Biden exemplifies evils of big government
OPINION:
The current president of the United States represents everything that’s wrong with big government, an understanding of which could be the most important legacy of the dismal Biden years.
Under President Biden, our government continues to mutate. What started as a republic of limited powers based on the consent of the governed has become a bruising behemoth — intrusive, arrogant, incompetent and larcenous — much like the president himself.
The model of a career politician, Mr. Biden came to Washington at the tender age of 30 and stayed for what seems an eternity — 36 years in the Senate, eight as vice president and now, if he serves out his current term of office, four years as president.
That’s half a century in the cozy bosom of government. Instead of Lunch Bucket Joe, it should be Lunch at the Ritz Joe.
If there’s an original bone in his body, you’d need microsurgery to find it.
At any point in his long and undistinguished career, he professed to believe whatever his party believed, no matter how absurd.
He started as a traditional tax-and-spend liberal, then veered hard left when his party went “woke.”
Besides becoming the biggest spender in our history, he’s embraced the sexual revolution with a fervor usually reserved for a religious creed — abortion without limits, LGBTQ privileges and transgenderism.
He’s gone so far as to call bans on the genital mutilation of minors “cruel” and “callous.” A spokesman for the Defense Department says the military has a “sacred duty” to help servicewomen obtain abortions — “sacred” per the Church of Satan.
On the so-called green agenda, he looks like Greta Thunberg with cognitive decline. The party that says government has no business in your bedroom wants to take over your kitchen. New York state will ban gas stoves in new homes and buildings by 2026.
This president wants to pull the plug on domestic energy production, drive us to electric cars, take away our guns, stifle speech, spy on Americans and indoctrinate our children.
The only places where Mr. Biden isn’t interested in control are at the border and on the streets of our cities.
The Democratic Party and its leader have become the champions of illegal aliens, fentanyl smugglers, shoplifters and homeless crazies who punch old ladies in the face at subway stops.
He has presided over record deficits, soaring prices for food and energy and subsidies for almost everything.
In a desperate bid for votes, he keeps trying to forgive student loan debt, even though the Supreme Court has told him he doesn’t have the authority. He attacks the high court, a co-equal branch of government, as “out of control” and “not normal.”
Starting on the campaign trail, when he called a questioner a “horse’s ass,” and up to recent reports that he screams at his staff, Mr. Biden has exhibited arrogance worthy of an Asian potentate.
In his book “The Road to Serfdom,” free market economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek had a chapter titled “Why the Worst Get on Top.”
The worst are those who love power and are the most ruthless in its acquisition and exercise. This president has turned the Justice Department, IRS and FBI into his Praetorian Guard, at all times prepared to draw the sword against his enemies.
He’s also refined the art of influence peddling. By comparison, he makes Boss Tweed look like an advocate of good government. Even Al Capone didn’t use his own son as his bagman.
If the allegations are true, the president and his family raked in millions by selling access and influence. This includes money from regimes that are the sworn enemies of the nation he is alleged to lead.
Big government or the welfare state is a thing of ugliness: legalized theft, coercion, turning citizens into subjects, and attacks on the individual, the family and society in the name of equity and inclusion. All have reached their apex under Joseph Robinette Biden.
Perhaps his tenure will cause a reassessment of what’s taken us from a shining city on a hill to a suffocating swamp.
When I was a kid, one brand of bubble gum came with comic cards. One had a glum-looking man with leg irons, sitting in a jail cell, with the caption: “Cheer up! You can always serve as bad example.”
Even Mr. Biden has a purpose in life.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
