The Socratic Review wishes to offer its sincere congratulations to President Biden and Vice President Harris. I wish them all good health and happiness during their term in office. By necessity however, these congratulations do not extend to the success of their programs, since that would violate many of my longest-held core beliefs.
I enjoyed Mr. Biden's inaugural today. I have seen every inaugural since Richard Nixon's second, I have personally attended one (Jimmy Carter's), and was heavily involved with many events surrounding another (George W. Bush's).
Each inaugural offers a wisp of hope and optimism, that any person running the gauntlet of national politics should be allowed to savor for at least one day. I even enjoyed his rhetoric this afternoon; soothing and paternal; just the right blend of firmness and compassion that we would expect from a man who has been making stump and floor speeches for decades. He was even remarkably facile at times (not an easy accomplishment for now President Biden) and his faux pax were brief and overlook-able.
So the speech: in it he calls for unity; pledges to represent all Americans; unequivocally states that this union is perpetual. You could sit down and read 46 inaugural addresses and find the same buzz words in every one of them. This was was a good speech; not a great speech. But more than likely, if Mr. Biden is to be at all successful, it will be as a good president, not as a great one, so a good speech should more than suffice.
Pomp and circumstance over, Mr. Biden scurried over to the Oval Office for the first time, where aides laid out a pile of executive orders for him to sign. Pen in hand, he began to strike out his predecessor just as surely as an ancient Egyptian pharaoh struck out the names of his predecessor from obelisk or road sign without distinction. Just as his predecessor did to his predecessor, and so on. Unity indeed; united like a seesaw is united at a locus of gravity oscillating between two poles.
The thing that concerns me here is not the actions themselves; that is his right to do as he sees fit as the new Chief Executive; it's that before anything is even done, we are already forming a cult of personality around these two people as the photo above indicates. How does this happen? How does a cult of personality spring up around a law professor, a showman hotel mogul, and a mediocre senator? How can we hope to have unity when we unceremoniously tip our sensibilities to believe that one demagogue is saving us from the terrible dangers of another demagogue? One can almost hear Harold Hill scheming in the background with "Trouble, Trouble Trouble" in chorus behind him.
With all due respect Mr. President, I have no interest in unity with either you or your party. I will honor you as our president and as our Commander in Chief, because I believe you were duly elected. Beyond that, I think your legislative agenda is pandering tripe, your foreign policy is misguided at best (and dangerous at worst) your ethics questionable, and your abilities (as demonstrated by your lackluster career) dubious. But that is not my problem, that is yours. I will remain open-minded in as much as I give every president the benefit of the doubt (even Donald Trump) because I wouldn't have your job for anything in the world, and I have no idea what goes on in the heart and mind of any person, let alone the President of the United States.
This said, I think it's only fair to enumerate those things where I (and my editorial sensibilities here at The Socratic Review) will not be supporting you in unity through these next four years, because to do so would violate my own ethics and sensibilities.
Foreign Wars: Unless we are attacked, I will not support you in military adventurism for nation-building or any other idealistic or mercantile purpose or crusade.
Disadvantageous Treaties: I will not support you in committing (or recommitting) the United States to any treaty or accord which erodes our national sovereignty, retards our self-sufficiency, or diminishes our national interests or prerogatives.
Fiscal Irresponsibility: I will not support you in efforts to increase the national debt, for whatever reason, but most especially for funding speculative measures and social welfare and social engineering schemes.
Equal Protection Under the Law: I will not support you in any effort that erodes the principle of Equal Protection Under the Law to include affirmative action, preferential loan forgiveness, legislation favoring one racial, religious, social, or ethnic group over another; or any rhetoric that Balkanizes our body politic by not treating all Americans the same; and this goes for progressive income taxes, minimum wage guarantees, and any number of other social engineering schemes. I will also not support you in the manipulation of speech, nomenclature, and terminology for the purposes of misleading, augmenting or misdirecting long-standing social, traditional, logical, and scientific conventions for like purposes.
Augmentation of Federal Powers: I will not support you in any attempt to increase the scope and purview of the federal government and its powers, either through executive order or via the support of legislation or lawsuits; nor in any effort to impose the federal will on any of the states of the union for whatever reason.
Foreign Aid: I will not support you on any bill you might sign into law that supports any type of foreign aid when the United States is in debt well-beyond the projections of its Gross National Product, not even to its allies.
I think these are all fair points of departure from unity and from the President. I would no more expect Mr. Biden and his party to adhere to and support these precepts, than he should expect me to adhere to and follow he and his party's precepts. His goals are only different than mine, they are not higher, greater, loftier, or more noble. Mr. Biden is not inaugurating a new era of anything; he is merely inaugurating the next (and latest) era of he and his party's point-of-view, as regurgitated over the past 100 years. This is not said derisively; it is merely stating facts of a left-center, labor orthodoxy that has percolated through our psyche since the early 20th Century, and is now re-set on stage for for a limited time revival, like something salaciously dragged out of the Disney Vault.
So Mr. Biden, here are my terms and conditions for unity. Your call this afternoon for peaceful dissent was both measured and correct. We all need to remember the duties of being a member of the loyal opposition. But please do not issue a call for unity when many in your party use inflammatory rhetoric, assign nobility to their aspirations that are purely subjective to their own (and their party's) assessment, and feel (like all demagogues) that they are somehow saviors of everything from science to democracy. You are not saviors, you are custodians; and someday, sometime in the future, the next pharaoh will come and wipe away your efforts with a sweep of a pen, as you are doing tonight. If you want to be a statesman; if you want to promote unity; start by promoting consensus not submission and dialog not orthodoxy. Until then, I will remain your loyal but skeptical (and tenacious) opposition.
Editor's Note: The second part of the Constitutional Convention series planned for publication this week will be run next week instead. I felt it was better to use this week's slot to reflect the gravitas of a new presidency. Thank you! RELW
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