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The Conservative Counterrevolution: Reagan and the Limits of Rolling Back the State

  • Writer: Jeff Kellick
    Jeff Kellick
  • Nov 29, 2025
  • 1 min read

From General Welfare to the Great Society - Ep. 08



The Conservative Counterrevolution. Intellectual dominance. Rhetorical victory. Electoral success. But the administrative state survived intact. Spending grew. Agencies remained. Entitlements were untouched. Debt exploded.


Why? Because institutions are more durable than ideas. Because constituencies defend their interests. Because path dependency creates irreversibility.


The administrative welfare state, once built, proved nearly impossible to dismantle—even by a president who genuinely wanted to and had the political capital to try.

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