For all the president’s fraught rhetoric about extremism, the Left has provided precious few definitions of the term. Thankfully, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre has offered a heuristic, a rule-of-thumb that Americans can use to identify those who threaten “our democracy.” Jean-Pierre declared at the August 31 press briefing: “When you are not with what majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking.” With two sentences, the silver-tongued spokeswoman gave us the administration’s rule — a dependable, reliable, and mathematically verifiable way of marking the radicals, bomb-throwers, and extremists among us: They hold any idea not shared by a majority.
By his own criteria, Joe Biden sits atop the most extremist administration in decades. The disconnect between his actions and those of mainstream Americans could hardly be more profound. How? Let us count the ways.
1. Biden’s Extreme Abortion Activism
- Biden derided the Texas Heartbeat law as “so extreme” that it’s “almost un-American.” A Hill-HarrisX poll found 55% of all Americans support laws protecting a child from his or her first fetal heartbeat, roughly six weeks after fertilization. More than one out of five Americans believe the law is “too lenient.”
- Biden made it possible to dispense “medication abortion” via telehealth — to send abortion pills through the mail — first temporarily in April 2021, then permanently that December. But 63% of Americans oppose sending abortion-inducing pills through the mail, a KofC/Marist poll Not content to defy the views of two-thirds of the American people, Biden signed an executive order this July vowing to “expand access to abortion care, including medication abortion.”
- In May, Biden endorsed the “Women’s Health Protection” act, which would strike down the 1,381pro-life laws enacted by the American people and their elected state legislatures, invalidating virtually every protection accorded to children and mothers, even well past fetal viability. Yet fully 71% of the American people believe abortion should not be available past the first trimester, according to the latest KofC/Marist poll; 49% of Americans believe abortion should never be legal except in the case of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
- Joe Biden has repeatedly stated he supports taxpayer funding of abortion-on-demand. Yet a majority of Americans and registered independents oppose forcing taxpayers to underwrite abortion in the United States (53%), and 74% oppose funding abortion overseas, according to a KofC/Marist poll. The latter category includes 59% of self-described “pro-choice” voters.
Biden is an extreme abortion advocate compared to other pro-choice voters, much less the vast and diverse nation entrusted to his leadership.
2. Biden’s Promotion of Extreme Gender Ideology
Joe Biden has denounced laws that would protect minors such as Chloe Cole from the predatory gender reassignment industry as “nothing more than bullying disguised as legislation.” He added, “they are un-American, and they endanger the safety and well-being of our children.” That means, on abortion and the transgender issue, Biden believes the majority of Americans are “un-American.”
- As noted, Biden supports allowing minors to undergo permanent and life-altering surgeries, including touting mastectomies and genital mutilation as “appropriate care for transgender minors” — even though science shows the human brain does not fully develop until age 25. Yet 56% of Americans would support a law making it illegal to perform transgender surgeries, or administer cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers, to anyone under the age of 18, according to a poll taken in May by the American Principals Project.
- In July, the Biden administration proposed a rule to interpret Title IX as though it applied to “gender identity,” which would require schools to allow men who identify as women to compete against women in sports. Nearly two-thirdsof Americans (61%) oppose letting males with gender dysphoria compete in women’s sports, according to an FRC poll in late May. Contemporaneous polls from Pew Research and NPR/Ipsos found nearly identical results (58% and 63%, respectively). Only 20% believed male athletes should compete against women in a poll from Axios, which is not known as a fundamentalist publication.
- In June, the Biden administration threatened to withhold federal funding for the school lunch program unless schools allow transgender children to use the restroom of their choice. But 59% of Americans believe people should use the restroom, locker room, and intimate facilities of their biological sex, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. “That result represents a 12% increase since 2016,” reports the LGBTQ website Them. In other words, American society has moved further away from Biden’s extreme views on gender ideology.
- In fact, Pew says 60% of Americans believe gender is determined by biology, not feelings or aspiration. In its own words, which employ today’s politically correct nomenclature, “60% say a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth, up from 56% in 2021 and 54% in 2017.” Democrats are the only group that holds an extremist position. Once again, the American people as a whole are moving away from Biden and the Democratic Party’s extreme agenda on social issues, making Biden’s policy hands greater, yet ever more convinced, outliers.
