Lurking among the jubilant americans venturing back out to bars and planning their summer-wedding travel is a different group: liberals who aren’t quite ready to let go of pandemic restrictions. For this subset, diligence against COVID-19 remains an expression of political identity—even when that means overestimating the disease’s risks or setting limits far more strict than what public-health guidelines permit. In surveys, Democrats express more worry about the pandemic than Republicans do. People who describe themselves as “very liberal” are distinctly anxious.

Calls from the Biden administration and from Democrats to raise taxes do not come from a plan to generate money for more government spending, but for redistributing wealth, Rep. James Comer said Tuesday.

Liberal senators and outside pressure groups are steaming over the Senate’s seeming failure to move a COVID-19 relief package with a provision hiking the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.

An adverse decision from the Senate parliamentarian means Democrats can’t move the $15 minimum using special budgetary rules meant to sidestep the filibuster.

That is leading to calls to overrule or fire the parliamentarian, or to get rid of the filibuster, which essentially requires legislation to secure 60 votes to proceed through the Senate.

The White House and left-wing Democrats are likely heading for blows after President Biden appeared to close the door on several of their top demands, threatening to splinter the party.

The president used his first town hall in office to pour cold water on the liberals’ calls for $50,000 worth of student loan relief per person and also took a step away from them as he signaled he is open to negotiating a minimum wage hike to a point less than their preferred $15 per hour. His comments put the two long-standing demands from progressive lawmakers and activists in jeopardy.

If progressivism can’t work there, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else?

You may have heard that San Francisco’s Board of Education voted 6 to 1 to rename 44 schools, stripping ancient racists of their laurels, but also Abraham Lincoln and Senator Dianne Feinstein. The history upon which these decisions were made was dodgy, and the results occasionally bizarre. Paul Revere, for instance, was canceled for participating in a raid on Indigenous Americans that was actually a raid on a British fort.

What a difference a week makes. On Wednesday, we discovered that House Democrats actually support police. They are against mob violence. They believe in law and order. They believe in harsh punishment for rule breakers. They believe in accountability.

They care deeply about civility. They believe words matter. They abhor intemperate rhetoric. They are against coarse language. Fancy that.

They believe in a peaceful transition of power, at least this time, as opposed to 2016. They believe in the Electoral College. They believe in the legitimacy of the people’s vote.

Something always struck me as odd about liberals – their love of high taxes. I always thought it had to do with their desire to punish successful people, something deeply rooted in jealousy. Over time, however, I came to realize it was something more, something deeper and deeply flawed in their understanding of the world and the idea of the concept of liberty. Democrats view government as the center of life and the giver of all good things. And that doesn’t come for free.

It was nice while it lasted …

It appears the titillating love affair between liberal Democrats and notorious anti-Trump zealot George Conway, the husband of former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, has finally crashed and burned as all affairs are wont to do.

Of course, this doesn’t mean they won’t eventually make up …

For the last four years the American commentary class has been in a state of sustained hysteria over what they call “populism”. As our experts use the word, “populism” refers to the peculiar views of Donald Trump, or those of the leaders of Hungary and Brazil and Poland. More formally, “populism” is said to be the nightmare “ism” in which racist authoritarians attack the news media and ignore the authority of the learned.