Don’t fear the Deep State. It may be America’s only hope.

Belief in the Deep State might start out as healthy distrust – especially in countries where coups really do take place – but once you start viewing the public sector as an enemy, it rarely ends well. Look what happened in Turkey: under Prime Minister (and then president) Recep Tayyip Ergogan, belief in the Deep State spiralled into a feverish conspiracy theory. At this point, virtually any public employee, from schoolteacher to military general, is suspected of being a stealth member of the Gulenists, the shadowy Islamist organization that Mr. Erdogan believes has organized the entire bureaucracy in a plot against him. In response, he has now purged tens of thousands of public employees, jailed thousands and wrecked much of his country’s education system, justice system and independent public administration.

That’s the problem with the Deep State vision: If you see the public sector as a partisan political entity, then the inevitable end result is that you will turn it into one. That is, unless somebody – a judge, a general, a senior official or some other public employee – has the moral and professional strength to stop you.