On November 20, 1945, an international tribunal first convened in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg to prosecute key leaders of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Trials were a key aspect of holding individuals accountable for the brutal acts and genocide committed under Nazi rule. High-ranking officials, including Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess, faced charges, and they tended to grab most of the headlines. But plenty of lower ranking officers, and even doctors, faced trial as well. Naturally they tried to defend themselves by claiming they were “only following orders”. But the Nuremberg Trials established a clear precedent that moral responsibility falls on the individual who committed the crime. “Only following orders” is simply not a valid justification for blatant wrongdoing. It’s always dangerous territory to bring up the Nazis in any intellectual argument because it’s just so sensational. But in this case the analogy is an important one because we’re ultimately talking about accountability. Bureaucrats and politicians in the US government commit outrageous, egregious acts of wasteful mismanagement on a daily basis. A lot of it is even deliberate. And yet no one is ever held accountable. The conservative writer Thomas Sowell once argued that “it is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” People in the private sector pay for their mistakes all the time. Businesses who don’t deliver value soon find themselves without customers. Employees who don’t do good work find themselves out of a job. But government officials have squandered trillions of dollars. They locked down businesses, forced experimental vaccines on children, censored free speech, and violated just about every right imaginable. How many have been truly held accountable? At the moment the answer is precisely zero. Fauci retired to a multi-million dollar book deal. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi will be honored throughout the rest of their lives. Marty Gruenberg (head of the FDIC and worst human being in government) still has his job. Even most of the worst Members of Congress won their reelections. That’s where today’s discussion begins. We actually recorded a podcast talking about this idea of government accountability. I’ve written a lot that America has, right now, a very narrow window of opportunity to fix its mountain of challenges, or at least get seriously on the right path. Those challenges will be difficult to fix without fundamentally addressing the culture of failure, the standard of mediocrity, and the habit of waste in the federal government. Even if the economy starts growing by leaps and bounds, the US government still won’t be able to fix its gargantuan fiscal crisis if an unaccountable bureaucracy is still there to suffocate progress. This is a MUST FIX for America to have a real chance at success. You can listen to the full discussion here.
