Professor of International Law Michael J. Glennon of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University has composed one of the most fascinating and comprehensive studies of what many policy analysts such as Peter Dale Scott are now calling “the public state” and “the deep state.” The Harvard National Security Journal article is entitled “National Security and Double Government.” Glennon contrasts the “Madisonian” public state described in the first three Articles of the United States Constitution (and taught in junior high Civics) with that of the covert “Trumanite” National Security State established in 1947 (and rarely known of by anyone outside its inner clandestine corridors). In many ways he is reaffirming what the great Old Right libertarian Garet Garrett prophetically observed at the creation of this monstrosity. Glennon strips bare any illusions as to where the true source of power lies. His descriptions of the inner workings, motivations, bureaucratic inertia, institutional loyalties, of this “double government” are brilliantly outlined. He conclusively demonstrates that although the transparent public face of power in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches may change with each new presidential administration or rotation in office of elected congressional officials or appointments to the courts, the faceless elite forces shaping national security policy are deeply entrenched, unapproachable, and unaccountable. This parasitic deep state feeds off its public state host, (and in turn off those hapless tax slaves who sustain both of these ravenous leviathans in our midst). An expanded book-length analysis is also available.

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