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Comment by angry_octet | Hacker News Reader

With respect, I'd have to disagree with your portrayal of Harper as an honest toiler, betrayed by revanchist public servants at every turn, and forced by circumstances to take harsh but fair measures.

Harperites didn't like the facts, and did their absolute best to hide them. The woolly headed policy making was conducted in defiance of the facts. When the objective facts were highlighted by public servant, in full concordance with the espoused values of their organisations, the conservatives got nasty.

Harper didn't like ridicule, and he proved what a small man he is when he had his satirist sacked. A remote wildlife ecologist public servant writing funny rhymes! What a coward to manufacture a dismissal.

As to Trump: he might think it a mutiny, others would characterise it as obeying the law and understanding the Constitution.

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Those are mostly orthogonal concerns to the ones raised in the GP. If the GP are correct in the details (I am not familiar with the situation), then the civil service acted purposefully to circumvent and undermine the government. No matter how bad they perceive the government to be (as described, we're not talking about crimes, but deep and probably reasonable disagreements on policy and execution), that's not what they are supposed to do. This is exactly what a "deep state" does: It opaquely keeps the power in the bureaucracy to "protect" the nation against the government, and that is obviously not compatible with democracy. Protecting against bad governments is what term limits and the electorate are meant to do, the civil service is supposed to loyally staff (within reason, of course -- civil servants are also citizens) the actually elected government.

> As to Trump: he might think it a mutiny, others would characterise it as obeying the law and understanding the Constitution.

The article isn't about the legitimacy of any individual leaks, rather:

Even if each individual leak is justifiable, as insubordination becomes more sustained and overt, it inches deeper into the gray zone of counter-democratic activities.

The distinction between deep-state meddling and acceptable protest is difficult to draw in the United States, Ms. Zegart said, because this degree of opposition is so unusual.

I strongly disagree. We get one election every X years. Institutional inertia is a very important check on elected officials. The classic US example is the unelected and appointed for life supreme court.

In many way civil servants like juries are the most direct form of democracy. There have been a few quiet revolutions where the system effectively said enough is enough.

The question is begged then, what actions do the people take to say enough is enough (Aside from the bloody revolution talked about by the founders)?

At the individual level leaks are the most common 'fix'.

Importantly, the population does not care is someone leaks an FDA study demonstrating that water is safe to drink. They are inherently useful when people disagree with what's happening. Further, the government leaks constantly at all levels which is how the '5th estate' had all that power.

For more a more extreme example striking is mostly associated with working working conditions and pay. But, it's also one of the way governments can fall with minimal violence. Not paying the police for months just does not work.

They vote.

Huh? How do you vote out unelected bureaucrats?

Civil servants are hired to do a job. That's it. They are not elected. It's not their place to restrict the power of elected officials unless their activities are illegal.

But we've had example of illegal activities in this administration (ie the immigration ban). What are civil servants to do then? Follow obviously illegal orders?

That's an important restriction though. There are lots of laws. Some laws give some civil servants some independence from elected officials' decisions.

Civil service employees take an oath to defend The Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to faithfully discharge the duties of their position. Their loyalty to elected officials comes after their loyalty to those first two precepts. In as much as they believe they are fulfilling their oath, they are absolutely supposed to resist the efforts of elected officials.

In Canada civil servants and researchers would go on the record when they spoke to the press. Those type of "leaks" were very different from the current ones that have anonymous people attributing beliefs to 3rd parties that promptly deny.

The real lesson is that when the media doesn't do its job of ensuring leaks are accurate (where is the proof? can I see some documents?) they descend into partisan attacks which discredit them and weaken the role of the media as a check against executive power. Wikileaks is the role model: its leaks were factual and credible and could be checked for accuracy.

> the media doesn't do its job of ensuring leaks are accurate

What is that based on? In the articles I read, they discuss the credibility of the information in detail.

One thing I don't understand is how many people in this thread think that the US civil service has only just now been politicised by that mean ol' Trump. As a non-US civil servant, I hate to break it to you, but your federal civil service has been absurdly politicised for as long as I remember.

If it's any consolation, the same has happened where I live (Australia). Perhaps there are aspects of the US political system that make this less of a problem (e.g. full separation of powers), I don't know. But at least in Australia's (and probably Canada's) case, politicisation of the public service is disastrous. Unfortunately this seems to be lost on many (including public servants). I'm convinced that governments with Westminster style systems cannot properly function without an independent public service.

To be clear, when I say 'independent', I mean only in the way the public service advises the currently elected government (i.e. without considering politics or the Minister's assumed personal preferences, and only giving advice on the grounds of policy merit). The phrase used in Australia (but not often put into operation, unfortunately) is 'frank and fearless'. However, only the elected government should make policy decisions, as they are the only ones with a democratic mandate. Once they have made a decision, the public service has a duty to implement them as best they can, regardless of whether they agree or not (or whether they advised otherwise).

It would appear your analysis is marred by personal politics, as are most analyses of Trump.

I voted for Harper (at least the first time) and would have to say it's a pretty accurate analysis.

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