There has been much discussion in recent years on the power of the Deep State. The Deep State is a vast assortment of government employees that were neither elected nor politically appointed. Because of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, nearly all these employees have strong career protections, and cannot be fired without going through an arduous process and providing a mountain of evidence. Some on the left argue that the Deep State, as Trump describes it, does not really exist while others celebrate the Deep State and their efforts to halt or slow President Trump’s agenda.
This has led many on the Right to argue that we should strip the power and protections away from the Deep State, and make more positions directly appointed by the President. I think this goal is admirable, but those of us outside of the White House or Congress have little ability to achieve that, so what are we to do?
I would argue that there are a lot of people on the right that are well suited to become public servants and thus, members of the Deep State.1 We have a stereotype that the government is full of leftists that think the best solution to everything is more government regulation, but that does not have to be the case. A true public servant should consider what is truly best for the public regardless of whether it gives them personally more status. I believe there are many on the Right that would be particularly good at this.
The federal government is naturally a very hierarchical institution which should suit most on the right. A good public servant could use their position to save the taxpayers a lot of money and their discretion to limit intrusions in private life. Think about how different the last few years were would have been if the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases had been someone cautious about regulating the public, someone who believed in honestly informing the public on what was known, someone very different than Dr. Fauci.
Trace wrote a great article on the lack of Republicans in important government positions that I suggest you read if you still doubt that becoming a public servant is a high impact career for Rightists. Effective Altruists have spent an inordinate amount of time and resources researching the highest impact careers, and they agree that policy jobs in the Government are among the highest impact, albeit in their narrow cause areas.2 Richard Hanania writes that conservatives naturally avoid High Status Low Pay positions, but what is striking about federal government positions is they are not nearly as low pay as some imagine. While the median Americans total compensation is approximately $88k, the median federal worker’s compensation is approximately $144k.
Now these are not apples to apples comparisons; the median federal worker has better credentials than the median American. The gap flips directions at higher positions, and becomes very pronounced at the top, where GS employees pay is capped at $181,000 and the Executives cap is at $246,400. Considering these employees could make mid six figures or even millions, it can feel like a rip off. But remember that these employees can have a second career when they leave public service, and since the federal retirement age is 57, that gives quite a few years to make more money.
It’s not the best path to riches, but it’s a much better path to power than most corporate America jobs or starting the average business. It also pays significantly better than journalism, academia, and not for profits, which are the true HSLP positions. You also gain civil service protection that make it hard to fire you, making it ideal for those who are risk adverse. You can have a solidly upper middle-class lifestyle while still exercising power to move the country right ward.
Who is best suited for this?
People high in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness
The key traits that will help you get a job in the federal government, rise the ranks, and accomplish things through the bureaucracy are not intelligence or creativity, they are Agreeableness and Conscientiousness.3 Agreeableness is necessary to build coalitions and motivate government employees who remember, are really, really hard to fire.
The other reason Agreeableness is useful is that for the most part, you will be implementing other people’s ideas, especially at first. Occasionally, you will be ordered to implement some really dumb ideas. Not only do you need to implement them; you need to do it cheerfully, with gusto, if you want to be promoted. That’s not saying you can never push back against a bad idea, and in fact rightists being in the government need to push back on bad leftist ideas. But there is a method and a manner that the pushback needs to be done, otherwise you risk alienating yourself. It takes calm criticism, not insubordination, and high agreeableness helps with that.
Not every Public Servant has High Agreeableness, but those that rise through the ranks tend to. In fact, in all my years in the Public Sector, I have yet to meet a single high-level official with low agreeableness. If they had it, they hid it well. Those with low agreeableness are much better suited to Think Tanks or Traditional Advocacy.
Some people might think that the Right, especially the Dissident Right is too low in agreeableness to rise to the top of the Bureaucracy. However, though the majority of the speakers of the Dissident Right have low agreeableness, I suspect more of their readers are more evenly distributed in terms of personality traits. This was recently confirmed by a survey of Walt Bismarck’s readers that showed the only common trait of the DR was high Openness; they were otherwise normal on other personality types. Let the people with low Agreeableness come up with good ideas and let us with High Agreeableness be ready to implement them.
Conscientiousness is less important than Agreeableness, but still useful. Nearly every job in the Feds has a ton of paperwork and a labyrinth of red tape. Conscientious individuals are more likely to be able to handle navigating the bureaucracy and accomplishing their goals. I have seen people with low Conscientiousness make it to the top, but only by relying on people with high Conscientiousness to do a lot of their work. I would say it is not necessary to be at the top of Conscientiousness, but at least strive to make it to the middle, so that you can be more effective.
