It was once taken for granted that in times of war, government must be strong, decisive, and—if necessary—nearly unconstrained. Only such a government could marshal the resources required for victory. In times of peace, by contrast, government was expected to be limited, restrained, and modest in its powers.
But circumstances have changed. In our own decade, every national government finds itself engaged in a continuous and difficult struggle against three primary rivals.
First, the state bureaucracy—and, increasingly, the supranational bureaucracy. Formally subordinate to elected authority, it in practice behaves as an autonomous force, defending its own interests. It is no coincidence that under governments committed to the ideal of the minimal state, both the number of bureaucrats and the burden of regulation tend to grow most dramatically. As David Graeber observed, this pattern has held since the Industrial Revolution. Once a government relinquishes the ambition to govern society, it soon loses the ability to govern even its own administrative apparatus.
Second, multinational banks and corporations, whose interests are only tenuously aligned—if at all—with the development of national economies.
Third, large media institutions that aggressively advance globalist priorities and progressive agendas.
This triad was articulated during the 2016 Trump´s presidential campaign by Steve Bannon, then serving as its chief ideologue. In practice, however, these three forces increasingly merge into a single, sprawling center of power.
Under such conditions, any attempt to weaken national government or bind it with procedural restraints amounts to a form of national self-sabotage. Yes, the risk of abuse grows with power. But we should not deceive ourselves: even the worst government is unlikely to inflict greater harm than what this consolidated triad would produce in its absence.
The real problem is that we continue to inherit the ideal of limited government from an earlier age—an age of absolutism, when rulers faced no comparable rivals.