. He qualifies for his work as an administrator quite as much by his general good faith as by his specific competence.”

“Propagandist” can be a loaded term, but even given it’s most basic definition the meaning is clear; it is important to staff an administration with people that will not only carry out their duty but that believe in it as well. Progressives certainly made it a point to require this of their appointees and preferred hires. Decades later the definition of “Progressive” has shifted in certain ways, however there is a noticable slant towards employees with a left-leaning political orientation in most agencies. According to the 2020 United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions publication (the Plum Book), there are (as of June 30, 2020) “over 9,000 Federal civil service leadership and support positions in the legislative and executive branches of the Federal Government that may be subject to noncompetitive appointment (e.g., positions such as agency heads and their immediate subordinates, policy executives and advisors, and aides who report to these officials). The duties of many such positions may involve advocacy of Administration policies and programs and the incumbents usually have a close and confidential working relationship with the agency head or other key officials.” So this is nothing new, only with Project 2025 there is an effort to identify potential appointees that reflect a more conservative ideology. Given this point, there is nothing inherently wrong with Project 2025 seeking to identify Conservatives to be ready to staff a Conservative Administration. It is logical and necessary for the stated purposes of the Project.

Basic “Promises” of Project 2025

What are the primary policy points of the Project? According the the main facilitators of the project at the Heritage Foundation, the effort will be concentrated along four broad fronts (promises) to decide America’s future:

1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”

There is certainly nothing odd about these focal points, as they are matters any government of a liberty-oriented society around the whole world be interested in addressing. The Left today, with a moral and ideological orientation that is fundamentally at odds with much of America’s founding ideal worldview and political philosophy, seeks to demonize any return to what America once was so that they may continue their more subjective, “ends justifies the means” political ends. Up until the present they have been very successful at organizing and usurping power via small gains and shifts of authority based on emotional appeals and promises of easy government solutions to all that ails society. This has come at the expense of the Constitution and the virtue, independence, and strength of the citizenry. To restore the Republic, Project 2025 aims to make their focal points into “promises” to the citizenry along the following lines:

PROMISE #1: RESTORE THE FAMILY AS THE CENTERPIECE OF AMERICAN LIFE AND PROTECT OUR CHILDREN.

According to Project 2025, “The next conservative President must get to work pursuing the true priority of politics—the well-being of the American family. In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones. You see this in the popular left-wing aphorism, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” But in real life, most of the things people “do together” have nothing to do with government. These are the mediating institutions that serve as the building blocks of any healthy society. Marriage. Family. Work. Church. School. Volunteering. The name real people give to the things we do together is community, not government. Our lives are full of interwoven, overlapping communities, and our individual and collective happiness depends upon them. But the most important community in each of our lives—and the life of the nation—is the family.”

Project 2025 mentions several areas in which our society needs improvement to bolster the strength of the family. Some of these issues include reducing fatherlessness in the household, stopping the Left from threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism, removing progressive language from government, and combatting the pervasiveness of pornography. Regarding schools and curriculums, the Project intends to bolster parental rights and stop racist Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology from infecting lessons and turning schools into indoctrination centers. Other important issues include protecting children from irreversible sex surgeries, stopping censorship from Big Tech in social media and beyond at the behest of government, ending/reducing abortion, and bolstering federal and state support for adoption.

PROMISE #2: DISMANTLE THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE AND RETURN SELF-GOVERNANCE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

This promise has attracted the most Leftist backlash and is the main focus of this article. The administrative state helps the Left implement all their other desired policies. Non-Leftists in power of course also wish to maintain the administrative state because they use it to their advantage as well. The unholy alliance between all the “sides” in Washington must end if we are to eventually restore constitutional governance and return to a path that can better lead to true human flourishing.

As the authors of the Project put it, “The term Administrative State refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments, agencies, and millions of employees. Under Article I of the Constitution, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” That is, federal law is enacted only by elected legislators in both houses of Congress. Congress passes intentionally vague laws that delegate decision-making over a given issue to a federal agency. That agency’s bureaucrats—not just unelected but seemingly un-fireable—then leap at the chance to fill the vacuum created by Congress’s preening cowardice. The federal government is growing larger and less constitutionally accountable—even to the President—every year.”

Some of the target issues the Project identifies for remedy include budget reform, reducing unaccountable federal spending, getting rid of ill-considered regulations, and restoring fiscal limits and constitutional accountability to domestic and foreign dealings to bolster the sovereignty to the American people.

According to the Project’s authors, ‘As monolithic as the Left’s institutional power appears to be, it originates with appropriations from Congress and is made complete by a feckless President. A conservative President must look to the legislative branch for decisive action. The Administrative State is not going anywhere until Congress acts to retrieve its own power from bureaucrats and the White House. But in the meantime, there are many executive tools a courageous conservative President can use to handcuff the bureaucracy, push Congress to return to its constitutional responsibility, restore power over Washington to the American people, bring the Administrative State to heel, and in the process defang and defund the woke culture warriors who have infiltrated every last institution in America. The Conservative Promise lays out how to use many of these tools including: how to fire supposedly “un-fireable” federal bureaucrats; how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of
government; how to restore the American people’s constitutional authority over the Administrative State; and how to save untold taxpayer dollars in the process.”

