I'm John Batcher with Victory Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution.

His book is The Dying Citizen.

Who administers the state?

Victor devotes a good deal of attention to the unelected.

Sometimes known as the administrative state, it's also a way of thinking about people

who are beyond correction because they are empowered by the executive branch or the

Judiciary Branch or sometimes by Congress.

Victor, the unelected are everywhere all around us.

You had so many examples, but the one I celebrate is the raisin industry, your 120-acre

farm in the Central Valley.

As of 1983, you were farming raisins.

But did I know that there is something called the raisin administration committee?

What is that?

What does it mean about being the unelected?

It's a depression era relic to set prices for raisins.

The way it works is you don't own the great vines on your own property if they produce

raisins.

Most varieties, they're single varieties.

If you have a raisin variety grape, then the government owns it.

What that means is when you cut the grapes and you put them on the ground and you dry them

on paper trays or now they do it on the vine and you collect them.

You stack them in your yard and you truck them to a processor that washes and stems them.

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