In a laudatory piece on the Biden economic policy #NeverTrumper Michael Gerson cautions, between the lines, that Biden must not only propose solutions but also make them work.

Oh sure, writes Reagan administration alum Donald Devine; like anyone in Washington cares about that.

Expecting policies to work may seem an obvious requirement, but my half-century of experience in Washington taught me that this [is] a rare concern among policy experts. The goal in these environs is to spend more money on problems, not to worry about results.

Really? But we have been taught to believe that government only works when the gap-toothed Republicans are replaced by suave educated Democratic experts. What gives?

The answer is given by my simple understanding of government, according to the Einsteinian principle to “make things as simple as possible but no simpler.”

Job One for government is to go to war. It might be war on Nazis or war on Commies. Why? Because that’s what real rulers do. Remember President Clinton regretting that he never went to war? If you can’t find an external enemy, an internal enemy will do.

So what are the Bidenoids doing? They are mobilizing for a global war on climate change and an internal war on “systemic racism.” A two-front war for a warrior president.

As with all wars, from fighting the bloody Brits in 1776 to fighting the bloody Commies in the Cold War, the Biden wars are all about morality: the immorality of eeevil fossil fuels and the morality of making war on systemic racists.

Job Two for government is to distribute loot and plunder to the supporters.

So what are the Bidenoids doing? They are dishing out loot and plunder to their supporters in the trillions. Trillions for well-connected suppliers of materiel for the sinews of climate war; trillions for ordinary bums to hang out in their homeless encampments and shoot dope and put off the day when they have to Get a Job.

Job Three? There is no Job Three.

Notice that there is no interest in results. What people want, what politicians like to dish out, is free stuff. Period.

You think I am too extreme on this? You think anything has changed since the Franks in the age of Charlemagne? Writes Richard Fletcher in The Barbarian Conversion:

[L]et us recall that the continuance of their [Frankish] rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.

You mean that the nobles of the Frankish empire, dedicated to Christianizing the Teutonic hordes, were really in it for the loot and plunder? Just like our own noble politicians?

Unfortunately, as the political philosopher Margaret Thatcher said: “eventually you run out of other peoples’ money.” Yes, when all the free stuff ends up in runaway inflation and the Fed has to put on the brakes, and the stock market falls out of bed and people can’t pay their mortgages and their houses are underwater, and millions of Democratic voters lose their jobs, well then the voters sensibly vote for the other guy -- never mind the mean tweets -- and it may very well be that the other guy wins a majority beyond the margin of theft.

Look, I’m a rank partisan. I want my guy to wipe the floor with pajama boys and microaggressed snowflakes, and I want him to tell Antifa to put it where the sun don’t shine. But I really don’t like putting ordinary Americans through all this, even Antifa lunatics that want to Abolish Cops and Billionaires.

Yet all of us -- Frankish nobles and gray-bearded college professors and the homeless -- are suckers for free stuff.

But I yearn for political leaders that hesitate, with a twinge of guilt, before plundering the state to get elected.

Okay, fuggetaboutit. Politicians are never going to change.

That means it’s up to us. It’s up to us to change the moral matrix at the school board and declare that anyone that advocates Critical Race Theory for the kiddies is a moral monster and a hater. It’s up to us to stigmatize the climate grifters as bloodsuckers and Malefactors of Great Green. It’s up to us to relabel the homeless: from helpless victims into moral cretins. It’s up to us to teach Americans to think of government employee unions as evil slime. It’s up to us to slowly convert Social Security from a slush fund into a genuine savings program. It’s up to us to bully social media into canceling lefty haters instead of the former President of the United States.

And, to stick one in the eye of the 1619ers, let the word go forth from this time and place that the founding of America dates from 1584 when the first ship of White Trash, the “waste population” of England, made landfall off Virginia. Yeah, wokies, we demand reparations for the First Rednecks!

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Gage Skidmore

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