It’s often been alleged that liberals want to create a ‘Nanny State,’ a political structure in which a benevolent government dictates everything -- how we live, what we can eat, what cars we can drive, etc. -- and the citizens acquiesce gladly, without question, like small children obeying their parents.

In the past couple of weeks, two prominent left-leaning celebrities have lent some credence to this allegation. The first instance was on Howard Stern’s nationally syndicated radio show. Coming from a normally hard-hitting, coarse, and frequently salacious host, Stern’s interview with Biden was fawning and groveling. I watched, slack-jawed, as Howard lavished sycophantic praise on Biden and, late in the interview, called him the ‘father of our country.’ An insult to the memory of George Washington, the true ‘Father of Our Country.’

Stern’s adulation was boundless -- and completely blind to the corruption of the Biden family, as well as the national and international crises that Joe Biden’s ineptitude has fomented: the rising crime rate in major cities; the flood of illegal and criminal immigrants pouring across our southern border; prosperity-killing inflation; violence on college campuses, and two wars -- in Ukraine and the Middle East -- that have brought the world to the precipice of World War III.

Stern seemed oblivious to all of this. Listening to his rhapsodic accolades, it became clear that underneath his obsequious, effusive praise was the pleading of a little child: ‘Please love me, daddy!’

The second, even more cringeworthy instance of idol worship occurred on the Drew Barrymore Show. Her guest was Vice President Kamala Harris.

Not only did Barrymore literally kneel in reverence to the most inept Vice President in history, but she fell all over herself lauding Harris to a degree that would have qualified Kamala for sainthood. At the conclusion of a discussion about not making her husband’s children from his first marriage choose between their parental mom and their new stepmom, Harris said she solved the dilemma by telling them, “She was ‘Mom’ and I was ‘Momala.’ Barrymore used it as a segue to declare, “I’ve been thinking in my head that we all need a mom... We all need a tremendous hug in the world right now. But in our country, we need you to be ‘Momala’ of the country.”

The audience, which was surely comprised of liberal, west-coast types, cheered and whooped and applauded. Barrymore was so oleaginous and toadying that a visibly uncomfortable Harris didn’t know how to respond to her overwhelming and servile reverence.

It doesn’t take a trained psychoanalyst to see what’s operating in both of these celebrities’ unconscious minds. It’s the unresolved need/wish for parental love and acceptance. And this dynamic is what drove both Howard Stern and Drew Barrymore to express such cloying adulation for Biden and Harris. Together, they illustrate the unconscious process at work in the liberal mind of millions of Americans, the one that wishes for a nanny state, a government to cuddle them from cradle to grave, to be a ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’ to their unconscious dependent, infantile longings. It’s the same dynamic that demands equality of outcomes, not equality of opportunities; that wants diversity, equity, and inclusion based on percentages, not merit; and that believes that criminal sociopaths are just poor social outcasts who didn’t get enough love when they were little.

Next time you find yourself in a debate with a liberal who refuses to have a rational discussion, and it feels as if they’ve simply dug their heels in like a stubborn, petulant child, you’ll know why.

Eric Dawe is an award-winning writer and chess enthusiast with post graduate studies in Clinical Psychology and psychoanalytic theory, and seven decades of life experience.

Image: Bill Norton/Eva Rinaldi