President Biden’s False Start

During the 2020 presidential campaign, President Joe Biden presented himself as the candidate who would restore normalcy to the presidency, and rationality — “We will follow the science” — to policymaking. Indeed, in the wake of his victory, his supporters spoke as if no rational defense could be made of any of his predecessor’s policies, and the best course would be simply to execute a 180-degree turn on those policies and institute some sort of reprogramming or re-education for the 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump.

Biden also promised to unite rather than divide Americans — though how that would be done, while describing those on the other side of the political divide as lacking all rationality and needing reeducation, was never made clear.

Yet if we examine the 17 executive orders issued on President Biden’s first day in office, and some of his early appointments, it soon becomes clear that he intends to govern as a progressive — i.e., as a worshipper of a secular catechism, from which scientific thinking is banned.

Predictably, President Biden’s inauguration speech was a sustained call for unity over division, for empathy over hatred. And in the main, he carried it off well. Yet there were a few tin notes as well. For me, at least, they included the invocation of rising “white supremacy” and “systemic racism.”