People private with their political opinions
So as a government employee, you have a protected 1st Amendment Right to make any political statements you want, on your own time, and no one is allowed to retaliate against you for your political beliefs in terms of hiring, firing, or promotions. HAHAHAHAHA, yeah right! If I believed that, I’d be posting under my own name, maybe under my LinkedIn account. Instead, my LinkedIn account has absolutely no posts except when I received my jobs, and I had a whole conversation with my Ethics counsel before posting this.4
In actuality, most people that conduct interviews are going to look at your social media accounts before hiring or promoting you. This is even more likely the higher the position is. How are you going to prove that they considered your Facebook political opinions when they made their hiring selection? You won’t be able to unless they put it in writing.
It is really hard to fire someone for political speech, but that doesn’t mean the Agency can’t make your job miserable until you mess up at work and they can fire you, or you quit. If the Agency is dumb enough to cite your off duty political speech in your proposed removal, I can recommend a few lawyers that could probably get your job back with back pay, but that’s a small consolation when you were out of work for months and will probably never be promoted again.
At the end of the day, anonymity is your best friend. Assume that anything you have ever posted under your name will be discovered, but nothing anonymous will. The people that do your security clearance check are different from your manager, and they are the only ones that might breach your anonymity if you are applying for a job with a high security clearance. They do not care about your political opinions as long as you do not want to violently overthrow the government. If you do want to violently overthrow the government, please get a job somewhere else.
There are some opinions that are risky to state, even privately. Specifically, any statements disparaging a protected class of people, sex (which includes LGBT), race, age, disability, color, creed, national origin, religion, or genetic information.5 The last thing you want is to have to read an old anonymous comment you made at an EEO hearing. Reading whomever you want is fine, just do not write anything that can be quotable. Public Servants are good positions for Lurkers.6
Being Well Read
And I do not mean reading whatever the latest piece of woke fiction College Board has put on the AP Lit Exam. There is a reason I am posting this on Substack, not Reddit, X, or TikTok. Being a good public servant is about applying someone else’s good ideas efficiently and effectively. You should be reading the Publications of relevant Think Tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI). You should read many intelligent writers on Substack, such as Scott Alexander, Bryan Caplan, and Walt Bismarck. You should be reading Academic Publications in whatever field of study you are working on. You should even read the ideas of Leftists, if only so you can be better prepared to counter their arguments.
The point of reading these sources is to get new ideas, find flaws in your current ideas, and in general, rely on people more creative and smarter than you are, who have had time to really focus on research in a narrow topic. Steal their best ideas, and you can go very far. Yes, there are a couple of research jobs in the Feds, but the vast majority are either focused on creating new policies or administering existing policies. We don’t need PhD specialist researchers in most Public Servant positions. We need well-read generalists that can look through a vast array of ideas and implement the best ones.7
Conclusion
Now that you have read this piece, do you see for yourself a possible career in public service? If so, please like this post and consider subscribing. If there is enough interest in my writing, I am happy to share advice on how to get a career as a public servant, how to get promoted, and how to be a good leader. If you are worried about being doxed, you can DM asking a specific question, and I can answer it either privately or with another post that does not mention you. You can also submit guest posts on the subject of public service, if you want an extra layer of anonymity. You can even send me your resume, and I might give advice on how to improve it. I might even make this into a regular newsletter. And everything I write will be completely free, mainly because if I charged money, I could get fired from my job.
This post is going to be very US centric because that’s where I live. For a UK article that touches on similar points though is more on the political party side, read this article by Stevan Stoppard. Special thanks to him. His article was my main inspiration for writing this piece.
I have a huge amount of respect for effective altruists, and only found Substack thanks to Scott Alexander. My first draft of this post was actually targeted to EAs, but then I realized that I had no arguments that were more convincing than what 80000 hours wrote on the issue. In general, there are already a lot of resources for EAs for career advice, leadership training, network building, and I suspect nearly all of it is better than what I can provide at this stage (meaning you should read it even if you do not agree with their principles). Meanwhile, I have not found a single person writing on how to be a civil servant on the Right. There is a lot of bipartisan advice, but much like CNN, it still feels like it has a liberal bias. There is Project 2025, but that is designed to rightists that already have career capital and want a political appointment in the next administration. My goal is to build career capital for administrations in 2029 and beyond. Still, consider becoming an EA, because I do think they are very impactful and could use more viewpoint diversity.
