From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

He had redible capacity for discipline. I was blown away by it. One of the examples was really going to dinner parties and he would disappear.

When it hit about 10 o'clock, he was gone. He had to get to bed because he would

be up by five. And he had this incredibly rigorous regimen where he was writing three columns a week.

He had firing line. This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour,

part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network.

That was Lawrence Perlman, author of the new book American Impressario, William F. Buckley, Jr.,

and the elements of American character.

We'll talk in depth with Lawrence about that book later on in today's program.

First, we're joined by Dr. Joseph Postel. He is Associate Professor

of Politics here at Hillsdale College and is the author of the book, Bureaucracy in America,

the administrative state's challenge to constitutional democracy. Dr. Postel, thanks so much for

joining us. Thanks for having me on. That book's been out for a couple of years now, still very

relevant. And so a couple of conversations in which we zero in on one of the chapters

inside bureaucracy in America. And today we talk about the beginning of bureaucracy. I wanted

to find a phrase first. It's one that people have heard often and perhaps use themselves.

But for our purposes, how would you define what the administrative state is? What does it mean when we use that phrase?

So this term, people are sort of wondering, what are we talking about when we talk about the administrative state?

Of course, it's hard to come up with a definitive definition that everybody will agree on, but

essentially it describes a sort of alphabet soup constellation of administrative agencies

where the real governance decisions in America are made today, EPA, SEC, OSHA, and so forth. And we've reached the point in American history and American

politics where most of the power, most of the laws, most of the enforcement is really done

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