Paul Kengor: Biden has become a total cultural radical
SOVEREIGNTY.PL: Joe Biden was presented to the American people as a moderate candidate. What can we say about it after the first year of his presidency? Is he really a moderate Democrat?
PROF. PAUL KENGOR*: Joe Biden indeed ran for president as a moderate, and in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, during his very long career in the U.S. Senate, he voted like a moderate. He was a moderate Democrat. That began to change when he became President Barack Obama’s vice president in January 2009. Ever since then, he has steadily moved to the left.
The most extreme manifestation of his lunge to the left has been on cultural-social issues, such as abortion and the so-called „LGBTQ” agenda. He has pushed hard for so-called „abortion rights,” on which he has been a terrible disappointment and has served an embarrassingly awful betrayal to his Roman Catholic Church, and on issues like transgenderism, where he has been shockingly radical. Joe Biden has become a total cultural radical.
Which aspects of his presidency are the most troubling from your perspective?
In addition to the cultural issues, I have been gravely disappointed in his handling of the COVID situation. He has attempted to forcibly vaccinate Americans against their will, including those of us with natural immunity who had COVID and now have antibodies. Biden used obscure workplace-safety guidelines issued through a Washington bureaucratic agency called OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) to attempt to coerce every employer with at least 100 employees to compel all of those employees to be forcibly vaccinated against their will, even those employees who already had COVID. Fortunately, Biden was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court, which understood (as reasonably thinking Americans do) that he had no constitutional power and authority for such a mandate.
Do you see in Joe Biden a statesman who really wants to make sure that America is the leading force in the world? Or his administration is „afraid” of the American might?
Joe Biden is weak in foreign policy, despite once serving decades on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The worst and earliest example of that weakness in his presidency came last July when he prematurely and very ineffectually withdrew all American troops from Afghanistan. The nature and process of the withdrawal was done too quickly and in a sloppy and unwise manner. Biden was widely criticized for that withdrawal, even by liberals and fellow Democrats. It was a foreign-policy disaster for the United States that once again turned the situation in Afghanistan back to the pre-September 11, 2001 period, when the Taliban was in charge and the country can once again became a place for radical Islamists to organize and plot against America and the world.
By September 11, 2021, the Taliban flag was once again flying over Kabul. It was a fiasco, a major blunder for Biden.
Is he able to really deter Russia or China?
Many analysts warned back then that belligerent nations and dictators, including Putin in Russia and Xi in China, would act on Biden’s grand display of weakness. Many immediately warned that the American lack of strength in Afghanistan could signal to Putin that he could get away with further aggression in Ukraine, or to Xi that he could go after Taiwan or further crack down on Hong Kong. We may be seeing that right now, especially with Putin in Ukraine.
Currently, Biden is showing backbone by threatening to deploy American troops to Ukraine. In reality, however, his mess in Afghanistan helped lead to situations like we’re seeing today with Putin and Ukraine.
I would also add that his terrible energy policies have worsened this situation. He is halting U.S. domestic energy production (which Donald Trump had greatly enhanced) in order to assuage the radical environmental leftists in his Democratic Party. His energy policies in the United States are making other countries more dependent on energy exports from nations like Russia.
Kamala Harris was supposed to be a political superstar of this administration and a solid candidate to replace Joe Biden in the future. Is this plan still viable? What did 2021 tell the Americans about true skills and abilities of Kamala Harris?
Americans do not like Kamala Harris. Biden picked her because he vowed to pick a black woman as his vice president. Many of us were shocked when he selected Kamala Harris as that black woman. She is an angry person, unkind, rude, and plainly not likeable. And even though Joe Biden has very low approval ratings, Americans by and large pray that Biden does not get replaced by Kamala Harris. If Biden were to unexpectedly die, our nation would be stuck with Kamala Harris. That is a highly undesirable and even scary scenario for many Americans.
Can you envisage Donald Trump running in 2024 and then winning the election?
It looks like Donald Trump is running again, already. Interestingly, although Joe Biden’s approval numbers are very low, they are about equal to current approval numbers for Donald Trump. Donald Trump has many people in America who love him, but equally numbers who hate him. He couldn’t beat Biden in 2020, and I don’t know that he could beat him in 2024.
But that said, Biden may not end up running in 2024. He’s already too old. Everyone feels that way about him and his age and his obvious mental deterioration. More likely, the Democrats will run someone else in 2024, perhaps the dreaded Kamala Harris. It could be another ugly election for America.
There’s a lot of talk that education is becoming the main point of the clash of civilizations in America nowadays. You teach at a university, so what can you say about the changes that the Democrats push in this sphere?
The Democrats favor a cultural revolution on sexual and gender issues. They are hellbent on redefining everything from the family to marriage to one’s gender to whether or not an unborn child in its mother’s womb should be considered a life. And Joe Biden is part of that revolution. Pro-lifers nationwide have been very successful lately in passing bills in state legislatures to protect unborn children early in a pregancy. Joe Biden has vowed to throw „the whole of the federal government” against them. He is doing everything in his power to preserve and advance abortion. Young people in America tend to be liberal on the sexual and cultural issues, and Democrats have reinforced them. Democrats are handmaidens to this destructive agenda.
It seems that abortion will be a huge topic this year. Should we expect a counterrevolution in America as far as this issue is concerned?
The counterrevolution against abortion is underway in full force. It is a wonderful development, especially for pro-life Catholics in America. Tragically, their Catholic president is a pro-abortion radical doing everything in his power to stop that counterrevolution. His aggressive efforts have upset many Americans, many Catholics, many priests, and also many of the Catholic bishops. Catholics have pleaded with their bishops to deny Biden the Eucharist because of his abortion promotion. Biden last October went to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis. He claims that Pope Francis told him to continue receiving the Eucharist. Believing that he received that blessing from the pope, he is even more undeterred in his abortion advocacy.
*Paul Kengor is an author and professor of political science. He is the executive director of Institute for Faith and Freedom. Among his best selling books are: „A Pope and A President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century”, „God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life” and „The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration”.
