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Atlantic
6 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
We Need to Reckon With Ronald Reagan's Legacy
Everything We Once Believed In I didn't wake up today thinking I would write a thank-you to The Atlantic, but after reading David Brooks's 'Everything We Once Believed In,' I feel compelled. For so long, I've felt the pain and embarrassment of seeing my country forsake its honor while most of the people I used to see as political allies cheered—but I've never been able to express it adequately. Brooks put my feelings to words. His article gives me hope that our nation can and likely will be made stronger over time. Tom Dornish I always look forward to David Brooks's articles and often agree with much of what he writes. However, his continued lionization of the Reagan administration—and Ronald Reagan himself—strikes me as an odd blind spot. Brooks's critiques of progressive missteps, including those outlined in ' How the Ivy League Broke America ' and reiterated in his recent article, have given me much to reflect on. But I don't believe Brooks has paid sufficient attention to the role the Reagan Revolution played in undermining the American dream and weakening the working class. Consider Reagan's massive tax cuts, which drove a marked rise in income inequality. His firing of unionized air-traffic controllers dealt a major blow to organized labor, and his divisive racial rhetoric—his use of the infamous 'Welfare Queen' trope; his 'States' Rights' speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi—feels in keeping with the reactionaries of today whom Brooks criticizes. This doesn't diminish the legitimate critiques of the left. But a fuller reckoning with Reagan's legacy—by Brooks, especially—would offer a more balanced and persuasive analysis. It might also help his critique of liberal excesses land with readers who see Reagan not as a paragon of leadership, but as a key architect of our current inequality and division. Adam Udell Downingtown, Pa. It's not every day that a public intellectual castigates himself for a 'pathetic' lack of foresight, and David Brooks is to be commended for doing so. I was struck, though, that nowhere in his discussion of 19th- and early-20th-century reform movements, nor in his call for a 'Whig-like working-class abundance agenda,' does he mention labor unions. As Brooks surely knows, there would never have been a middle class in the United States if unionized workers hadn't fought to obtain a fairer share of the fruits of their labor. I am a proud union member at The New Yorker. Any viable 'working-class abundance agenda' must recognize and celebrate workers' right to organize in the workplace. Douglas Watson New York, N.Y. I did not attend an elite university of the kind David Brooks describes until graduate school. But I never experienced anything that would have ignited the bitterness that Brooks diagnoses in the reactionaries. I don't think it's fair to blame universities for our current political predicament. My higher-education experiences promoted ethical behavior and instilled in me a commitment to serve society with the knowledge I gained. Barbara K. Sullivan-Watts Kingston, R.I. David Brooks's 'Everything We Once Believed In' was characteristic of all his work: insightful, and chastening but hopeful. I wish I shared his optimism that conservatism may yet find its way back. I think Brooks may misunderstand the ascendant right. Although he correctly identified its source in the snark of The Dartmouth Review, the ascendant right is anything but reactionary—it is triumphalist. Triumphalism is the kissing cousin of nihilism. Those of us who joined the conservative movement in the late '70s and early '80s had read our Edmund Burke too well to imagine conservatism sweeping away all before it to establish a conservative utopia. Indeed, we were conservatives precisely because we believed there was no such thing: Here we have no abiding city. We were a distinct minority fighting an uphill battle that we could never truly win. Those who joined the movement during the second Reagan administration and later were, I think, more attracted to power for its own sake. That is what we are seeing today. Brooks fails to properly blame conservatives for the rise of this triumphalist right. Conservatism is institutionalist, but the one institution we neglected in the '90s was the most important of all: the family. We got distracted by the culture wars and ignored the economic challenges that families faced. We were reading Milton Friedman when we should have been reading Pope Leo XIII. If the triumphalist right has seized control of conservatism, then we conservatives have only ourselves to blame. Rockland, Mass. I am genuinely heartened by the constructive honesty in David Brooks's mea culpa. Still, after reading through his article several times, I am left with the sense that he has not yet thoroughly plumbed the questions his reflections raise. Why didn't Brooks see this coming? Did conservatives in the 1980s really think that reactionaries would simply pave the way for the conservative agenda and then allow themselves to be shunted aside? Perhaps conservatives then, as now, saw themselves as working with the lesser of two evils. To bring about the civic renewal Brooks hopes for, however, they will need to fully separate themselves from the reactionaries and focus again on the public interest. In 1895, an article in The Atlantic described a group of politicians called the 'mugwumps,' who worked