2024: We Can Do Better ... Or Can We?

On April 25, US president Joe Biden announced his intention to seek re-election in 2024.

"The question we're facing," Biden says in his announcement video, "is whether in the years ahead, we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer."

"I know what I want the answer to be," he continues, "and I think you do, too."

Of course, it's not about what anyone "wants" the answer to be. It's about what the answer actually is.

The number of our rights doesn't change, because we don't get our rights from presidents, elections, or constitutions.

We get them from what the Declaration of Independence refers to as "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."

We have them because we're human beings, not because Joe Biden, or anyone else, sits in the Oval Office.

The "freedoms" Biden refers to are entirely a question of whether or not he and his fellow politicians respect those rights.

More than 50 years in politics proves that no, Biden doesn't respect them. His version of a "right" is the privilege of living as Joe Biden orders us to live.

And those orders can turn on a dime. Note, for example, the skid marks left on various campaigns trails by his sudden switches from "pro-life" to "pro-choice" (2019), from "pro-death-penalty" to "anti-death-penalty" (2019), from "marriage is between a man and a woman" to "marriage equality" (2012), and from "build the wall" to "build the wall but phrase it differently" (2013).

It's almost as if he says whatever he thinks his base wants to hear, because he thinks that's what his base wants to hear, so that he gets re-elected.

Just like his most probable general election opponent, Donald Trump.

Every four years, I hear from upstart, dark horse candidates that "we can do better." But can we?

Political power lends itself well to holding onto political power. So much so that that seems to be its main use by those who grasp it even once.

Which explains why our two mostly likely future presidents are two age-befuddled geezers who plainly don't live in the real world now, if ever they did, and why Capitol Hill is swarming with Senators who can't find their car keys without pulling staffers off of "look for a good sale price on adult diapers" duty to help.

The only real term limit is death of old age. And America's looking pretty long in the tooth itself.