Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
No, George Will. Joe Biden’s program is not ‘normalcy’
No, George Will. Joe Biden’s program is not ‘normalcy’
Jan 21, 2026 7:37 AM

Reading George Will’s latest article in National Review online Praising the normalcy of the former Vice President Joe Biden, I couldn’t help whispering to myself: What is properly normal about Uncle Joe?

I am totally aware of his record as a moderate liberal in the Senate. He was against busing children to distant schools and supported a law-and-order policy to fight crime. However, I am also aware of his claim that a Mitt Romney victory in 2012 would have meant blacks back in chains, along with his defense of abortion and affirmative action, and the millions made by his son’s business with China while he was VP. Today, he has a developing “Ukrainian nightmare.”

Biden is no Mr. Normalcy. On the contrary, he is a professional politician ever seeking a radical cause to call his own. But moving to a more liberal position will undoubtedly be hard to achieve since he will run against figures like senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

In a year when liberals are looking for someone who can punch President Donald J. Trump in the mouth, being Mr. Normal is a liability — even if this is a misconception. And Biden knows it. The first thing the now-candidate has done is disown his more than 45 years of political history — or at least trying to reframe it all.

Candidate Biden says he is deeply sorry that Senator Biden did not play a more significant role in Anita Hill’s campaign to destroy one of the greatest Americans of our generation, Justice Clarence Thomas. Candidate Biden is also keen to show how he was always a friend of the cultural left and prayed for the gospel of the politically correct, which may have him disavowing the eulogy he did in memory of Senator Storm Thurmond. I’m counting down the days to see Candidate Biden denying three times his association with his former patrons, the State of Delaware financial services industry, which had had him on a short leash for nearly half a century.

Despite all that can be said about the progressive credentials of both Senator and candidate Biden, Uncle Joe has already proven that he has embraced the agenda of the radical left and that, once in power, will do everything to destroy the old America. Did Barack Obama not do the same? In 2008, the then-candidate Obama was in favor of restricting immigration, dubious about his position on gay marriage and preaching a post-racial society. In the White House, President Obama did the opposite of what he said he would do.

When I look at Uncle Joe’s alleged moderation, the only thing es to my mind is Virginia’s Democratic governor Ralph “Blackface” Northam. Elected as a moderate against the hatred that Trump it was claimed spreads across the country, the main job Northam nowadays seems to have is to make infanticide legal in the Old Dominion.

More than ten years after Obama’s election, the Democratic Party is now to the left of many European Social-Democratic parties. On economic issues, the Green New Deal – endorsed by all candidates for the Democratic nomination – would cause deep embarrassment to many die-hard socialists in Europe. Can you imagine the Swedish Social-Democrat Party trying to destroy all of those Volvo jobs?

As far as cultural issues are concerned, modern American liberals would be fortable rades Lenin’s and Stalin’s selective respect towards Russian national history – which they tried to appropriate for political ends and do not entirely destroy. The American cultural left’s hatred for everything that can symbolize the tradition or history of the United States, on the other hand, has no parallel in the old munist guard of the Italian Palmiro Togliatti or the Frenchman Maurice Thorez, for example. Indeed, the electoral bases of munist parties through the Cold War were so socially conservative and many of their leaders so opposed to sexual liberation that, following standards of modern America, they would be considered the most reactionary among reactionaries.

If you do not believe me, watch the debate between Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Zizek. According to the last, the munism is a sort of provocation – without real meaning – after the disasters of the 20th century. Regarding economics, the content of Zizek’s speech was the old social-democratic chant that one must regulate capitalism, not subvert it or destroy it.

Speaking about culture, Zizek spared no criticism of the millennial leftism advocated by the Ocasios-Cortezes and Ilham Omars that seeks refuge in the micro causes of identity and the moralisms of politically correct thinking. According to him, this leftism is a form of political withdrawal, impotent moralism, “of marginal narcissism.” In the past, the idea was to change the world. Now, the revolutionary desire is to change the words, the pronouns, the genres, the bathrooms.

From any perspective, Uncle Joe, as well as the entire Democratic Party, is on the left of the old Stalinist Zizek. When George Will — who was once known as the dean of the conservative columnists — praises the moderation of someone more radical than Zizek, this must be understood as a sign that conservatives have lost the culture and political wars and the Republican establishment has lost its shame.