to free themselves from party affiliations and focused on what was best for the country, to significant effect. The mugwumps, it noted, 'form a class, never a large one, of persons who possess the power of seeing fairly the opposite sides of a question, and who lack the barnacle faculty of sticking tight to whatever one is attached, whether it be the steadfast rock or the restless keel.' If just a handful of members of Congress from both parties were willing to act in a similar manner, the rebirth Brooks hopes for might actually become a reality. I applaud David Brooks's essay on not foreseeing the current 'conservative' takeover of the country. What I don't share with Brooks, though, is his optimism regarding the United States' ability to recover. Although he cites numerous historical examples of nations that bounced back after disaster, there is one variable that wasn't present in those cases: climate change. The Trump administration has moved to gut decades-old environmental regulations, as well as federal expertise and oversight. It has eliminated funding for climate action and doubled down on fossil fuels. This means that even our current, arguably modest efforts to reduce carbon emissions are being reversed, potentially making it impossible to prevent catastrophic climate change. Once this happens, the wildfires, floods, and extreme weather of recent years will seem like paradise. So while the United States as a democracy may eventually recover, it will likely be too late for our planet. Michael Wright Glen Rock, Pa. Behind the Cover In this month's cover story (' Witness '), Elizabeth Bruenig describes her experience watching executions during her years of reporting on the death penalty. What she has seen has not altered her conviction that capital punishment must end, but, as she writes, 'it has changed my understanding of why.' The death penalty promises justice, or at least vengeance, but it forecloses the possibility of mercy. For our cover, The Atlantic 's creative director, Peter Mendelsund, painted an image of the corridor leading to an execution chamber, and a prisoner lying prone on the table within it. — Paul Spella, Senior Art Director
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion: Will the ‘Abundance' agenda change politics?
Every few generations, a controversial book is published that sparks a dramatic shift in political trajectory. Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' (workplace and food safety reforms), Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' (environmental activism), and Milton and Rose Friedman's 'Free to Choose' (the Reagan Revolution) are a few examples. We suggest that 'Abundance,' authored by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, may be such a tome. 'Abundance' dissects how progressivism has crippled innovation, housing and essential development. The liberal authors artfully recommend a liberalism that protects and builds. Although causing a rift in the Democratic Party, could this signal a shift in the trajectory of national politics? COWLEY: Reminiscent of Princess Leia's plea to Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Abundance agenda is Democrats' 'only hope.' Government is getting in their way, stifled by layers of self-imposed regulatory burdens. Government should be judged by its outcomes, not the rigid principles it follows. Process has been prioritized over product. Stymied public projects are merely symptoms of a larger illness within the Democratic Party. They have countless militant factions, each fighting for their niche issue to be pervasively included in all facets of government. Environmental activists demand prairie dog protection from new transmission lines. Clean air advocates want mass transit to be carbon-neutral. Even Biden saw how his infrastructure spending bills didn't have a meaningful impact because a large chunk was gobbled up by red tape and compliance costs. Imposing restrictions on their own desired outcomes results in money spent, time wasted and little to show for it. They cannot be all things to all people. Leadership is sometimes saying no. Although not entirely the fault of Democrats, upward mobility and the American Dream are becoming relics of the past. In 1940, children had a 92% chance of out-earning their parents. By 1980, it fell to 50%. If we don't build and innovate, economic opportunity dwindles. AI is the next frontier for discovery and development. This global race is one that Americans cannot afford to lose, and both parties should be paying attention. PIGNANELLI: 'The formation of ideological factions within political parties — starting among intellectuals and writers — is a staple of American history.' — Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic I remember when Friedman's program promoting the free market aired on PBS (that's right) in January 1980, when President Jimmy Carter was beating Ronald Reagan 65%-31 %. In November, Reagan won in a landslide. Ideas have power. Abundance philosophy has existed for years. But this book compiled supportive documentation into a mass communication vehicle. The well-intentioned government programs established 50 years ago are crippling housing and the implementation of technological innovations. The authors argue that progressives are focused on process and litigation rather than achieving results that benefit society. