Everyone is shocked, shocked, that there is corruption going on in Minnesota, what with Feeding Our Future and Somali immigrants plundering various welfare programs for fun and profit, and top Minnesota politicians posing for photos with an illegal immigrant fraudster from Somalia.

Experts agree that it would be racist not to rename the Minnesota Vikings as the Minnesota Somali Pirates.

You and I, because we are so wise, are not surprised. We understand that, not later than the Roman Empire and its “bread and circuses,” corruption has been the very soul of a government program.

Even philosophers agree. Eric Hoffer opined that every mass movement ends up as a racket.

But what intrigues me is that most every corrupt government program began as a moral crusade. Case in point, the Progressives and the “spoils system.”

Back at the Dawn of the Progressive Age in 1883 our representatives in Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act and promised a Golden Age with a civil service hired on merit instead of the corruption of the Spoils System.

With the average federal worker now earning benefits and a pension far higher than the average private sector worker, does anyone still think that the civil service system is anything other than a corrupt spoils system? Only now the jobs in the spoils system are lifetime jobs for Democrats, and Republicans need not apply, whereas in the bad old days the spoils were switched from one party in a fair and equitable manner after each election.

And so it goes, right down to the present.

Back in the day, our rulers regaled us with the moral horror of racism, and passed a Civil Right Act to end it. But even before the Act was passed our Democratic president Kennedy issued a racist executive order mandating Affirmative Action in the federal government and requiring agencies to hire on the basis of race. Later on, Affirmative Action became quotas and then Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. So the moral crusade of civil rights became an anti-racist, anti-sexist, homophilic spoils system.

Back in the day, our rulers regaled us with the moral horror of poverty. So let’s help the poor with temporary assistance and food stamps! That has developed into the SNAP and Medicaid spoils system in the late great state of Minnesota.

Shall I go on?

Back in the day, government science prophets foretold the end of the world and the existential peril of climate change and the moral necessity of lowering carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. Now we are faced with spiraling energy costs because of corrupt renewable energy projects that do nothing except kill eagles and whales and shovel federal dollars at the Climate Industrial Complex.

Back in the day, President Nixon declared a War on Drugs, in 1971, so we could defeat the drug epidemic then rampant among educated-class hippies. But in 2011 Chicago magazine wrote about how politicians and drug cartels in the Windy City were joined at the hip. My take is here. Now we have Democratic politicians outraged that ICE is conducting raids on drug cartels in sanctuary cities. Of course: an Obama functionary was recently indicted for laundering money for the drug Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion. Meanwhile, everyone is horrified at the carnage among speedboat helmsmen in the seas off the U.S. Experts agree that if a boat speeding through the Caribbean does not sport at least four 200HP outboard motors affixed to its stern it is not a drug boat.

And whatabout USAID? Back in the day, our heroic CIA was busy in Eastern Europe fighting for democracy. And there was no more noble agency in this Holy Quest than USAID, where highly credentialed members of the educated class could do their bit for democracy. But the DOGE moment seems to suggest that, at some point after the end of the Cold War, USAID became a spoils system for activists-in-training, so they could get some revolutionary experience by assisting in various Color Revolutions undertaken in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Then they could return to the U.S. and get a job with an NGO funding Antifa.

But let me be clear. You’d better not touch my Social Security, and you better not mess with my Medicare, and you better not touch Obamacare subsidies, and you better not mess with government-guaranteed 30-year fixed rate home mortgages, and…

I just picked up The Fourth Political Theory by President Putin’s favorite philosopher, Alexandr Dugin. He writes that the 20th century was the century of ideology, but now it’s time for a rebirth of Tradition -- religion, hierarchy, and family. I expect that Alexandr and Vladimir have deep philosophical discussions about all that.

But my dream is a society that regards loot and plunder distributed by politicians to voters and drug gangs as shameful. I know my dream is impossible. But I still Have a Dream.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: AT via Magic Studio