RUTHFULLY YOURS

January 2009, when Barack Obama took office as President, was several years before I began this blog. Of course I realized from the start that I disagreed strongly with nearly every policy that Obama intended to implement. However, I also recognized that Obama had been duly elected President, and was entitled to exercise the powers of the office. Therefore, I would oppose his policy initiatives as best I could within the bounds of the law. In my case that mainly meant collecting evidence and presenting to the world what I think are sensible arguments, in the hopes of swaying some potential voters over to rational positions. Within Obama’s first term, I had the blog up and running.

Well, now it’s Biden. Time to renew the commitment.

In his inaugural address on Wednesday, Biden’s principal theme was the call for what he called “unity”:

To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul, and to secure the future of America, requires so much more than words. It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: Unity. Unity. . . . Without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of this is our historic moment of crisis and challenge. Unity is the path forward. We must meet this moment as the United States of America.

And then, on the same day, Biden proceeded to execute some 17 Executive Orders to implement various parts of the program of the progressive Left. Much more of same is to come.

There is a fundamental disconnect here. The program of the progressive Left is foundationally inconsistent with the whole idea of “unity” among the people. The progressive program is a program to achieve a vision of perfect fairness and justice and utopia through force and coercion, and those who disagree or stand in the way are to be pushed aside or defeated or crushed. Suppose you disagree with almost all of of this program (like me), or even just some of it. There is no “unity” on offer to you. What is on offer is that you must surrender and accept your defeat.

Note that the progressive program differs completely from the libertarian program in this respect. In the libertarian vision of limited government and a freedom-based economic order, there is no need for the government to suppress disparate goals and livelihoods of different people. In such a vision, it makes complete sense to talk about “unity” in adherence to our constitutional order, while we also can go our own ways in our individual lives.

But in contrast, consider just a couple of items from the list of Executive Orders.

• The Keystone XL pipeline, currently under construction, is to be blocked. Some thousands of people either currently working on it or about to be hired to complete it, now lose those jobs. This is part of the progressive program to lower world temperature by, say, a hypothetical and unprovable 0.001 deg C by 2100. The thousands thrown out of work are given no say in their fate; they simply have less political clout in current progressive circles than the environmental zealots. Is that “unity”?

• The U.S. is to rejoin to Paris climate accords, with a commitment therefore to reduce CO2 emissions by around 15% over the next five years. Devoted environmentalists are being installed throughout the bureaucracy — particularly EPA and the Department of Energy — to restrict access of Americans to energy to achieve the goal. The whole idea is to drive up the cost of energy and impoverish the people. If you think this is a bad idea, you have no say. If you want continued access to cheap, reliable energy, you also have no say. The environmental activists have more clout than you right now. Is that “unity”?

And those are just from the initial crop of Executive Orders. Other policy initiatives that Biden has advocated during the campaign include things like much higher government spending; vast increases in the sorts of programs that have failed for decades — and will continue to fail — to reduce poverty or improve housing or education or health or inequality; and greatly increased taxes. All of these are to be imposed by government force and coercion. If you oppose, you will be made to go along by force. The sphere of freedom in which you can conduct your own life without government interference and coercion is to shrink and shrink and shrink some more.

Sorry, but I’m not going along. I oppose nearly everything you stand for. Your program of ever-increasing government takeover makes everything about life a political fight and makes anything resembling “unity” impossible. For that reason, the “bitterness and fury” that you decry is an inherent feature of your own political program.

I will not engage in violence or rioting, but as far as I’m concerned all legal means of opposition are on the table. We’re getting rid of you in the next election, and rolling back everything you have done in the interim. If you can agree to that, then I guess we can have “unity.”