By accepting the notion of transgenderism, Biden has become a gender ideology extremist, and — if we adopt his rhetoric — possibly a threat to democracy and/or “the soul of our nation.”
3. Biden’s Open Borders Extremism
Though Joe Biden’s lax border security policies have led to a record-breaking level of illegal immigration, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the media in July, “We are doing a good job.” Yet 53% of Americans believe our country is experiencing an “invasion” at the southern border, according to an NPR/Ipsos poll in August; 55% want Biden to continue using Title 42 to expel illegal aliens, according to a May Politico-Harvard poll; and Pew Research found last year that 87% of Americans want Biden to increase border staffing and resources, 79% want to reduce the number of “asylum” seekers, and 57% want to make it harder for illegal immigrants to apply for asylum.
4. The Biden Administration’s Extreme Recession-Denial
For decades, economists have agreed the nation experiences a recession if GDP shrinks for two quarters (six months) in a row. The U.S. met that definition of recession in July. Yet the Biden administration insisted no one should believe we are in a recession because, technically, only the Business Cycle Dating Committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research can declare a recession (and, thus far, it hasn’t).
But that committee’s eight members constitute a distinct minority of American citizens, who experience greater heartburn each month as they compare their bank accounts against their grocery bills. The number of U.S. citizens who believe the economy has already entered a recession steadily increased from 48% in May, to 53% in June, to 58% in July in an IBD/TIPP poll. It reached 61% in August’s Economist/YouGov poll. With these numbers and Jean-Pierre’s definition in mind, the next time a Biden administration recession-denier claims the economy is sound, dismiss him (or her, hir, zir, or eir) as the extremists they are.
5. Biden’s Extremist Belief that More Spending Reduces Inflation
President Biden says the “Inflation Reduction Act,” which leaves the U.S. with a $155 billion net deficit, actually “tackles inflation.” But most Americans do not believe inflation, the phenomenon of “too many dollars chasing too few goods,” will be lowered by printing more money. Only 24% of all voters believe the bill will “make inflation better,” including a mere 48% of Democrats — highlighting Biden as a radical within his own party on yet another issue.
6. Only Extremists Believe Biden Should Be Re-Elected
Biden has repeatedly declared that in 2024, at the age of 81, he will run for a second term as president of the United States. But a whopping 64% of Democrats said they want someone else to run in a New York Times/Sienna College poll in July. Only 26% of Democrats want to see him clinch their party’s nomination. The numbers hardly budged when USA Today asked the same question in August: 58% of Democrats said they do not want Biden leading the 2024 ticket.
7. Only Extremists Believe Biden Is Mentally Fit for Office Now
Questions of Joe Biden’s mental acuity, which a compliant media let him bury in his basement during the 2020 campaign, have compounded during his 18 months in office. His staff has consistently laughed off such queries. Last December, Jill Biden called worries about her husband’s mental acuity “ridiculous.” In June, Jean-Pierre scolded CNN’s Don Lemon for raising the issue at all, instructing, “That is not a question we should be even asking.” A month later, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg deemed questions about the “vigorous” president’s mental fitness “insulting.”
Yet the American people harbor doubts about Biden’s mental state at an escalating rate. A plurality (48%) questioned Biden’s mental fitness to be president last November in a Politico poll. By February, 54% said Biden lacked “the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president” in a Washington Post/ABC News poll. In May, 53% of Americans said they “have doubts” about Biden’s mental fitness in a Harvard/Harris poll. Admittedly, majority vote does not decide mental fitness — but the metric articulated by the Biden administration’s chosen spokesperson makes anyone who believes Biden is compos mentis a fanatic. (Luckily, I suspect many of the people quoted above do not believe what they said.)
Does Joe Biden Threaten the Soul of America?
By his administration’s own criteria, President Joe Biden is out-of-step even with the rest of the Democratic Party and is “extremist” on every one of the aforementioned issues, making him among the most “extremist” political figures in the nation and possibly a threat to the soul of America.
One may reasonably question whether opposing the ever-changing whims of the majority truly makes someone an “extremist.” Traditional Christians of all stripes, including evangelicals and “devout” Catholics, base their decisions on the eternal insights of Jesus, not the opinion of the mob. The president, and his spokeswoman, may wish to adopt this scriptural standard as their own. Until he does, Joe Biden should realize that someone in a glass house should curtail his efforts to stone his political opponents for heresy.