OPINION:
President Biden repeatedly tells us he is creating a government that looks like America, but he is not seeking to govern as Americans think.
Whether it’s voter suppression, weak border enforcement, neutering police or dramatically boosting federal social spending, the president is out of step with voters and force-feeding the nation with woke ideas.
Three-quarters of Americans support requiring voter IDs, about four-fifths see illegal immigration as a threat to vital national interests, and more than half are against redirecting resources from police to social services agencies.
In a recent Fox News poll, more respondents said the president wants to spend too much than said he seeks to spend to too little. Forty-nine percent see socialism as a threat whereas 26 percent think it is not.
A basic premise of American democracy is that people should be free to think and say what they wish, but the president has been silent about Facebook and Twitter suppressing critical ideas, such as COVID-19 may have been created in a Wuhan lab, and muffling conservative voices.
Kamala Harris never managed to break into the first rank of candidates in the Democratic primaries and the hard left’s ultimate standard bearer, Bernie Sanders, was soundly trounced by Mr. Biden presenting himself as a moderate. Yet, judging from what the president is offering, this is the HARRIS-Biden administration.
It’s no wonder Americans are cynical and afraid—and that’s when decent people start embracing conspiracy theories.
Americans elected a moderate but a left-leaning bureaucracy subverts their choice. Intolerant and scurrilous professors and pernicious socialist think tanks alumni fill the administration, and we wake up one morning to find our democracy snatched.
Not by the rowdy fools who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 but by the quiet infiltration of an anointed intelligentsia that enforces progressive orthodoxy and validates the cancel culture. And insidiously propagates to our youth falsehoods about our Founders and the legitimacy of our core beliefs — the seditious fabrications of New York Times 1619 Project and critical race theory.
Capitalism — citizens not the state should own our businesses and homes — and free markets—individuals working hard to offer their services to those who find them of the greatest value—have been at the center of American democracy at least until now.
The New Deal and the Great Society were about elevating people so they could compete. Head Start, Medicaid, the earned income tax credit, the expansion of our once great but now intolerant state universities and government-backed student loans were intended to ensure that while the starting line is not the same for everyone — it never is in any capitalist, socialist, feudal or tribal society — the resources to succeed would be at least adequately available to each child and young adult.
Now progressives say the government should not merely guarantee each citizen a decent chance to succeed, but free money is the new mantra—a guaranteed minimum income.
The Biden budget is a Trojan Horse and nothing more than a ruse. The refundable Childcare Tax Credit, which sends parents up to $3,600 a year for each dependent, virtually free childcare for all, universal pre-kindergarten, paid family and medical leave, two years of free community college, enhanced subsidies for health insurance premiums and so much more in the American Family Plan, when set against other entrenched federal programs like food stamps and Section 8 housing, become pieces of a great jigsaw puzzle that make a guaranteed minimum income appear the most reasonable alternative.
Cut out the tedious eligibility criteria and costly bureaucracy and just give the people free money!
We hear two common refrains from the left-leaning media — virtually all the advanced nations provide these things — and from Mr. Biden — these things will strengthen America.
Europe has chronically high youth unemployment and anemic growth, and Mr. Biden’s budget projects a 25 percent downshift in growth from the Trump performance.
The reasons are simple. If everything is free, people won’t work — look at how excessive unemployment benefits caused so many COVID-19 displaced workers to sit out the recovery — and high taxes stifle innovation.
France is the poster child of the left’s crusade, but it has spawned no high-tech giant, can’t even make a car competitive in North America and was the only permanent UN Security Council country without a successful COVID-19 vaccine.
France fails at the sinews of progress in the modern age and is a beggar among great nations in the pandemic. No thanks. Warts and all, rugged individualism and personal accountability are necessary for democracy and the human race to survive.
• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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