Recent publicity has shone a light on the fact that long after the excuse of the pandemic has passed for most of America, federal government “workers” are still staying home an astonishing percentage of the time. Not only that, they are resisting calls for them to start coming back to work more often. There are at least three ironies embedded in this resistance.

First: Do the resisters realize that the nation is being treated to yet another estimate of how much worth versus waste is involved in their “work”? While there are surely many federal employees who work hard and accomplish worthwhile things, a wide-spread resistance against returning to the office must appear to We the People as if something is possibly amiss in the District.

Second: Do the resisters realize they are implicitly revealing a mindset that reverses the constitutionally intended master-servant relationship? We the People are supposed to be the Sovereigns, not the servants. On what basis do the servants get to dictate to the masters the terms of their employment?

Third: Probably most important, has anyone paused to consider how much of the resistance may be the direct result of poor examples set by the leaders of the Deep State? After all, Biden campaigned in 2020 largely from his private basement bunker, and throughout his presidency, has spent far more time away from the White House than any of his predecessors—he’s napped on the Delaware beaches a shocking amount of time. One estimate is that he has been away from Washington for about forty percent of his time “in office.” His Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg famously abandoned his Cabinet post for months on “paternity leave.” And his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin did not consider it important enough to alert Biden he’d be in the hospital for an extended period for prostate surgery. Austin showed his staff he considered being AWOL from his post of so little import that he failed to tell not only his commander-in-chief but also key members of his own staff, and he notified the acting Secretary of Defense that he had passed the con to her while she was on vacation in Puerto Rico.

It is often said as a general principle that “the fish stinks from the head.” Here we have a specific instance of the importance of leadership setting properly impactful examples—or not.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.