According to a Fox News poll released on June 23, President Biden is 56% popular, owing mostly to high marks for his handling of the pandemic. Is President Biden really that popular and, if he is, how should we respond to such popular authoritarianism?
This from Fox News: “Conducted June 19-22, 2021 under the joint direction of Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company (R), this Fox News Poll includes interviews with 1,001 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide who spoke with live interviewers on both landlines and cellphones. The total sample has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.”
The response from the Republicans may be to poke at the polling data or to call it a push poll, or something like that. Perhaps, given the untrustworthiness of all major press outlets, there is a bit of chicanery afoot in the polling sample and/or methodology. But, on the other hand, perhaps only a plurality of voters, that 43% who could not approve of Biden, genuinely opposed everything this man stands for.
We will do without belaboring all that we as Freedomists find at variance with basic common decency in most every politician, including this morally compromised President. Let’s just stipulate that this wanmabe tinhorn petty authoritarian really has, thanks to the massive dishonest propaganda of every major US institution and corporation, gained such popularity among our gullible fellow citizens.
Popular authoritarianism is still authoritarianism and it will cut and harm both its supporters and its opponents over time. Joe Biden represents the regress of freedom and the advancement of authoritarianism. It doesn’t mean he will become a dictator or that we are doomed. It does mean he and his circle of supporters and minions are on the authoritarianism spectrum and represent a dangerous shift away from freedom.
If we consider our rather principled opposition to his tenture of radical division and his instinctive authoritarian response to any crisis or any dissent, we wonder how any morally upright or clear thinking person could be anything but revolted by this administration. But the truth is that the grounding of principle we embrace, rooted in the core ideals of our country’s founding, is an uncommon thing.
Most people don’t care about ideology or philosophy. They don’t know the ideological and philosophical roots of America or Joe Biden and, frankly, they aren’t much interested. This isn’t because they are bad or dumb. There are two things holding them back from seeing how malignant the Biden Prwsidency is: their lack of educational foundations thanks to public schools and colleges/universities that push propaganda over truth and the reality of their busy lives.
The traditional approach in politics is to appeal to raw emotion and self-interest, not to reason and much less to morality. This is almost a necessity to get elected, even if your agenda and ideological foundations are more in keeping with an objectively more pro-freedom and prosperity worldview. Extolling the merits of your ideology just puts voters to sleep, they don’t care!
For those who are principled, it is actually hard to see, or accept, that most of their fellow voters rarely use principles to guide their judgment or approval of leadership. Most will tend to combine a mixture of their experience and the interpretation thereof by major culture-bearing institutions as their only guide. It is subjective and shifting, to be sure, and is hard to keep up with in attempting to appeal to them.
One can understand this and use this understanding to win votes through clever marketing even as one laments the stunning lack of principle among most voters. The fact maybe it’s true the likes of a lying, thieving weasel like Biden could win such popularity, or the fact the outlandish and often uncouth Donald Trump is the only viable alternative seen by so many, proves that principles don’t really matter to voters.
Of the 43% who do not approved of Biden as President, how many do so for genuine principle? How many understand the roots of the ideological bent of the people Biden relies on for support or the great and noble principles of freedom which demand we oppose this administration?
Moreover, is a campaign to revive an understanding of the great principles of our country in the understanding and affection of most voters anything but a fool’s errand? Must we limit ourselves to emotional and parochial appeals, even if we deeply oppose Biden et al on principled grounds? While our answer is, “no, we must not abandon principle”, we must be honest and admit that principle today doesn’t carry much weight with voters.
President Biden is a man who defies and is ignorant of the great ideals of America, namely a balanced and Judeo-Christian interpretation of Unity in diversity, Popular sovereignty, Democratic equality, and Rule of law and respect for the original spirit and intent of the Bill of Rights. His brash dismissal of others and his willingness to lie about and demoize fellow Americans is reprehensible to principled people, but irrelevant to most voters.
The truth may be that 56% of voters actually approve of this man! If ever one wished to cast aspersions upon the concept of representative republicanism or “democracy” for that matter, the fact such a man of almost zero moral or principled foundation can gain such popularity justified such skepticism.
Our founders often said things like that a republican form of government is not good for a population without morals and principles. We can see that they were right. But we can’t change the reality we have inherited from the last few generations, who gave us a “democracy”, in defiance of our Founders’ intent, that is rather shallow because its voters have been raised to be emotional and parochial in their thinking.
Our response to this crisis of principle is threefold:
1. We will use appeals to emotion and parochial interest to win elections and promote laws and policies in defiance of anti-freedom policies and unscrupulous leaders like this President.
2. We will seek to enliven a deeper understanding of and affection for the spiritual constitution and true manifest destiny of America as an empire of liberty for a free and pluralistic society of equals.
3. We will work to build relationships and structures at the individual and local to national scale that provide gaps for freedom regardless of the whims of voters or the authoritarianism of politicians and corporations.
We cannot trust these polls, but neither can we dismiss their veracity or that perhaps it is true that 56% of our fellow voters really don’t have a problem with such a lunatic freedom taker being in the White House. Our work to push back the boundaries of this authoritarianism and its intrusion into our lives must gain new urgency.