Chicago City Wire

Ned Ryun, founder of American Majority, said it is intentional that Chicago is the “poster child” for failure.

“Chicago is the poster child of Leviathan’s failure—and it’s by design,” Ryun wrote in a Substack post. “For decades, the ruling class has run that city into the ground. They’ve hollowed out its neighborhoods with crime, suffocated its businesses with regulation, and kept citizens trapped in dependency through failing schools and bloated social programs."

“And when the inevitable crime waves hit, they shrug and call it ‘tragic,’ as though it were an act of God,” Ryun wrote. “It’s not tragic. It’s intentional. It’s the business model: come up with bureaucracies and process that are meant to entrench and empower the ruling class but never meant to actually solve problems.”

Ryun’s 2024 book, American Leviathan: The Birth of the Administrative State and Progressive Authoritarianism, examined how administrative power has reshaped the U.S. government. In it, Ryun said that unelected bureaucracies and entrenched elites have eroded the balance of power envisioned by the Founders, creating a centralized system that diminishes individual liberty.

“So when Trump threatens to send the Guard into Chicago, what he’s really doing is breaking the script and threatening the business model,” wrote Ryun. “He’s daring to say that sovereignty and safety belong to the people, not to bureaucrats, NGOs, or the academic class feeding on taxpayer dollars.”

Ryun, son of former U.S. Representative Jim Ryun, is known for his work as a conservative strategist and CEO of American Majority, an organization he founded in 2008. He previously served as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and remains influential in conservative grassroots training and political commentary.