PROMISE #3: DEFEND OUR NATION’S SOVEREIGNTY, BORDERS, AND BOUNTY AGAINST GLOBAL THREATS.

We cannot have a functioning country based on our Founding ideals and the Rule of Law if we do not have solid policy that helps us control the beginning and end to our jurisdiction, ensures our laws are respected, and enables us to defend our way of life from potential foreign threats. The authors of the Project state;

“The United States belongs to “We the people.” All government authority derives from the consent of the people, and our nation’s success derives from the character of its people. The American people’s right to rule ourselves is the obverse of our
duty: We cannot outsource to others our obligation to ensure the conditions that allow our families, local communities, churches and synagogues, and neighborhoods to thrive. The buck stops with each of us, so each of us must have the freedom
to pursue the good for ourselves and those entrusted to our care. A casual reader might take the last few pages as surveying a broad array of
challenges facing the American people and the next conservative President: supra-national policymaking, border security, globalization, engagement with China, manufacturing, Big Tech, and Beijing-compromised colleges. But these really are not many issues, but two: (1) that China is a totalitarian enemy of the United States, not a strategic partner or fair competitor, and (2) that America’s elites have betrayed the American people. The solution to all of the above problems is not to tinker with this or that government program, to replace this or that bureaucrat. These are problems not of technocratic efficiency but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves but by ripping out the trees—root and branch. International organizations and agreements that erode our Constitution, rule of law, or popular sovereignty should not be reformed: They should be abandoned. Illegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated; the border sealed, not reprioritized. Economic engagement with China should be ended, not rethought. Our manufacturing and industrial base should be restored, not allowed to deteriorate further. Confucius Institutes, TikTok, and any other arm of Chinese propaganda and espionage should be outlawed, not merely monitored. Universities taking money from the CCP should lose their accreditation, charters, and
eligibility for federal funds.”

PROMISE #4 SECURE OUR GOD-GIVEN INDIVIDUAL RIGHT TO ENJOY “THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY.”

Many of the Project’s critics might be surprised to find some overlap with their beliefs and goals regarding The content and aims of this “Promise.” Such overlap demonstrates that often there is not fundamental disagreement with general goals and determinations of what is good, but only regarding the validity of the means of getting there. The authors state;

‘The Declaration of Independence famously asserted the belief of America’s Founders that “all men are created equal” and endowed with God-given rights to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It’s the last—“the pursuit of Happiness”—that is central to America’s heroic experiment in self-government. When the Founders spoke of “pursuit of Happiness,” what they meant might be understood today as in essence “pursuit of Blessedness.” That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. The next President should promote pro-growth economic policies that spur new jobs and investment, higher wages, and productivity. Yes, that agenda should include overdue tax and regulatory reform, but it should go further and include antitrust enforcement against corporate monopolies. It should promote educational opportunities outside the woke-dominated system of public schools and universities, including trade schools, apprenticeship programs, and student-loan alternatives that fund students’ dreams instead of Marxist academics. Just as important as expanding opportunities for workers and small businesses, the next President should crack down on the crony capitalist corruption that enables America’s largest corporations to profit through political influence rather than competitive enterprise and customer satisfaction. Analogous pro-growth reforms for America’s voluntary civil society are also in order. America is not an economy; it is a country. Economic freedom is not the only important freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the freedom to assemble also represent key components of the American promise. Today, in addition to the problem of Big Tech censorship, we see speakers at universities shouted down, parents investigated and arrested for attempting to speak at school board meetings, and donors to conservative causes harassed and intimidated. The next conservative President must defend our First Amendment rights.”

Assessing Project 2025 Given the Overall Context

Project 2025 is nothing new in Conservative thought or policy, it is merely an organized expression of its most basis principles and a presentation of a plan on how to apply these principles and staff a Conservative Administration  given current political realities. The Leftist freakout over the plan as some sort of authoritarian shift for America is quite frankly embarrassing. It should not be a surprise that Leftists do not like the plan, but if one reads it for themselves and matches it to the Leftist media talking points, the overreaction and misinformation on their part becomes obvious. Restoring America to its constitutional foundations will not be easy (even the plan’s authors admit it will be difficult and will likely take more than one Administration). Ensuring people in the Executive Branch understand their constitutional role and willfully limit their actions to constitutional duty alone is one of the most basic things that can be done to start us off on this restoration. Perhaps Leftists that see this as an attack on themselves should reflect on the supposed justification of their own actions and beliefs. If they seek to build an all-powerful administrative machine staffed by ideologically-driven administrators, rationalizing it as an expression of “democracy,” they ought not be surprised when the opposing ideological “side” wins elections, assumes power, and does the same. The important difference however is the eventual goal of Conservatives is to limit government power and secure the rights and liberty of the People from infringement by overly coercive authorities. Disagreement is inevitable, which is why it was always wise to limit such power and control at the Federal level to Constitutional actions in order to avoid disruption and insure domestic tranquility.