Asher Sisneros

Philip Dru: Administrator by Edward M. House follows a brilliant West Point graduate’s rise to political power. From the beginning of the book and throughout all of his conversations with Gloria, who he later marries, Philip Dru shows interest in the greater welfare of society. Unfortunately, Dru rests on the false assumption that salvation can come from the State, and in the name of progress and the welfare of the people, he throws them into bondage and usurps their liberty. 

The first example of Philp Dru’s hypocrisy is his alliance with Senator Selwyn. The basis of Dru’s revolution was that Senator Selwyn and a rich businessman by the name of Thor had used their political influence and capital to quasi-rig the election. “Their man” was put into the presidency—someone Selwyn could control—and they won dozens of seats in the Senate. But there was no election fraud or bribes (presumptively) involved in winning the election. So there was nothing illegal or even abnormal about what Selwyn and Thor did.  Since the founding of America—no, since the founding of civil government—men of means have always sought to use their influence to their advantage. In the case of Thor, he believed getting his men in the Senate would make him wealthy, presumably through handouts from the federal government. And Selwyn merely sought power. In any case, when this secret was exposed, it caused national scandal and eventually violent revolution. But after Philip Dru won the war and defeated all of the U.S. troops, Selwyn became an extremely close advisor to his administration. But if the war was fought to combat Selwyn’s political influence, why were tens of thousands of lives lost? Was it all in vain? Either Senator Selwyn was not as evil as Philip Dru thought, making the revolution unnecessary, or Dru sold out and joined his enemy. 

The great irony of the book is that in the name of liberating America from corrupt special interests, Dru set himself up as dictator. For years, the U.S. was run by his own decree as he prepared the country to have a just system of government. And under his blissful and just reign, Administrator Dru invaded Mexico and annexed Canada. But of course, he did this for freedom. 

Worst of all, Philip Dru nullified the U.S. Constitution by personal decree, rewrote all of the state constitutions by the flip of his finger, and destroyed the very essence of checks and balances in government by denying courts the right to constitutional review. Perhaps there would have been legitimacy to his actions if the state constitutions were written by state assemblies and popularly elected representatives, but that was not the case. Dru wrote it by himself and enforced it by his own power. As far as constitutional review went, he stripped courts of the right to evaluate whether congressional laws and executive powers were constitutional or illegal. The great American experiment was built on the premise that the people are best when their government is smallest, and since governments have a tendency to increase their power over time, it is best to separate the legislative, executive, and judicial powers so, as each branch of government seeks to grow its own power, the other branches of government will “check and balance” the power. But if the judiciary loses its right to review whether laws and executive actions are constitutionally legal, the other two branches of government get a blank check to increase their power exponentially, rendering the American experiment obsolete. 

There are other examples, of course, such as Philip Dru’s invasion into the private sector to functionally nationalize all corporations, but these three examples show Dru’s hypocrisy and how he became a worse evil than Thor and Selwyn ever were. Under Dru’s leadership, governmental power expanded, states were compulsively forced to agree to his constitutions, all states were stripped of independent rights and turned into districts, and constitutional review was stripped from the courts. In other words, despotism reigned, and under the guise of welfare, liberty died in America.