You might be wondering about other traits in the Big 5 and IQ. Based on my anecdotal experience, I do not see any correlation between the other 3 Big 5 traits and government leadership. I do think High Openness and Low Neuroticism are in general good traits, but neither will help nor hinder you from getting a job or promotion. IQ is certainly correlated with rising the ranks and doing your job better, but only weakly. Walt Bismark is significantly smarter than me, but due to his low conscientiousness and agreeableness I predict he would make a horrible public servant and be unlikely to rise higher than a highly technical non-supervisory job, around GS-14. More importantly, he would hate working for the Feds, and his best niche is doing exactly what he is doing, coming up with unusual ideas and hosting a salon. Your IQ could be lower than 100, but if your agreeableness and conscientiousness is very high, you could still be a good, frontline or middle manager in a blue-collar field, which we desperately need in the Feds.
That conversation is why there is not option to support me financially. My speech is drastically limited if I am using it for financial gain. Technically, nothing here would violate the regs, but I want to be above suspicion. If you have a profitable side gig that involves public speaking or writing, probably avoid public service as well.
Personally, I 100% believe people are equal no matter their sex (which includes LGBT), race, age, disability, color, creed, national origin, religion, or genetic information. I am just letting any other rightists to know that if they want a job with the Feds, they should also make sure to state this often, regardless of what they personally believe.
This advice is targeted at career civil servants. If you want a political appointment, you should almost reverse this advice. Anonymity probably will not save you. You never know what investigative journalists might discover with advanced AI tools in 20-30 years. Senate Confirmation Hearings are brutal and expect that even things you wrote anonymously will be read out loud during them. Instead of hiding behind anonymity be public and open at all times, but also make sure you never say anything objectionable. Be the most milquetoast person you can be. But also, be an open loyalist for your party that the Heritage Foundation and GOP can trust to implement a radical agenda.
How do you balance them? I have no idea. If I figure it out, I will write a post instead of a footnote. I have the idea that writing anonymously how much you support a party and revealing it to an important insider at the right time is a good tactic, and one I am actively trying out. But I still suspect I might be eventually doxxed. Hopefully, I will discover a better option eventually.
This probably takes High Openness, but I have it as a separate category because even if you have low openness, if you have high agreeableness and conscientiousness and are well read, you can likely rise up the ranks of Civil Service well. In fact, that probably describes the majority of current bureaucrats.
I like the optimism but I wanted to inquire about a few things.
First, and this is really nitpicky, but I have always posted everything with the assumption that it will be uncovered in the future. It's just prudence to post as if you are never truly safe, as even telegram or signal are not above being surveyed by intelligence if necessary.
Second, being well read extends far beyond the publications like heritage and cato. Now I know I post a lot about classic literature, but I don't think that's all one should read. An interest in the controversial is beneficial if not but for the fact that it forces you to open your mind and make your own decisions. Read heritage, but read it's opponents. Not just on the left but also on the right.
Finally, infiltration is pretty subversive which is a characteristic of amoral or even immoral people. The problem that stops most members of the dissident right (although to be sure not all because many are atheist) is that the agreeability forces one to go against a moral compass that is much stronger than that of those on the left. It's a rough balancing act that can lead to a vicious circle and ultimately compromise the entire message of the right if not utilized correctly.
Your overall tone makes it seem pretty likely that you're serious about this.
Which is odd, because the nature of your suggestions makes the whole thing seem woefully naive.
Yes, we absolutely need more public servants from the Right. But the Regime has been winnowing out those people for decades now. Not just for political appointees, either. That the deliberate discrimination against anyone not completely aligned with the Regime is implicit rather than explicit doesn't make it any less effective.
Yes, federal hiring is supposed to be neutral and impersonal. But there are two obvious reasons it doesn't work that way.
1. Resume entries aren't just biographic and professional details. They're also signals. It's easy to filter out anyone who, say, attended an educational institution (or was otherwise affiliated with an organization) with an even vaguely religious-sounding name. Or worked for right-aligned organizations. Or, hell, comes from a conservative area. Etc. Anyone in a position to make hiring decisions can do things like that as a matter of practice without making it a matter of policy.
2. Security clearances. Nominally, these are supposed to weed out genuine "security" risks, i.e., people with criminal backgrounds, dodgy financial dealings, verbal incontinence, multiple DUIs, substance abuse problems, etc. In practice? Spooks comb your digital presence looking to ascertain your likely ideological commitments. But there's nothing to stop the spooks running your "clearance" from deciding that regular church attendance is a red flag. They don't have to tell you--or anyone else--what they've looked at, or the basis for a rejection. Remember all those memos or press releases about "domestic extremism"? That's not just abusive targeting of intelligence and law enforcement apparatuses. That's the Deep State inadvertently disclosing some of its criteria for people who will never make it through a security clearance.
The reason we don't have more public servants on the right is that the Deep State won't allow it.