There is a fundamental difference in how left and right view the role of government in our lives.
To the left, the government is an omnipotent force. It is the moral arbiter of our country. It gives us rights and takes them away.
It is the parent; we are the children.
A painfully cringeworthy reminder of just how the left has come to worship government came on Monday in a clip from “The Drew Barrymore Show.”
The host had Vice President Kamala Harris as her guest and sat in awe of Harris’ presence and every word that left her mouth.
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“I keep thinking in my head that we all need a mom,” Barrymore said. “I’ve been thinking that we really all need a tremendous hug in the world right now — but in our country, we need you to be momala of the country.”
Her posture and body language suggested she was looking at the vice president as something much greater than just an elected official and career public servant.
Harris is a parent to the country — “momala.”
Do you see the president as your parent?
Barrymore — espousing an attitude largely prevalent with the left — sees government as a force on which we can cast our woes and depend upon to watch over us.
This attitude is not unique to President Joe Biden’s administration. Hollywood liberals have given parental status to other occupants of the White House.
In 2013, actor and comedian Chris Rock referred to then-President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as the “mom and dad of the country” during a news conference on gun control.
“And when your dad says something, you listen,” Rock said.
For both Barrymore and Rock, there is no sense of the reality of Obama’s or Harris’ elected status. They are not just public officials chosen by Americans to serve in leadership positions in the federal government. They are something greater — our parents or our wardens.
Present is also the notion that these roles are limitless. Obama speaks, you listen. Disregard the true function of the executive and our system of checks and balances.
Such an attitude almost veers into a sense of monarchism. It harkens back to the American Revolution during the reign of King George III when Thomas Paine wrote in “Common Sense”:
“… could we take off the dark covering of antiquity, and trace them [kings] to their rise, we should find the first of them nothing better than the principle ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners, or pre-eminence in subtilty obtained him the title of chief among plunderers.”
Here Paine was exposing the king for his status as a hereditary and undemocratic ruler, but his words resonate as the left raises our officials to a monarchal status.
We should not forget these are human beings. They do not have all the answers; they are not all-knowing. They err and do so often. They do not always have our best interests in mind.
This is why we have the Constitution and where the distinction lies between the left and the constitutional right. A true constitutional conservative looks at that document as the limiting factor in government.
The Constitution is not a tool to broaden the scope of government. It has not given us our rights gracefully to take them away if it feels warranted as a parent would with a misbehaving child.
Those rights existed prior to it, and it exists only to protect them.
November will come to be a referendum for true constitutionalism. Either we will continue to go down the path of deifying our public servants, or we will reverse course and rein them in to align with a vision true to the Founders.
