In the past, men bowed to priests for salvation.  Today, they bow to bureaucrats for permission.  The robes have changed, but the faith remains.  The altar is no longer in the temple—it’s in the office.  The bureaucrat sits where the priest once stood, handing out indulgences in the form of licenses, permits, and approvals.  The masses obey, not because they believe, but because they’ve forgotten how not to.  The ritual of submission has replaced the act of faith.

It’s absurd how many think bureaucracy is reasoned order.  There’s no order in coercion, only obedience.  Each new rule is another sermon on the virtues of compliance.  The modern creed is printed in government code, recited by clerks, and enforced by threats.  They call it safety, fairness, or equality—modern saints’ names for control.  Bureaucracy feeds on the illusion that all must be managed.  It assumes man is incapable of right action unless supervised.  The individual becomes a file number, the citizen a resource, and the soul a statistic.

They act as if they are the sacred interpreters of a secular scripture.  They write their own commandments, then call them regulations.  They do not debate truth, only procedure.  Once written, these decrees take on the weight of revelation.  They must be followed no matter how absurd or destructive.  To question them is to commit heresy.  The faithful reply, “It’s the law.” They worship process and call it justice.  They worship compliance and call it virtue.

The priests once claimed access to divine revelation.  The bureaucrats claim access to statistical revelation.  The difference is cosmetic.  Both appeal to something higher than reason.  Both promise salvation through submission.  They claim to save the world with paperwork.  To them, liberty is disorder and creativity is risk.  The bureaucratic mind can’t comprehend that life organizes itself.  It believes it must command, or chaos will reign.  The result is a lifeless order where men are permitted to breathe only by regulation.

There’s no divine right of kings, no divine right of legislators, and certainly no sacred right of bureaucrats.  They aren’t chosen, only appointed.  They don’t lead, they administer.  Their faith is not in God or truth, but in authority itself.  Like the possessed, they believe they are instruments of good while spreading paralysis.  Their power grows not from wisdom, but from fear.  They claim to protect, but they only prevent.  They claim to organize, but they only obstruct.

The sacred bureaucracy isn’t sacred at all—it’s a cold religion without a soul.  Its disciples serve without question, its victims obey without thought.  As long as men believe that virtue can be legislated and order can be manufactured, the sacred bureaucrats will continue their mass, and freedom will remain a forbidden prayer.

Reference

Herbert Spencer; The Man Versus The State