If Men Were Angels, No Government Would be Necessary
There's a difference between government waste, efficiency, and speed. And the Framers always meant for the government to be slow.
James Madison said if men were angles then we wouldn’t need a government, and if angels ran the government then it wouldn’t need checks and balances.
But, he said, since men run the government (and men are no angels), we need measures for the government to “control itself.” Thus, the Framers wrote a Constitution with separation of powers and checks and balances so the branches could be “the means of keeping each other in their proper places.”1
Without separation of power and checks and balances, it’s too easy for one branch to become more powerful than the others; it’s too easy for the rich & powerful to manipulate government for their own gain and to the detriment of others; and it’s too easy for single-ruler governance (exactly what the Framers were running from) to reemerge.
To say it plainly: our government is slow for a reason.
Waste
Even with checks and balances slowing things down, no one wants a wasteful or fraudulent government. Apparently that’s why a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed claimed, “Democrats Ought to Love DOGE.”
Maybe, but DOGE is doing a piss poor job uncovering waste.
DOGE says it found tens of billions in savings, but just the first round of reporting shows Musk’s math counts the same $650 million contract three times; a contract that supposedly saved $232 million was actually $560,000 (?!?); and an $8 billion “contract” that was actually an $8 million line of credit (meaning the real savings might be $0).
Efficiency
It’s also possible for a slow government to be efficient. Once a law or policy is in place, efficiency means executing the law—getting results—with the least effort and expense.
The key word here is results, and that’s where DOGE fails once again:
Firing workers and cancelling programs only to rehire or restore them days later is a master class in waste and inefficiency.
Eliminating civil servants with decades of expertise is, to say the least, not efficient.
Blasting through legal barriers so the government has to defend dozens of lawsuits is a monumental waste of taxpayer funds and DOJ lawyers’ time.
Speed
No one wants waste and everyone wants efficiency, but a slow, stable government that protects those in the minority and stymies single-ruler authority is exactly what Madison told us the Framers wanted.
They wanted to slow down lawmaking by dividing legislative power between two houses of Congress.
They empowered the President to slow down Congress by vetoing a bill before it’s on the books, but once a bill is law they required another act of Congress to repeal it.
And despite Musk’s most recent rant, they established a judiciary to slow down the other branches when they go too far. His Tweet from Tuesday:
If you’re following along, you know the answer: our government has judges who can override the will of the people because people aren’t angels. Just ask the 10+ million Africans ripped from their homes and enslaved in America. Ask Mildred Loving. Ask John Lawrence, Jr. and Tyron Garner. All of them victims of laws that were the clear and cruel will of the people.
When the people’s elected leaders violate the law or our most basic rights, the Framers wanted a government that could slow them down; a government that could “keep them in their proper place.”
The question is whether that’s still the country we want, because all of DOGE’s actions in the name of “waste” and “efficiency” are actually about creating a government with power concentrated in an executive branch (more precisely, in the President alone) allowed to move at lightning speed and go unchecked by any other branch.
For good measure, they’re even f*ing around with the idea of impeaching judges who dare stand up for the Framers’ constitutional system.
They’ll probably do it, too, if for no other reason than holding a bunch of impeachment hearings would be the absolute paragon of waste and inefficiency.
I said it before, and I’ll probably have to say it again: These are not American values. Or at least they didn’t used to be.