The Fourth Branch of Government? It (wasn’t supposed to) exist
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Another Win for EU 'Democracy:' Leading Presidential Candidate Kicked Off Romanian Ballot
David Strom, HotAir:
I know that many dreamers out there still live in a fantasy world where the Europeans are the good guys dedicated to freedom and Western values, but that is becoming less and less true over time. Sure, the EU is happy enough to allow the population to vote, as long as they vote the "right" way. If they threaten to exceed the Overton Window set by the technocrats--the transnational elite--the elections can be canceled until the "right" candidates are put on the ballot.
DEMOCRACY? Romania, under pressure from the EU, has disqualified Calin Georgescu’s candidacy for president as he is critical of both NATO and the EU. The previous election he was leading was annulled to prevent him from winning. Now he's being kept off the ballet despite leading… pic.twitter.com/giHA7pFklz
— @amuse (@amuse) March 9, 2025
Strom provides his usual thoughtful commentary, and the entire article is well worth reading, but it’s the portion where he turns his focus to our country that really caught my attention:
It is striking to me that many Americans love this version of "democracy" as much as the Eurocrats do, and they do because they share the same vision of governance: rule by technocracy.
They imagine the permanent bureaucracy to be a check on the president and hence the voters, so they accuse Trump of being an autocrat because he, as an elected official in charge of the Executive Branch, is using his powers instead of deferring to the unelected bureaucrats.
ACLU: “Not only would such mass layoffs violate federal law, but this action would undermine the important and historic check that the career civil service has had on curbing abuses by the executive branch.”
— Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) February 13, 2025
When people talk about a “Deep State”, this is part of what they mean… pic.twitter.com/dW4XH2H0RK
Strom:
Newsflash, Deep Staters: civil servants only have power through the president, and the president has his power through Article II of the Constitution.
Here is what Article II of the Constitution says in the very first sentence.
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.
Nowhere is there a bureaucratic power or some mythical fourth branch of government.
The transnational elite seriously believes that all power does or should rest in their hands. That there is a global technocratic elite that serves as the rightful leader of the hoi polloi and that elections should rightly be shams to calm us all down and provide "legitimacy" to their rule.
In Europe, the EU decrees who can be elected. In the US they tried to use lawfare to keep Trump off the ballot, but it amounts to the same thing: the elites should get to decide who can have power.
Trump has defied them, and is having to move quickly--like a bull in a China shop--because he has no choice. It is a race against time because there are millions of bureaucrats in the Deep State and trillions of dollars mobilizing to impede his retaking of power away from those who have run things for decades.
Trump is riding a populist wave, and populism is always messy and just a bit dangerous. But populism rises as the elites become so corrupt that the people have no choice but to rise up against them.
I hate that we are here. I wish we had decent and trustworthy elites, but we don't.
We have elites who do things like this: kick candidates they dislike off ballots because they might win. That is what tyrants do.