I Suppose That Means There's No Easter Bunny - The End Of Santa Claus And Airy-Fairy Political Giveaways

President Joe Biden in a paroxysm of federal spending, has opened the sluice gates, turned on the faucets and let forth a grand ol' opry, end-of-term giveaway extravaganza. In its last heaving throes, the Democratic Congress has signed off on unaccountable trillion of taxpayer dollars, poured into bridges to nowhere, buckets of welfare handouts, faded, failed social schemes of uplift and self-esteem, and every other idea that never got off the ground in his four years in office. A final I love you wave to the American people, a Christmas gift, a last hurrah, and an in-your-face take-that to Musk, Ramaswamy who will from Day One turn off the old man's spigots.  

Democrats have always been a tax-and-spend party, a legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who opened the Treasury doors to all comers until the nation could get its financial house in order and get back to business.  Rescuing the country from the Great Depression was one thing, but the assumption of government autocracy was another altogether.  Democrats knew a good thing when they saw it, and began decades of unaccountable social idealism - billions after billions in feel-good programs of charity and compassion which had no markers of performance, no end dates, no rates of return.

Thanks to Roosevelt the Democratic Party became the perennial no-questions-asked Santa Claus, a give and thou shalt receive more ethos of ungrounded largesse.  In the most distortedly ironic justification for such profligate spending, Democrats said to the American people. 'It is your money, and we are returning it to you'. 

Highway robbery was what it was, taking from individual taxpayers money they would never see again, down the rathole in schemes of vain idealism. 'We shed a tear for our fellow man', shamelessly grieving lawmakers said as they flooded every corner of the country with fairly tale programs of uplift,  generosity, and doing the right thing.

In the most callow, thoughtless, politically driven gesture of Biden's presidency, he simply opened every coffer, every money bin, every treasury, and every account to show the American people what a good man he is, to establish his legacy as a person of good, and to etch in voters' minds the Democratic ethos of generosity. 

All for naught as the Trump, Musk, Ramaswamy legions come to town, dedicated with a disassembling passion not seen in even the most conservative Republican administrations.  This unconscionable waste and fraudulently political spending would stop.  Accountability and performance would replace aimless generosity and emotional investment. 

 

From where did such mindless idealism come?  Although it was facilitated by FDR who built the foundations of the neo-socialist state, it had its origins further back in American history.  The Progressive Movement (1890s-1920s) provided the credo, doctrine and liturgy.  George, Sullivan, Steffens and others combined pre-socialist distributive notions with sentiments of populism and 'collective investment'.  

Although the movement lost steam and energy as the country turned from social idealism to surviving the Depression, it never lost its appeal.  There was something about the fabulous entrepreneurial juggernaut of American capitalism that was unsettling, and the Russian Revolution of Marx, Lenin, and the Soviets gave new weight and credence to American progressivism. 

Time after time, regardless of the febrile intellectualism of socialist leaders, the profound corruption of the labor movement, and the vitality and promise of the private sector, progressives held on to their idealism and increasingly self-righteous sense of community with the poor, laboring classes. 

Now, in the full bore of the conservative restoration in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, voters are turning away from liberalism's false promises towards a more firmly-based, historically relevant future of individual enterprise, economic opportunity, private initiative, and personal responsibility.  Government is no longer looked at the great caretaker, the provider, the guardian; but the thief, the brigand, and the con artist. 

The American Left sees what's coming - the inauguration of Donald Trump will usher in an administration of radical conservatism only imagined by Ronald Reagan.  The architecture of the Big State will be dismantled, federal departments will be eliminated, states and municipalities will be told in no uncertain terms that they are now on their own and can no longer depend on government largesse to keep them in power.  

Unproven, unaccountable federal programs will disappear and the leashes and harnesses taken off the private sector.  Tax burdens will be relieved at all levels of society, and individuals and corporations will have more of their money to spend as they see fit. 

Most importantly, at the core of this reformation will be a change in ethos - idealism and feel-good, faux charity will be gone; and opportunity will be celebrated in its stead. Economic prosperity, social mobility, and full participation in everything American will be a function of individual and corporate enterprise, not government hand-holding.  Diversity of intellectual ability will replace the identity culture and by so doing will people all institutions with the most talented.  Respect for religious conviction, so important in the founding days of the Republic, will return.  Patriotic sentiment will replace depressive, downside only, thinking. 

The new President of Argentina, Javier Milei stand before a magnetic board on which are the handwritten names of government ministries.  One by one, he pulls them off and throws them to the floor. 'Afuera!', he shouts after removing them, 'Afuera', and to plaints from the Left about the poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised, he shouts, 'No hay plata'. There is no money! and I will be damned if I take any more from the good citizens of this nation. 

Giorgia Meloni, President of Italy in speech after speech condemning illegal immigration, demands the same responsibility - enough is enough, she says, and if any public money is to be spent, it will be spent on Italians. Citizens of Chicago shout the Mayor down for spending billions of their money on outsiders, mooches, and gang-bangers. No hay plata!

The hysterical spending of Joe Biden is important because it is politically existential.  The political tied is turning on every continent, and such bald-faced financial irresponsibility will soon be a thing of the past. Biden will not be remembered for his generosity, but for his foolishness.

It is good for America than not only is this failed Administration soon to be history, but that the death knell of progressivism has tolled.