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden passed massive legislation to fund projects in healthcare, technology and alternative fuels that were impossible to initiate due to regulatory barriers. Severe left-wing opposition to abundance advocates underscores their fear of losing influence. Indeed, pundits predict a civil war within the Democratic Party between the far left and moderates eager for a new ideology. This demand for competent, efficient government can attract independents and moderate Republicans. America is amidst a major political realignment, and abundance is a new dynamic. We are witnessing history. Utah is well governed. But are there aspects of 'Abundance' that could be utilized to promote the objectives of our state officials? COWLEY: Utah understands that less is more when it comes to government. The Legislature is actively removing government barriers to innovation. For example, Utah's regulatory sandbox allows entrepreneurs to seek regulatory relief in their businesses while serving as laboratories of innovation. Look at the speed with which nuclear power is coming to Utah. Yet, more could be done on permitting and zoning to address Utah's significant housing shortage. PIGNANELLI: Gov. Spencer Cox appropriately notes that Utah has performed DOGE-like functions for years. Senate President Stuart Adams is promoting clean nuclear energy. Speaker Mike Schultz and lawmakers pursued a similar objective by mandating that the Utah Higher Education reallocate 10% of state funds to more productive uses. Despite public grumbling, insiders are grateful for the political protection that compels them to readjust resources. These goals also apply to conservatives to discourage their policies that inhibit housing and economic development at the local government level. Abundance should not be beholden to any political party, but rather a mindset that if government is used, it must be practical and not an interference. Will 'Abundance' be a campaign issue in the future? COWLEY: The Abundance agenda may help Democrat candidates become more appealing to Utah voters as the battle between progressives and moderates wages on. The real question is if they see the existential crisis befalling them and what will they do to avoid extinction. Staying the course doesn't have an upside. There is no drama-filled Twitter spat or blunder big enough that Trump could commit for the millions of Americans who voted for him to suddenly support the progressive agenda. Democrats need to loosen the stranglehold activists have on their party in order to rack up wins. PIGNANELLI: Abundance will be weaponized against moderate Democrats by left-wing progressives in internal battles. Democrats and Republicans in swing districts will advocate for this philosophy.
The Guardian
04-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The genteel, silver-tongued thinker who fathered US conservatism - and paved the way for Trump
Back when the 'public intellectual' was still a thriving species in America, the conservative writer William F Buckley Jr was one of the most famous – of any political stripe. On the PBS television show Firing Line, which he hosted weekly until 1999, he debated or interviewed people ranging from ardent rightwingers to black nationalists. In between, he edited the magazine National Review, wrote three columns a week, wrote or dictated hundreds of letters a month, and was known to dash off a book while on vacation. He was photographed working at a typewriter in the back of a limousine as a dog looked on. In Aladdin (1992), Robin Williams's genie does Buckley as one of his impressions. Buckley's extraordinary energy is captured in a sweeping new biography that also uses its subject to tell a larger story of the American right. 'As far as I'm concerned, he invented politics as cultural warfare, and that's what we're seeing now,' the writer Sam Tanenhaus said. Tanenhaus spent nearly three decades researching an authorized biography that was published on Tuesday, titled Buckley: The Life and Revolution that Changed America. Buckley is often remembered as the architect of the modern conservative movement. For decades he worked to unite anti-communists, free marketeers, and social conservatives into the coalition behind the Reagan revolution. Yet today, almost two decades since Buckley's death in 2008, the conservative landscape looks different. Free trade is out, economic protectionism is in. The Republican party's base of support, once the most educated and affluent, is now increasingly working-class. Even as Donald Trump remakes the right in his own image, however, Tanenhaus sees Buckley's thumbprints. One of the biggest is Trumpism's suspicion of intellectual elites. Although Buckley was a blue blood and loved the company of artists and literary people, he famously said that he would 'sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University'. His first book, in 1951, accused professors of indoctrinating students with liberal and secularist ideas – more than half a century before the Trump administration's bruising attempts to pressure Ivy League universities into political fealty. Tanenhaus, the former editor of the New York Times Book Review, spoke to me by video call from his house in Connecticut. He is a gregarious and funny conversationalist. At one point, he paused a digression about Joan Didion to observe: 'Wow. There's a vulture in my backyard. For God's sake.' He said he looked forward to reading my piece about him, 'unless you're saying bad stuff about me. Then send it to me and say: 'My editors made me write this.'' Our free-flowing, one-and-half-hour conversation gave me some sense of why Tanenhaus's biography took so long