It’s not just Biden who’s too old — progressivism is too

OPINION:

President Biden is too confused and feeble to be president. If you’ve seen him stumble on the steps of Air Force One or heard him read stage directions off a teleprompter (not to mention forgetting the names of his cabinet) — that’s not a hard sell.

A July Harvard-Harris survey showed more than 7 in 10 Americans don’t want the president to run for reelection. Of those, 1 in 3 cited his age as a factor. In a May Harvard-Harris poll, 53% said they had doubts about his mental fitness.

But it’s not Mr. Biden alone who’s unfit for power. He represents a dogma that has failed consistently — in various guises — over the course of 110 years. Call it progressivism, socialism or Marxism, it’s an ideology that’s brought untold misery around the globe and hard times here at home.

Progressivism is Marxism with a democratic facade. It came to this country a few years before the Bolshevik Revolution — 1913 versus 1917. While the Soviets were collectivizing agriculture and establishing one-party rule, both the graduated income tax (based on the principle of from each according to his ability) and the Federal Reserve System were established under President Woodrow Wilson.

On June 13, the Victims of Communism Museum opened in Washington, memorializing the more than 100 million killed by communists over the past 105 years and the estimated 1.5 billion living under communism today.

It’s a grim saga of firing squads, torture chambers, secret police, mass starvation and denial of basic liberties. The abject failure of these regimes may be seen in the efforts to keep the inmates from escaping. The Berlin Wall wasn’t built to keep West Berliners, longing for privation, from fleeing to the German Democratic Republic.

Cuba went from one of the most advanced economies in the Western Hemisphere in 1959, to the basket case it is today. Venezuela moved from a major oil producer to a land of rolling blackouts and bare subsistence living.

Domestically, from Wilson to FDR, and LBJ to Biden, we’ve seen rapid government expansion, mega-deficits and bankrupting of the middle class. Only our Constitution, especially the separation of powers, has kept Democrats from taking it as far as other collectivists.

In the course of fewer than 18 months, we’ve gone from 1.4% inflation to an annual rate of 9.1% in June. The price at the pump has doubled since Mr. Biden took office. The president begs loathsome dictatorships to pump more, while he devises new ways to make domestic producers pump less. 

In terms of shortages, we’re beginning to look like a Third World country — foodstuffs, baby formula, fertilizer, computer chips, lumber, hygiene products — the list is almost endless.

We went from energy independence to the Democrats’ scorched-earth war on fossil fuels, from border security to a king-size welcome mat at the border (20,000 illegals are entering every week). In what used to be called the war on crime, the president’s party is waving a white flag.

It’s not just Marxist economics. Under Mr. Biden, cultural Marxism is also advancing at an alarming pace. 

The Democratic Party has substituted what it calls social justice for the class struggle. You can see it in a revolving-door justice system, homeless encampments allowed to fester, increasingly obnoxious abortion protestors (instead of storming the Winter Palace, they tried to storm the Supreme Court building), and the indoctrination of the young in anti-Americanism and gender ideology. 

We haven’t quite arrived at collective ownership. But American businesses are so heavily taxed and regulated that they might as well be state-owned. 

Instead of a hammer and sickle, we have windmills and electric cars symbolizing the struggle to overthrow fossil fuels and reach an environmental paradise. Both progressives and Marxists believe mankind is infinitely malleable.

Mr. Biden isn’t a recent convert to progressivism. Throughout his 36 years in the Senate and eight years as vice president, the president was an integral part of the post-McGovern Democratic Party. Although the agenda has evolved over time, he was always a willing foot soldier for the cause.

“Do I look to you like a radical socialist?” Mr. Biden asked in the 2020 campaign. Indeed he does not. He looks more like a business-as-usual progressive/socialist, the kind found in European social democracies.

The ideas he represents have failed miserably wherever they’ve been tried. This geriatric ideology, suffering from hardening of the arteries, should toddle off the stage of history aided by a walker.

• Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer and syndicated columnist.