Diogenes-Light: Joe Biden Is a Threat to the Constitution

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NR Reader,

As president, Joe Biden is who he was as a candidate, and who he was as a vice president, and who he was as a U.S. senator before that. He's a fraud.

President Biden is not good ol' folksy Joe. He's not a political moderate. He's not a defender of the American system of government. He's a chameleon, whose only loyalties are to himself, to his party, and to wherever the loudest voices on the American left happen to be at any given time. We are now nine months into Joe Biden's presidency, and he has already revealed himself to represent a substantial threat to the Constitution. As it always has, National Review intends to fight that threat, and to win. We hope that you will help us do so by contributing to our webathon.

The fight is a broad one, for it seems that there is no long-cherished norm that President Biden will not abandon for temporary gain. Once upon a time, he was a staunch champion of the filibuster who described those who disagreed with him as being engaged in a "naked power grab" that would destroy "America's sense of fair play." Now, he is fine with destroying what he has dishonestly taken to calling a "relic of Jim Crow." Once upon a time, he was against packing — read: destroying — the Supreme Court: "I remember this old adage about power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely," Biden explained in 2005. "Corrupted by power, in my view, [FDR] unveiled his court-packing plan." Now, he is so open to the idea that he has convened a presidential commission to study it. (Perhaps it'll conclude that power doesn't corrupt absolutely, after all?) Once upon a time, Biden insisted that he was for free speech and against "silencing" — even when it became raucous. Now, he has enlisted the attorney general in a disgraceful and unconstitutional attempt to chill the speech of American parents who aren't thrilled at the prospect of their children being conscripted into Ibram X. Kendi's army. National Review has stood strong against all of these threats, and, with your help, it will continue to do so.

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Presidents often abuse their power. But, so confident is Joe Biden that the press will cover for him, this one isn't even trying to hide it. In August, having confirmed repeatedly that he did not possess the legal authority to extend the federal eviction moratorium unilaterally, Biden not only decided to do it anyway, but announced that he was doing so in order to game the court system and "keep this going for a month — at least." More recently, Biden has played the same game with his federal vaccine mandate. In July, both the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, and the head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, echoed Joe Biden's December insistence that there would be no federal rule. Vaccine mandates, Jen Psaki confirmed, are not "the role of the federal government," but of "institutions, private-sector entities, and others." "There will be no nationwide mandate," Walensky assured reporters. "There will be no federal mandate." In September, Biden announced such a mandate and told any governor who opposed it to "get out of the way."

Well, I'm afraid that's not how any of this works. Joe Biden is the temporary custodian of the Oval Office, and, contrary to the obsequious implications of many in the media, he is as obliged to honor his oath of office as is anybody else in public life. If he cannot do that, it is he, not the American order, who must "get out of the way."

For 65 years, National Review has stood up for our constitutional system of government as it actually exists, rather than as politicians who believe they know better would like it to exist. We have stood up for a textualist approach to the law and an originalist approach to the Constitution. We have stood up for a strong federal system, in which the states are the elemental building blocks of the nation, not mere departments of the federal government. And we have stood up for a robust separation of powers, in which the legislating is done by Congress, and not by the executive or the judiciary. With your help, we can continue to take our stand.

Charles C. W. Cooke