to write. It also made me better understand how the conservative Buckley was charmed into the decision to allow a self-described 'lifelong unregistered liberal Democrat' unfettered access to his papers, and to give that person the final – or at least most comprehensive – word on his life. The outcome is a lively, balanced and deeply researched book. At more than 1,000 pages, including end matter, the hardback is an engrossing, if occasionally wrist-straining, read. Tanenhaus was born in 1955, three weeks before Buckley published the first issue of National Review. Writing the book, he said, often felt like a kind of 'reconstructive journalism' where he relived history that he had experienced but never considered in its context. As a liberal and an 'unobservant, ignorant, secular Jew', he also had to try to understand someone with whom he had little in common, politically or culturally. Although Buckley's views on some subjects evolved over time, 'he was pretty and firmly entrenched with two foundational ideas,' Tanenhaus said. 'One was Catholicism, which was the most important thing in his life. The second was a kind of evangelical capitalism.' Unlike many of his mentors and allies, who tended to be ex-Marxists or ex-liberals, Buckley was not an ideological convert. His father, a wealthy, devoutly Catholic and rightwing oilman from Texas who raised his large family in Connecticut and across Europe, loomed large over his early life. Buckley and his nine siblings were desperate to impress their father. He was loving to his family and also racist, in a 'genteel Bourbon' way, and antisemitic, in a more vitriolic way. In 1937, when Buckley was 11, his older siblings burned a cross in front of a Jewish resort. He later recounted the story with embarrassment but argued that his siblings did not understand the gravity of what they were doing. Although Buckley came to make a real effort to purge the right of racist, antisemitic and fringe elements, Tanenhaus thinks his upbringing held sway longer than most people realize. One of the most interesting sections of the book concerns Camden, South Carolina, where Buckley's parents had a home. In the 1950s the town became notorious for violence against black people and white liberals. During his research, Tanenhaus discovered that the Buckleys – who were considered by their black domestic workers to be unusually kind relative to the white people of the area – also funded the town's pro-segregation paper and had ties to a local white supremacist group. After a spate of racist attacks in Camden, Buckley wrote a piece in National Review condemning the violence, but not segregation itself. He defended segregation on the grounds that white people were, for the time being, the culturally 'superior' race. Buckley's views on race began to change in the 1960s. He was horrified by the Birmingham church bombing that killed four little girls. During his unsuccessful third-party campaign for mayor of New York in 1965, he surprised both conservatives and liberals by endorsing affirmative action. In 1970 he argued that within a decade the United States might have a black president and that this event would be a 'welcome tonic'. Despite his patrician manner and distinct accent, Buckley had a savvy understanding of the power of mass media and technology. National Review was never read by a wide audience, but Buckley and his conservative vanguard fully embraced radio, television and other media. A technophile, he was one of the first to adopt MCI mail, an early version of email. Tanenhaus thinks he would thrive in the age of Twitter and podcasts. Yet the current era feels a world away in other respects. For one, Buckley's politics rarely affected his many friendships. 'His best friends were liberals,' Tanenhaus said. He greatly admired Jesse Jackson. It was not strange for Eldridge Cleaver, the black nationalist, and Timothy Leary, the psychonaut, to stop by his house. Buckley was deeply embarrassed by the notorious 1968 incident in which Gore Vidal called him a 'crypto-Nazi', on-air, and Buckley responded by calling Vidal an alcoholic 'queer' and threatening to punch him. It was an exception to a code of conduct that Buckley generally tried to live by. 'If he became your friend, and then you told him you joined the Communist party, he would say: 'That is the worst thing you can do, I'm shocked you would do it, but you're still coming over for dinner tomorrow, right?'' Tanenhaus laughed. 'It's just a different worldview, and we don't get it because we take ourselves more seriously than he did.' Being the authorized biographer of a living person entails a special relationship. You become intimately familiar with your subject – perhaps even good friends, as Tanenhaus and his wife did with Buckley and his socialite wife, Pat. Yet you also need critical distance to write honestly. It was impossible to finish the book 'while he was still alive', Tanenhaus said. He realized in retrospect that Buckley's death was 'the only way that I could gain the perspective I needed, the distance from him and the events that he played an important part in, to be able to wrap my arms around them'. He thinks Buckley also understood that a true biography would be a full and frank accounting of his life. 'I think that, in some way, he wanted someone to come along and maybe understand things he didn't understand about himself.' Despite his disagreements with Buckley's politics, Tanenhaus was ultimately left with a positive assessment of him as a person. 