Homepage picture: WikiCommons

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Audio: Dr. Sam Gregg on Relativism & Ordered Liberty
Dr. Samuel Gregg, Acton’s Director of Research, has e something of a regular guest on Kresta in the Afternoon of late; below you’ll find audio of his two most recent appearances. Leading off, Sam appeared with host Al Kresta on February 15th to discuss Pope Benedict’s concept of the dictatorship of relativism in the context of the HHS mandate debate, and the potential consequences of the death of absolute truth. Listen via the audio player below: [audio: Then, on the...
No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition. (Except Those Who Oppose Conscience Protections.)
The New Yorker‘s George Packer believes, “The outcry over Obama’s policy on health insurance and contraception has almost nothing to do with that part of the First Amendment about the right to free religious practice, which is under no threat in this country. It is all about a modern conservative Kulturkampf that will not accept the other part of the religion clause, which prohibits any official religion.” Ross Douthat provides a devastating reply to Packer’s backwards view of religious liberty:...
Commentary: Corn Subsidies at Root of U.S.-Mexico Immigration Problems
Since the North American Free Trade Agreement began to be implemented in 1994, the United States has raised farm subsidies by 300 percent and Mexican corn plain that they have little hope peting in this protected market. In this week’s Acton Commentary (published Feb. 29)Anthony Bradley writes that, “U.S. government farm subsidies create the conditions for the oppression and poor health care of Mexican migrant workers in ways that make those subsidies nothing less than immoral.”The full text of his...
Is the HHS Mandate A Game of Chicken?
In his homily on Lent Cardinal George warned that if the HHS Mandate is not changed Catholic schools, hospitals, and other social services will have to be shut down. Take a look at this post at by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, What if the Catholic Bishops aren’t Bluffing? to see what closing down schools and hospitals would mean. Morrissey writes in his article for the Fiscal Times The Catholic Church has perhaps the most extensive private health-care delivery system...
Can’t be said too often …
While working on an article today, I read Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s 2005 homily right before the was elected Pope. I wanted to recall a section about truth that cannot be repeated enough. It is especially pertinent in light of the Obama Administration’s promise on the HHS mandate. promise changes nothing. It is political sophistry. It still forces people to act against their conscience and support moral evil. The truth about good and evil cannot be swept away by an accounting...
Bonhoeffer on ‘the view from below’
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: There remains an experience of parable value. We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled – in short, from the perspective of those who suffer. The important thing is neither that bitterness nor envy should have gnawed at the heart during this time, that we should e to look with new eyes at matters great...
Samuel Gregg: The American Left’s European Nightmare
On The American Spectator, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg observes that, “as evidence for the European social model’s severe dysfunctionality continues to mount before our eyes, the American left is acutely aware how much it discredits its decades-old effort to take America down the same economic path.” Against this evidence, some liberals are pinning the blame on passing fiscal and currency imbalances. No, Gregg says, there’s “something even more fundamental” behind the meltdown of the post-war West European social model....
Video: Europe’s Economic and Cultural Crisis
A week ago, Dr. Samuel Gregg addressed an audience here at Acton’s Grand Rapids, Michigan office on the topic of “Europe: A Continent in Economic and Cultural Crisis.” If you weren’t able to attend, we’re pleased to present the video of Dr. Gregg’s presentation below. ...
James Q. Wilson, Requiescat in pace
Political scientist and criminologist James Q. Wilson, co-author of the influential “Broken Windows” article in The Atlantic Monthly in 1982, which led to shift munity policing, died today at the age of 80. In 1999, Wilson spoke to Acton’s Religion & Liberty about how a free society requires a moral sense and social capital: R&L:Unlike defenders of capitalism such as Friedrich von Hayek and Philip Johnson, who view capitalism as a morally neutral system, you see a clear relationship between...
Hugo Grotius vs. ObamaCare
In the seventeenth-century, the Dutch lawyer, magistrate, and scholar Hugo Grotius advanced Protestant natural-law thinking by grounding it in human nature rather than in the mands of God. As he claimed, “the mother of right—that is, of natural law—is human nature.” For Grotius, ifan action agrees with the rational and social aspects of human nature, it is permissible; if it doesn’t, it is impermissible. This view of law shaped his writings on jurisprudence, which in turn, had a profound influence...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved