Fauci Makes the Case for SCOTUS’s Decision in Slaughter

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, July 29, 2026

 

The editors note this entry in Anthony Fauci’s diary:

 

Big front page article abut me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering. The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable person in the world. Countless profiles on me in multiple media. I cannot even read all the things that are written about me since I am so busy . . . seriously.

 

This is embarrassing, yes. But, more important, it is human. And because it is human, it underscores the importance of the recent work that the Supreme Court has done in ensuring that power in the United States is exercised by those to whom it was granted by the voters, rather than by those who staff our allegedly “independent” agencies.

 

Unlike the revolutionary utopians in France and in Russia, the framers of our Constitution understood that human nature is immutable, and that it is imperative that our institutions attempt to channel its vices, rather than to extirpate them. Because ambition was inevitable, they reasoned, it ought to be harnessed and used to counteract ambition elsewhere in the system. Thus, power in America was to be separated, and each of the branches within that fractured system was to be held directly accountable for its actions.

 

The progressives of the early 20th century had no time for this insight, believing that it empowered the unworthy and created stasis within the system. As a result, they looked outside of the ordained three branches, to the bureaucracy, which they wished to fill with brilliant, detached, learned figures who were set apart from politics. In their estimation, the best system was one in which the substantive decisions of state were made by experts who were unsullied by the electoral process.

 

The problem with this — other than that it is completely incompatible with the Constitution, which is not a suggestion, but the law — is twofold: First, that there is no such thing as a brilliant, detached, learned figure who is set apart from politics, and, second, that the electoral process is the means by which we reach those who have power over us, and demand that they correct course.

 

Anthony Fauci believed himself to be “the most famous and talked about person in the country,” and he may well have been right. Had he been a singer or an athlete, this would not have been a problem. But he wasn’t: He was a prominent bureaucrat, with a great deal of influence over our lives. It is probably unavoidable that we will have such people within our government. But if we wish to live in a republic, we ought to insist, as, the Supreme Court increasingly has, that they are treated not as immortal philosopher kings, but as the temporary employees of the figures whom we are able to reprimand and remove.