'He had a warmth and generosity that are uncommon. When you're a journalist, part of your business is interacting in some way with the great, and the great always remind you that you're not one of them. They have no interest in you. They never ask you about yourself. Buckley was not like that.' He is not sure what he would have made of Trump. Buckley was willing to criticize the right, and was an early critic of the Iraq war, Tanenhaus said. Yet 'conservatives can always find a way to say: 'Whatever our side is doing, the other side is worse.'' This is Tanenhaus's third book about conservatism. I asked what he thinks the left most misunderstands about the right. He instantly responded: 'They don't understand how closely the right has been studying them all these years.' He noted that Buckley surrounded himself with ex-leftists and that he and other conservatives made a point of reading left and liberal books and studying their tactics of political organizing. But that doesn't seem to go the opposite direction. Leftists and liberals 'don't see that the other side should be listened to, that there's anything to learn from them. And they think, no matter how few of them there are, that they're always in the majority.' Buckley once said that his 'idea of a counter-revolution is one in which we overturn the view of society that came out of the New Deal', Tanenhaus said. Today, Trump is aggressively moving, with mixed success, to roll back the federal administrative state – a vestige of Buckley's vision of unfettered capitalism, even if Trump's other economic views aren't exactly Buckley's. 'It would not be far-fetched to say we are now seeing the fulfillment of what he had in mind,' Tanenhaus said.
Axios
09-05-2025
- Business
- Axios
Trump's internal millionaires' monologue
President Trump has been negotiating with himself on a millionaires' tax: He's for it at the $2.5 million level, after being against it at $1 million. Why it matters: Negotiating with his own party may be easier. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will tell Trump on Friday that the House will deliver on the president's tax priorities, according to a congressional aide. Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) admitted he's "not excited about the proposal," before quickly adding, "There are a number of people in both the House and Senate who are." "If the president weighs in in favor of it, then that's going to be a big factor that we have to take into consideration as well," he said on Hugh Hewitt's radio show. Driving the news: Trump told Johnson over the phone Wednesday that the House should increase the top rate from 37% for individuals making $2.5 million and up ($5 million for married couples). "This is to pay for working- and middle-class tax cuts that were promised, and protect Medicaid," an administration official told Axios. Trump is also insisting that carried interest be treated like regular income, which would amount to a tax increase for the private equity industry. Between the lines: Just as Trump is calling for higher taxes on the wealthy, blue state Republicans are demanding that Trump lower them by increasing the SALT cap. New York Republicans are now rejecting lifting that cap from $10,000 to $30,000. Some lawmakers want to go as high as $62,000. Flashback: Trump told Time Magazine in April that "I actually love the concept," or higher taxes on the wealthy. "But I don't want it to be used against me politically, because I've seen people lose elections for less, especially with the fake news," he said. Zoom in: As Republicans look at the math of Trump's "one big, beautiful bill," they are confronted with a stark reality: They are short on revenue and long on spending. Speaker Johnson is committed to a "ratchet" system, where he can only pass $4 trillion in tax cuts if he can find $1.5 trillion in savings. The bottom line: Since the "Reagan Revolution," Republicans have been preternaturally predisposed to hate taxes. Or, as House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said when the millionaire's tax was floated in April.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Milton Friedman's Warning to DOGE
"Wise words," wrote Elon Musk about this 1999 viral clip described as "Milton Friedman casually giving the blueprint for DOGE [the Department of Government Efficiency]" as he ticks off a list of federal government agencies he'd be comfortable eliminating. Musk is right. Friedman, a Nobel Prize–winning libertarian economist, did offer a solid blueprint for creating a smaller, less intrusive government. At the peak of his fame, he seemed poised to influence an American president to finally slash the federal bureaucracy. But those efforts ended in disappointment because they were blocked by what Friedman called the Iron Triangle of Politics. Slashing government waste and making the federal bureaucracy more accountable are incredibly important. But President Donald Trump and Musk are hitting the same wall President Ronald Reagan did more than four decades ago. Now more than ever, it's time to pay attention to Milton Friedman's advice for how to defeat the tyranny of the status quo. In the 1980s, Friedman's influence reached deep into the halls of power. "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem," said President Reagan during his first inaugural address in January 1981. Like Trump, Reagan was preceded in the White House by a big government liberal, who expanded the size of government and whose presidency was plagued by inflation. Reagan, who awarded Friedman the Presidential Medal