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Bruce Pardy: How Americans gave up their own republic

Decades of court rulings and legislation shifted power from elected leaders to unelected bureaucracies

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It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The United States was the land of the free. Limited government. Checks and balances. Separation of powers. The Bill of Rights. But America has instead become a managed society. Its government dominates the lives of its people. How did it go wrong? Lots of bad steps helped to transform the American republic into a managerial state. Here are nine of the moments that sent the ship off course.

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Residual powers: The “necessary and proper” clause, 1787

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The U.S. Constitution was revolutionary. But there is wiggle room in its Article 1. Congress, it says, may make all laws “necessary and proper” for executing its mandate. That was enough for Alexander Hamilton to slip through. He wanted to create a national bank to deal with Revolutionary War debt. The Constitution lists no such power. But he persuaded George Washington to sign the bank bill in 1791. The precedent was set.

The 10th Amendment, passed soon after, could have put the genie back in the bottle. Powers not delegated to the federal government, it says, are reserved to the states or “to the people.” That could have meant the federal government had no residual or implied powers. But the section omitted a key word: “expressly.” Had it said, “not expressly delegated,” the path of history might have been different. But Hamilton’s blank cheque remained.

Untouchable bureaucrats: The Pendleton Civil Service........

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