There have been very few politicians in history who understood the true nature of freedom and the incredibly dangerous abuses that power can lead to. “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely” was Lord Acton’s dictum and it has ever been valid. The men who founded the United States, the most brilliant political theorists the world has ever known, understood power, and desperately, desperately tried to limit is misuses so Americans could be free. But human nature is what it is, power corrupts, and that’s just as true in America as it is anywhere else in the world. Our Founders had only limited success in their goal. And, with the Democratic Party of the 21st century, none at all.
If there are any decent historians in the future—and there will be some, but given what the American education system has been the past few decades, they will be rare in our country for a while—Joe Biden will undoubtedly go down as one of the worst Presidents in American history. His four years have been an utter disaster for the nation, which any wise historian could have predicted, if he knew his field, the nature of Leftism, and the moral laws that God established to govern mankind. I’m curious to see, in a few years, where Biden will “rank” in the historians’ “poll” of Presidents. My guess, right now, given who will do the voting (Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, et al, historians, they’ve never asked me) is that he will be ranked somewhere in the “middle of the pack,” and decidedly ahead of Donald Trump’s first term. Of the latter point, there is no question. Trump’s final rating will depend upon his second term, of course, but don’t expect your grandchildren to live long enough to see him ever ranked anywhere near the top ten. And maybe he won’t deserve it. The next four years will tell. We don’t know the future.
But, in time, when the fair, just historians get around to ranking the Presidents, they will have to admit what millions of Americans already know—Joe Biden was a horrible President. Not because of his dementia, but because of his craven moral pusillanimity, his Leftist politics that devastated the economy, his weakening of the military, his destruction of the country’s borders, inner cities, and the federal budget. Two international wars which he was utterly inept as preventing or halting will be remembered, along with 13 dead American soldiers in his pathetic withdrawal from Afghanistan...well, I don’t have space here, and wouldn’t if I wrote ten articles, to list the abominations of Biden’s administration. To me, as an historian, he was worse than Jimmy Carter, worse than almost any President in American history. That opinion won’t get me tenure at Harvard, but I don’t especially want to wallow in the mire at a garbage university anyway.
Biden’s pardon this week of his son Hunter had even Democrats grimacing. But they must try to spin and excuse him. While everybody else is saying Biden lied in his countless earlier statements that he would never pardon his son, the New York Times informed us that he “changed his mind.” Well, I guess. People do have a right to do that; I’ve done it before, too. So, if we want to be charitable, we’ll say Joe “changed his mind” after repeatedly affirming he would never do what he changed his mind to do. My first thought was, what mind does Biden have left to change?
The Washington Post wasn’t willing to sink as low as the Times. Their excuse for Biden was, “Biden did what many fathers would do: Save his child,” with this added byline, “Pardon by president of his son Hunter might not be politically smart, but it is defensible.” The Post knows, as everybody else does, that Biden did a revolting thing here. I’m not sure why they would say it “might not be politically smart.” Biden isn’t going to suffer any consequences for it. He’ll pay no price. What does he care, now, what anybody thinks of him? Is he planning to run for President again in 2028? (It wouldn’t surprise me.) The Post is agonizing, trying to find SOME defense for a man they have defended, wrongly, for four years. The American people—the intelligent ones—aren’t going to buy this pile of stinking pig slop any more than anything else the Post said about Biden since 2020. But it’s all they’ve got. And how many times have we said, over the last year, “it’s all they’ve got” when they have tried to defend Democrats? Often, we said it when they attacked Trump during the campaign, which was indeed, all they had.
A President, of course, does have the right to pardon people. That “right” the Founders gave the President was not, however, intended to be used as an abuse of power, which it fully was in Biden’s case. The pardoning power is only intended to be used when there exists a clear breach of justice (as in the J6 indictments and imprisonments), and where there is a distinct national interest. The pardoning power was not, and NEVER, intended to be used for the selfish purposes of the President. But this simply, once again, demonstrates what kind of man, and President, Biden is (God, please protect us for the next six weeks). For 50 years, he has plagued the United States in his undying lust for a power that he should never have come close to. And the American people gave him the throne in 2020 (supposedly). And they paid the price for four years. Will they learn the lesson, long-term? I seriously doubt it.
Until we grasp how to elect virtuous people who know how to use power, the country will continue to suffer at the hands of those who don’t know how to use it. We’ve no one to blame but ourselves.
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