Editor's Note: This is an exclusive excerpt of Chapter 9: "The Experts" adapted from "Hide Your Children: Exposing the Marxists Behind the Attack on America's Kids" by Liz Wheeler, released on September 26, 2023 (Regnery Publishing).
Technocracy, in practice, is on full display in the administrative state. For instance, during judicial reviews of agency actions, or during so-called “notice and comment periods,” executive agency rule-makers often justify their rules and regulations on the basis of “science” or on technical grounds. In other words, if administrative agencies argue that their rules are “science based,” they are usually allowed to create binding rules over us while circumventing the legislative process.
This begets an enormous problem inherent to technocracy: “science” and “technology” are not the only variables in the equation when creating public policy. Another, of course, is the Constitution. Still another is moral judgment. The premise of democracy, of self-governance, is that people have a right to influence the policies that will have an impact on their lives. If the moral judgment of the people through their elected officials is delegated to the administrative state, then it will be the moral judgment of the unelected bureaucrats that drive our policies. And yet, there is no such thing as a “neutral” administrative class. Instead, the administrative state simply shirks responsibility for its moral judgments while technocrats impose their version of morals on us via “rule by science” or “rule by the experts.”
Technocracy is embedded not only in the powerful administrative state of the federal government, but also in institutions like teachers’ unions that determine much of what our children are taught in public schools. The largest teachers’ union in the nation, the National Education Association, tweeted, “Educators love their students and know better than anyone what they need to learn and to thrive.”
Who knows best about your children? Not the children’s parents; that’s a job for the experts.
In 2021, during a gubernatorial debate with Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, Democratic candidate and former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe admitted he intended to exclude parents from their children’s education in favor of what the experts think. McAuliffe said, “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Who should be in charge of a government-run, mandatory public school system that will shape the next generation of Americans? The experts. And not just any experts.
The experts we’re supposed to listen to are those who peddle the racism of Critical Race Theory and want to sexualize our children with Queer Theory and comprehensive sexuality education. They’re the experts who want to ban homeschooling and prevent religious parents from instilling their values in their children. They’re the experts, like those at Planned Parenthood, who know better than parents when their child seeks an abortion or life-altering pharmaceuticals to “change genders.”
The experience of our government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic—where government bureaucrats trampled on our civil rights, locked down our society, masked our children and deprived them of playgrounds, stifled free and open scientific discussion of data, unjustly scapegoated “the unvaccinated,” forced vaccines on employees under penalty of being fired, and outlawed gatherings unless they were organized for neo-Marxist political purposes—served as an eye-opening moment for the public. Suddenly, the scope of technocracy in our country and the politicization of “the experts” was laid bare. Far from being a politically neutral class making science-based judgments unencumbered by partisan ideology, the technocrat experts of the administrative state proved themselves to be woke, neo-Marxist radicals.
This is true in many institutions outside government too, where “experts” pretending to be neutral administrators of science are instead propagating corruption or outright Marxism. For instance, “the experts” at the American Academy of Pediatrics push “gender identity” propaganda in the name of science while disregarding parental judgment (and science) on co-sleeping, sleep training, and breastfeeding. Similarly, “the experts” at the Centers for Disease Control dictate a vaccine schedule for children that now includes over seventy shots—that are not all safe, effective, or necessary—and many of these injections are mandatory for children to attend public school. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control are thoroughly corrupted by financial interests and ideological agendas, yet portray themselves as neutral “experts.” This is technocracy.
Technocracy is seeping into law as well. In Connecticut, a new bill would allow children as young as twelve years old to undergo vaccination procedures against the wishes of their parents if the experts decide it will benefit the child. Likewise in Virginia a new bill would allow a child to “transition genders” against the wishes of his or her parents if the experts claim the child is capable of consent.
Technocracy is not neutral. It is not apolitical. Technocratic rule by “the experts” always includes politically partisan moral judgment hidden under “the science.” It is merely another means by which neo-Marxists impose their will, subvert our republican form of government, deny our rights as voters, citizens, and parents, in order to achieve the ultimate purpose Alexander Bogdanov envisioned: the total transformation of our society from free market capitalism to the totalitarianism of communism.
Liz Wheeler hosts the podcast The Liz Wheeler Show and is the author of Tipping Points: How to Topple the Left's House of Cards. Liz was named a top 10 "30 under 30" conservative rising star in 2016 by Red Alert Politics and profiled by Politico magazine in 2018 as a "titan of conservative media." She formerly hosted Tipping Point with Liz Wheeler on One America News Network.