Beyond Labels

A 360° Discussion of Foreign, National and Local Policy Issues

What is the core ideology of populism in the US?

Here’s a link to an article in the 8 June edition of The New York Times asserting that the central ideology of fhe Trump version of populism is what the author calls “anti-maferialism”.

The author’s name is Nathan Levine. I haven’t been able to find out much about him except that he was affiliated with The Heritage Foundation at some point and that he publishes a a newsletter on Substack called The Upheaval under the name N.S. Lyons.

As the author describes it, anti-managerialism is the effort to enhance the freedom of the people in general by reducing the power of public and private sector bureaucratic organizations. Those bureaucratic organizations include the federal government, big businesses, big law firms, media outlets, and universities.

In the article, the author says “… our democracy has been usurped by a permanent ruling class of wholly unaccountable managers and bureaucrats.” He says anti-managerialism is a popular reaction “…to decades of frustration with mainstream conservatives’ failure to deliver results ….”

Levine cites a 1941 book by political philosopher John Burnham as the origin of this movement. As summarized by Levine, Burnham said:

“… [T]he exponential growth of mass and scale produced by the Industrial Revolution meant that in both corporation and state it was now those people cleverest at applying techniques of mass organization, procedure and propaganda — what he called the managerial class — who effectively controlled the means of production and would increasingly come to dominate society as a new technocratic oligarchy.”

According to Levine, Burnham’s book “… made an especially significant impression on George Orwell, who remarked that a managerial class consisting of ‘scientists, technicians, teachers, journalists, broadcasters, bureaucrats, professional politicians: in general, middling people,’ hungry for ‘more power and more prestige,’ would seek to entrench ‘a system which eliminates the upper class, keeps the working class in its place and hands unlimited power to people very similar to themselves.’ “

Levine goes on to say that, by the 1980s, some thinkers on the right believed “the managerial class had risen to elite status, just as Burnham predicted. This managerial elite now occupied positions across the heights of society, from government agencies to the boardroom and the faculty lounge, and was generally united in espousing liberal-progressive ideological beliefs.”

Today, according to Levine, “… only by delivering a decisive blow to the unity and control of the bureaucratic ‘deep state ‘through evicting swaths of the managerial class could the left’s structural power be successfully undermined. … Hence the administration’s determination to reassert presidential authority over the administrative state, seeing this as an urgent restoration of democratic accountability.”

If this sound like an interesting topic for discussion, here are a few questions I think Levine’s article raises:

1. Is the Trump administration following Levine’s playback?

2. If so, are they succeeding?

3. So far, who has benefitted from the anti-managerial movement? Who is bearing the cost?

4.To the extent the Trump administration is succeeding, will that success be reversed after Trump leaves office?

5. In what respects is this reduction of the power of bureaucratic a good thing?

June 2: Scope of Federal Court Orders (and Birthright Citizenship)

Our next meeting will focus on the current Supreme Court cases regarding birthright citizenship and deportations.

One of the important sub-issues that draws these two subjects together is the question of how broadly a judge’s ruling should apply—only within the local district in which a judge sits, in the regional circuit, or nationwide. In the past (I think) these have been pretty clear. But some recent Trump Administration cases has refocused attention on the issue:

  • If a district judge enjoins or temporarily restrains an executive branch action as being likely unconstitutional, should other similarly situated parties be able to rely on that ruling? Or does everyone have to file their own petition for temporary relief?
  • Can a “class “ receive protection before it is certified?

Given the fast pace of parallel, and sometimes irreversible, actions, waiting for a full trial, then circuit court appeal, then Supreme Court decision can take years.
I’ll post some links to some related reading as a “comment “ to this post by Wednesday; others are welcome to do so as well.

A proposed Catholic charter school in Oklahoma and recent US Supreme Court establishment clause decisions

At the end of today’s session, we discussed as a possible topic for next Monday a case argued before the Supreme Court on 30 April: St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond. According to a recent New York Times article:

“After Oklahoma’s charter school board approved the proposal to open St. Isidore, the state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, sued to stop it.

Mr. Drummond , a Republican, said a religious public school would violate the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion and the State Constitution’s ban on spending public money to support religious institutions.”

The school has said it will include Catholic doctrine throughout its curriculum.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled in favor of Drummond’s position that allowing the school to operate as a state chater school, which would require the state to provide funding for it, would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as applied to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment. The US Supreme Court granted the school’s petition for certiorari.

Here are links to some recent New York Times articles about the case and about recent US Supreme Court decisions regarding the Establishment Clause:


Supreme Court Seems Open to a Religious Charter School in Oklahoma (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/us/politics/supreme-court-charter-school.html?unlocked_article_code=1.E08._u1U._zTvZ8w3te83&smid=em-share)

A Key Question Before the Court: Are Charter Schools Public or Private? (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/us/politics/charter-schools-public-private-supreme-court.html?unlocked_article_code=1.E08.TpuM.BDhlATqTsLf2&smid=em-share

Will Religion’s Remarkable Winning Streak at the Supreme Court Continue? (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/30/us/politics/supreme-court-religion.html?unlocked_article_code=1.E08.RKwO.ka_NhZt-Nm9r&smid=em-share)

Highlights: Religious Charter School Case Reaches the Supreme Court (https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04/30/us/supreme-court-charter-schools?unlocked_article_code=1.E08.487Z.Qs8DoGrEzCD2&smid=em-share)