of Freedom, promised to enact many of the libertarian policy ideas laid out in the 1980 bestseller co-authored with his wife Rose. "I don't think it's an exaggeration to call Milton Friedman's Free to Choose a survival kit for you, for our nation, and for freedom," Reagan said in an introduction to the television adaptation of Friedman's book. But for the most part, the Reagan Revolution failed to deliver on its libertarian promises. "Reagan's free market principles…clashed with…political reality…everywhere," wrote his former budget director David Stockman in his 1986 book The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed. "For the Reagan Revolution to add up," he wrote, all the people "lured" by politicians into milking social services "had to be cut off." Reagan tried to keep his promises but, like most presidents, he was only partly successful. Reagan lifted price controls on oil, cut taxes, and pushed for deregulation. But his commitment to these initiatives quickly fizzled. Federal spending exploded, and he even left trade quotas in place for the automotive industry. The failure of the Reagan revolution inspired the Friedmans to write The Tyranny of the Status Quo, which examines the political obstacles that obstruct government cost cutting. Their insights are as relevant today as they were 41 years ago. The book, which came out in 1984, pinpoints the Iron Triangle of Politics as the main obstacle to cutting government. The triangle's three points reinforce each other to uphold the status quo: the Beneficiaries, the Politicians, and the Bureaucrats. The "beneficiaries" are interest groups and connected industries that profit off of government programs at the expense of taxpayers. Today's beneficiaries include farmers who receive federal dollars. The new budget bill backed by the Republican Party would extend the Farm Bill, which subsidizes crop purchases. As Friedman said, the people paying the bill are "dispersed." You might not have noticed your share of the $2.1 billion going to prop up corn, soybeans, wheat, and other prices when you paid your 2023 taxes, but the farmers who get that money certainly did. The "politicians" depicted on the triangle are supposed to be responsive to their constituents but end up serving interest groups instead. But it's the bureaucrats who actually distribute the money. They grow their power when politicians grow the size of their departments, which generates more spoils to distribute to the beneficiaries. It's a symbiotic relationship all at taxpayer expense. Bureaucracy tends to "proceed by laws of its own," wrote Friedman, noting that in the half-century between Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and the Reagan Revolution, the U.S. population "didn't quite double but federal government employees multiplied almost fivefold." Musk has also observed that a metastasizing bureaucracy "proceeds by laws of its own," stating in a press conference from the Oval Office that "if the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives…then we don't live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy." And, like Friedman, he senses danger if the ballooning of the bureaucratic state isn't reversed. At another press conference, he told attendees that "the overall goal here with the DOGE team is to help address the enormous deficit….If this continues, the country will become de facto bankrupt." DOGE's strategy is to try breaking through the Iron Triangle by the force of a thousand cuts, looking for little inefficiencies with the mindset of a software engineer. Musk has described his role as "tech support," which is fairly accurate given that the Executive Order that created DOGE actually just rebranded an Obama-era agency called the U.S. Digital Service. It's a good start. The federal work force should be streamlined, and much of it even automated. But Musk might be repeating some mistakes of the Reagan years. As Stockman observed, the Reagan Revolution floundered because his team only focused on "easy solutions" like ferreting out "obscure tidbits of spending that could be excised without arousing massive political resistance," which" yielded savings that amounted to rounding errors in a trillion-dollar budget." To make real progress on cutting spending, the cost reduction must go deeper than tech support could manage on its own. Friedman knew that the path to shrinking the federal government began with abolishing federal agencies. In his viral clip, he lists the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, Commerce, and Education as ones to put on the chopping block. Trump has already shut down the Department of Education…kind of. His executive order directs the Education secretary to draw up plans to eliminate or shift some spending to other departments. It keeps major spending like federal student loans intact, and a total dismantling will require Congress to act. The Trump administration has made severe cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and it defunded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, which made access to credit and banking more difficult for low-income customers. DOGE also enticed 75,000 federal workers to resign. But many of these cost-cutting initiatives have been challenged in court. Truly eliminating federal agencies requires congressional action. Because Trump holds only slim congressional majorities and didn't win on a platform to slash government, he won't be able to eliminate entire federal departments like Commerce or Agriculture. But what would happen if