“This town is now as nervous as it’s ever been.” That’s Congressman Chip Roy’s assessment of the mood in Washington, D.C., since President Trump’s return to the White House. It’s one of several dozen refreshingly blunt descriptions of American politics in Ned Ryun’s new documentary based on his book, American Leviathan. The documentary is available to anyone with an Internet connection, and it is nothing short of a declaration of war on the administrative state.
I highlighted Ryun’s book when it came out last September for several reasons. First, it is a remarkably clear description of the ideas, people, and events that led us to this unique moment in history — when the inevitable clash between the authoritarian bureaucracy and the constitutional Republic has come to a head. There was nothing “natural” about this process. The vast and unaccountable administrative state did not arise from the U.S. Constitution; it is a repudiation of the Constitution. The unelected bureaucracy does not reflect the wishes of the American people; it is the polar opposite of representative government. No matter how many propagandists defend Big Government as “our Democracy,” the ever-growing Leviathan is thoroughly authoritarian in disposition. It jealously guards its expanding powers and despises American citizens who insist that legitimate government comes only from the consent of the people. It is such an unnatural beast that it must spy on Americans, censor their speech, and intimidate them into submission merely to maintain control. The administrative state is “government by coercion” and the antithesis of limited government and individual liberty.
Second, Ryun is a rather unique political operative in that he “walks the walk” every bit as much as he “talks the talk.” He is an effective warrior when it comes to getting Republicans elected, but he is also a tireless critic of the Deep State. Those qualities are often mutually exclusive in high-stakes American politics where a person’s clout is usually directly proportional to his willingness to sell out personal principles. Washington’s political machine — the Frankensteinian monstrosity composed of equal parts malevolent bureaucracy, corporate blackmail, academic blacklisting, news media gatekeeping, Intelligence Community skulduggery, and rank influence peddling — tends to scoop up “true believers” and recondition them into compliant cogs of the permanent government’s hive-mind, collectivist “Borg.” Ryun is a rare political player who refuses to be “assimilated” or transformed into another D.C. “drone.”
Lastly, I wanted readers to mentally prepare for what would happen after President Trump won in November. There were fifty days between the publication of Ryun’s American Leviathan and Trump’s victory, and while those crucial days required all of our efforts to make sure that he would, in fact, be re-elected, I knew that we would have no time to waste once he succeeded. That’s where Ryun’s efforts really stand out. His book is meant (1) to wake up those who have been sleeping during the century-long transformation of the American Republic into a tyrannical bureaucracy, (2) to re-energize those who have been fighting the good fight for most of their lives, and (3) to lay out the blueprint for restoring the Republic and destroying the Deep State. I wanted readers to spend time before the election thinking about what would come next because winning was only “Step One” of a much larger operation.
Hellbound and Down 