The gloves have now come off in the battle between President Trump and an increasingly alarmed federal bureaucracy. EPA employees are in the streets. The National Park Service is sending out insubordinate tweets. Intelligence agencies are not just leaking, they’re gushing. Bureaucratic resistance is, of course, not new. But what does seem unprecedented is the degree of open defiance, no doubt prompted by Trump’s own naked hostility. Much has been made of this presidency’s corrosive effect on political norms. Count as another casualty the civil service’s professional ethos and respect for democratically-elected superiors.

Public resistance of this sort has its merits, among them transparency and the opportunity for dialogue. But it also has consequences, some unintended. One is the inevitable crackdown from above. As David Hume observed, “where a disposition to rebellion appears among any people, it is one chief cause of tyranny in the rulers, and forces them into many violent measures which they never would have embraced.” In other words, overt uprisings can stoke even stronger authoritarian impulses — irresistible to a man already predisposed to them. So while some are warning of the dangers of a “deep state,” a shadowy bureaucratic underground, equally worrisome are the perils of a shallow one: a resistance marching boldly in the light.

The question now is not whether the hammer will fall, but how hard.

Read more at Yale Journal on Regulation: Notice & Comment