the Trump administration had really followed the Friedman blueprint, learned from the shortcomings of the Reagan Revolution, and created a political movement capable of pressuring Congress to finally start permanently eliminating entire agencies? Friedman says it would actually make the federal government function better by narrowly focusing on providing what state governments and the private sector can't. "One function of government is to protect the country against foreign enemies—national defense," says Friedman. "A second function of government, and one which it performs very, very badly, is to protect the individual citizen against abuse and coercion by other citizens….I believe that the government performs that function very ineffectively because it's doing so many things that it has no business doing." Earlier this year, Musk wielded a chainsaw gifted to him by Argentina's libertarian president, Javier Milei, who more closely followed the Friedman blueprint by targeting the beneficiaries and the bureaucracy, which he calls "La Casta." In Argentina, it took massive poverty and triple-digit inflation to spark a real libertarian movement that now has a chance of overthrowing the tyranny of the status quo. We don't want to wait for things to get that bad. Musk praised Milei's approach at an event in Buenos Aires co-hosted by the libertarian Cato Institute. "I think governments around the world should be actively deleting regulations, questioning whether departments should exist," said Musk. "Obviously President Milei seems to be doing a fantastic job on this front." Fantastic indeed. But how can the Iron Triangle be overcome in the American system? DOGE itself can't legally delete entire departments. DOGE's website claimed $140 billion in cuts out of its $2 trillion goal as of early April 2025. But it hasn't provided full documentation, and various media and open source analyses have ball-parked DOGE's total savings as more in the $2 billion to $7 billion range. Either way, DOGE isn't anywhere close to reaching its goal of cutting $2 trillion in government spending, or almost 30 percent of the $7 trillion annual budget. The Congressional Budget Office found the deficit grew 5 percent in February compared to the previous year despite DOGE's early cuts. Meanwhile, the Republican majority passed a budget projected that would add $3.4 trillion to our $28.8 trillion debt. And we haven't even talked about Social Security and Medicare, which are the major drivers of debt, and which Trump has promised not to touch. As Stockman came to realize, this is a bipartisan problem. "There isn't a difference [between the parties] when it comes to the debt," he said on an episode of Reason's Just Asking Questions. "How in the world can we keep adding $1 trillion to our public debt every three months? How are we going to get away with basically enslaving the next generation of Americans with debt?" The only way to break the Iron Triangle, Friedman suggested, is to push through deep structural reforms that are hard to overturn: a balanced budget amendment that forces Congress to spend responsibly, a line item veto allowing a president to eliminate special interest handouts without scrapping an otherwise popular law, a flat tax to eliminate special interest carve-outs, and a hard limit on how much money the government can print each year. Sounds easy, right? Of course, it isn't. Friedman believes that to defeat the Iron Triangle, a popular politician must break free of the grip of the triangle's other two points. A new president, with a broad popular mandate and bully pulpit, is in a unique position to push the kind of radical but necessary reforms needed to cut government. And it all must happen, says Friedman, within the first six-month "honeymoon" period. Trump entered his second term with a bold and disruptive plan, but he's spending his political capital unwinding America's global trade and defense partnerships, not on slashing spending. To really cut the government, Friedman says you must capture the White House with a plan to cut spending and then make it harder to spend more. Trump isn't fighting that battle. He went to war with Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) for opposing the GOP's bloated budget. And with Trump's tariffs throwing the market into turmoil, legal challenges to his executive action piling up, and his popularity already waning, the "honeymoon" is already over. The gargantuan task of breaking the Iron Triangle will probably be left to whoever comes next. But the Iron Triangle will remain unbroken, and the looming threat of an increasingly centralized and bloated government will persist, until a movement emerges that is dedicated to achieving enduring structural reforms. As Friedman wisely observed, it's not only short-term results that matter but the methods and their long-term consequences. When asked what he'd do if made dictator for a day, Friedman replied, "I don't want to be made dictator. I don't believe in dictators. I believe we want to bring about change by agreement of the citizens. If we can't persuade the public that it's desirable to do these things, we have no right to impose it on them even if we had the power to do it." DOGE's mission to rein in our catastrophic debt and unrestrained federal government is one of the most important political battles of our time. But it's a mission that will need more than a single executive agency to ultimately succeed: It needs a mass political movement. 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