Under a Biden administration, we will see a colossal escalation in the scope and power of government, projected by authoritarian policies.
September 29, 2020 (American Thinker) — The principle of limited government is at the heart of the American system. The Founders believed that tyranny grows in proportion to power, threatening individual liberty. History is littered with innumerable examples of “absolute Despotism,” to use the words of the Declaration of Independence, in which government exercised its power against the people rather than for the people.
The pivot of limited government is restraint. Under the Constitution, government is confined to those powers that protect life, liberty, and property. James Madison warned, “It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it” (Federalist 48).
Despite accusations of fascism from the left, President Trump has attempted to scale back the power of government by eliminating or curtailing many federal regulations and by reducing the size of the federal government and the federal work force. He has made mistakes, to be sure, but in terms of actual policy, his critics are hard pressed to cite substantive examples that amount to a pattern of “tyranny” and “fascism.” Instead, much of the criticism surrounds his sometimes reckless language and his verbal attacks on the press. (Ironically, it was Barack Obama who abused government power by investigating, spying on, and harassing journalists.)
Under a Biden administration, we will see a colossal escalation in the scope and power of government, projected by authoritarian policies, many of which were put in place under President Obama. The apparently affable Biden is a Progressive who believes that the primary purpose of government is to engineer social and economic structures in order to create a “just society.” Progressives have no limiting principles to restrain government growth because they are convinced that government is a benign agent of the people — a supremely naïve belief according to the American Founders.
The prospect of an authoritarian government under Biden is not a nebulous accusation, but a concrete extrapolation based on his record and his current positions and policies. The examples that follow are drawn from my eBook, The War on America’s Founding Principles: How Progressives Are Dismantling America One Plank at a Time. The book can be downloaded for free.
Attacks on Religious Freedom
Biden has promised to sign the so-called Equality Act into law if it is passed by the Senate. This legislation limits religious freedoms by elevating LGBT rights, which, for Progressives, take precedence over other rights. The Equality Act amends the 1964 Civil Rights Act to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of the sex, sexual orientation, gender identity.” Section 1107 specifically denies exemptions for religious freedom granted under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
The Equality Act would force churches to open their sex-specific facilities, such as bathrooms, to members of the opposite sex. It would threaten creative professionals, like Christian bakers, wedding photographers, and florists, who would be forced, against their deeply held religious beliefs, to use their artistic skills in support of same-sex couples attempting to marry. In short, the Equality Act would force religious individuals and organizations to speak messages and act in ways that violate their beliefs, under the threat of punishment.
Biden will restore the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), forcing religious ministries and schools, along with businesses operated by religiously devout owners, to cover the insurance cost of birth control drugs that can cause abortions. After a successful nine-year battle in the court system against the Obama administration, the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order of nuns, would find themselves in litigation again to protect their religious freedom. Ironically, Biden claims to be a devout Catholic.
Forced Taxpayer Funding of Abortion
Biden will require taxpayers to fund abortions, with no exception for conscience. Those who morally object to abortion as murder will be forced to subsidize it. Most Americans have opposed government funding of abortion, including Biden himself. Until recently, he supported the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortions (with a few exceptions). This longstanding agreement was, in effect, a truce between the two opposing, and often hostile, sides of the abortion debate. But Biden, under the influence of the radical left, has become far less tolerant and will settle for no middle ground when it comes to “social justice.”
Shadow Justice System
Biden will restore Obama’s guidance for college tribunals on sexual misconduct. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights established new mandates under the Obama administration requiring colleges and universities that receive federal funding to dramatically reduce the due process rights of students accused of sexual misconduct. These included:
- a recklessly broad definition of sexual harassment
- a low threshold of evidence for determining guilt
- denial of the right of the accused to face his accuser
- denial of the right of the accused to cross-examine witnesses
- denial of the right to see all the evidence collected in the case
- denial of the right to objective and impartial investigations
- denial of the right of presumed innocence until proven guilty
These unjust regulations were rectified under the Trump administration to the accolades of civil rights organizations like FIRE. But Biden intends to reinstitute Obama’s sham system, which has more in common with the show trials of authoritarian regimes than with American justice. These shadowy tribunals give us a window into the Progressive view of justice and how it would be applied in a Progressive legal system. full story
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