Elon Musk and DOGE are not threats to "democracy," like Democrats are complaining. They're threats to the bureaucracy that has taken over the government our Constitution established. Glenn explains how this all originated with Woodrow Wilson, who dreamed of "freeing" the government from the "chains" of the Constitution and replacing it with a government of "experts" and administrators. That's where the shadow government began and that's what Trump and DOGE are "destroying."
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Elon Musk said, that we're not living in a democracy, we're living in a bureaucracy.
When he said that, my response was, yes. Now, I don't know if you know who Elon. I don't know if you know who Woodrow Wilson is.
But, yes!
Living under a bureaucracy, that's the point. Let me give you the quote, the history of liberty is a history of resistance.
The history of liberty is a history of limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it. Who said that?
Sounds like a guy who understands and values freedom. Somebody who understands the delicate balance of power, between the individual and the state. Right?
But the guy who said that, was the 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.
Now, does that sound like somebody that we know, maybe on the left, that is now saying things like, we've got to save democracy? We've got to save democracy?
He's killing democracy, by cutting the bureaucracy.
Wilson was exactly the same kind of politician. Except, he was the grandfather of all of this.
He was the architect of a vision, where government would no longer be confined by the rules, the outdated rules. And the chains of the Constitution.
He was the guy who said the Declaration of Independence needed to be cast aside, because it's an outdated relic. He was the guy that wanted you not to be governed by the laws of nature. And nature's God. But by an elite ruling class of scientists, experts, bureaucrats.
That's -- that's what he wanted.
Isn't that what we have right now? We're not -- we don't elect the president. You elect the president and nothing changes. Why?
Not just because both parties are alike. But because the bureaucracy is set in stone!
It's a ruling class, of scientists, experts, and bureaucrats. Wilson believed that the government was no longer the machine of our Founding Fathers, that needed to be shackled and restrained.
He thought government should be a living organism, an evolving entity, free from the so-called outdated principles of 1776. This is where we get the Constitution is a living, breathing thing.
No, it's not. No, that's Woodrow Wilson.
He looked at the Constitution. The greatest safeguard of liberty ever written. And didn't see it as a beacon of freedom. He saw it as an obstacle that needed to be overcome. He -- let me paint you this picture.
Imagine, you're sitting in a grand lecture hall. It's early 1900s. Gaslights are flickering. And a young professor steps up to the podium.
He stands at the podium, everybody starts to be quiet. It's all -- you're in the crowd, everybody there is the future rulers of America.
And he starts in to thunderous applause, with something that, I don't know.
Me. It would -- the back of my neck, the hair on the back of my neck would stand up.
He said, quote, the makers of the Constitution constructed the federal government upon a theory of checks and balances. Which was meant to limit the government's power.
And therefore, its ability to govern.
This was a great mistake. The Constitution was founded on the Newtonian theory of the universe.
But we now understand, that the government is not a machine. But a living thing.
It must evolve. It must adapt. And it must be freed from its chains!
End quote.
Freed from its chains. When I read that line, I -- I thought to myself. I thought of setting the monster free in Young Frankenstein.
You're free! You're free! It didn't work out well.
Okay? When you take something that is like fire. Hello, California. And just release it. It is a very bad thing.
Washington said, government is like fire!
It will be the master of you, if you're not the master of it. Are we the master of our government, or is it the master over us?
What do you think happens, when you -- when you have a government, I free it from its chains?
Does it become a benevolent force?
Does it look out for your best interest. Does it even know who you are, let alone answer to you?
Wilson wasn't just a professor. He was a man on a mission.
To change, and this is his words.
To change a man or a boy, to be the most unlike his father, as possible.
Isn't that what our education system is doing?
Wilson believed that we needed to move away from the messy system of self-government.
And have it all placed into the capable hands of an intellectual elite, that he called administrative experts.
So you can see this throughout our whole government. Anthony Fauci.
The law was, that we are not supposed to do gain-of-function research!
We now know, through all kinds of records, that have been released, that Anthony Fauci disagreed with that. And he made the decision, that we were going to do gain-of-function research!
Because it's not up to him, to answer to the people!
He answers -- he's the expert!
He's the administrator. He knows better than the average person. Even if other scientists disagree with him, he is science!
These experts, that are unelected, and unaccountable, Wilson saw this. This is -- these are the people that need to run the country.
Not as representatives of the people. But as scientists, technocrats, bureaucrats, who know better than you do, on how to live your life.
For Wilson, and now you're seeing his finished product, that Trump and Elon Musk are beginning to dismantle. You are now seeing, that his vision was that the American people were not individuals that were given God-give up rights.
They were just parts of a collective. A mass to be organized. To be managed.
To be directed.
He viewed the old principles of liberty and self-determination. Those are relics of an ignorant past.
Things that have to be replaced. By science. And numbers. Cold, efficiency of science and government regulation.
Now, our founders would say, that's all well and good.
We understand that, let's just take you, at face value and say you're honest in that. But what you're forgetting is that men go bad with power and money!
All men can be corrupted.
So it's not that we are putting chains on the government, because government is bad! No. Government is made up of the people that are in it.
And if you don't limit it, if you -- if you allow them to gain more and more power, and more and more money. It will go corrupt.
And it will begin to oppress you.
The government -- the founders weren't anti government. They were anti-out of control large government. Where the people were servants of that government, not the other way around.
Wilson wrote, the Declaration of Independence. That the -- the foundation of our freedoms.
He said, it was outdated.
He called the principles for all practices and purposes in the Declaration, meaningless.
Meaningless is his word.
The words that inspired the American Revolution, the ideas that all men are created equal, that our rights come from God. Not from government. Were to Wilson, irrelevant. And meaningless in the modern world.
Why? Because you're too stupid to understand what's really going on. You're too stupid to be able to manage the affairs, of not only the nation. But the world!
Every time we try to manage a nation, or the world, we go wrong!
Every single time!
He didn't believe you really have a right to property. To speech. To life itself, unless the government allowed it. If that doesn't terrify you, let me tell you something darker than that. Not morality.
Not faith, not the Constitution. But science should be the guiding force of government.
Well, we saw that with COVID. Didn't we?
Follow the science!
What kind of science?
The experiments that Fauci has been doing on animals and everything else. It's -- it's -- it's -- it's Mengele stuff.
It's really evil stuff! Because it has no medical purpose to it at all. The science that Wilson was talking about. Was eugenics.
And that's the same kind of stuff, that just named it something else. But it's the same kind of medicine that we're talking about now.
The kind that kills those who are unfit. Look at what's happening in Canada!
It's the kind of politics that led to policies of forced sterilization.
And racial segregation.
Which he put into practice. He was the guy who reseparated -- resegregated the military.
He segregated the government.
He praised the film, birth of a nation. Which we don't need to be the Klan. He believed in an America where government, led by an enlightened few, would decide who was fit to participate in society, and who wasn't.
Does that sound like America to you at all?
Or does that sound like the birth of something entirely different?
When he left office, it grew!
It took root in Washington, because they figured out, companies could go to Washington and lobby and get their way.
This was the beginning of all of the lobbyists in Washington.
And it -- it just grew. Ever expanding bureaucracy. A shadow government of unelected officials, who now control almost every aspect of your life! From what kind of car you drive. To what you eat.
To what stove you can have in your house. How you can build your house.
His dream was that a government would no longer be by the people. But by the experts.
The people would be managed. Guided. And nudged in the right direction.
So when they're saying that they're destroying democracy, no. They're destroying the bureaucracy, which is the antithesis to our founding documents.
