Joe Biden’s EV Edict Isn’t Just Harmful, It’s Fascistic

The left claims that local elected officials curating school library collections is “authoritarian,” but they find it okay that the powerful centralized government issues an edict mandating a major industry to produce a particular product and force millions of people to purchase it. President Biden is using carrots and sticks to “transform” and “remake” the entire auto industry, as the Washington Post notes. The Environmental Protection Agency proposes extreme emissions limits, ensuring that 67 percent of all new passenger cars and trucks produced within nine years will be electric. It is a state coercion that is undemocratic, and it means that we are not governed, but managed.

The state control of manufacturing and commerce and dictating prices and wages for the “common good” often characterizes fascist economies whose demagogue may exploit the nationalistic impulses of the populace. Any unpatriotic profits are captured by the state, and all economic activities must gain state approval. Crony and rent-seeking firms are regular participants. It is not to say that we already live in a fascist economy, but the Democratic Party’s economic platform makes one want to believe that we are.

The media coverage of Biden’s edict has been predictable, as Politico, for instance, asks, “Biden makes huge push for electric vehicles. Is America ready?” The modern media coverage rests on the idea that the left’s perspectives result in societal evolution towards enlightenment, and the only question is when will the “slaw-jawed yokels” in Indiana and Texas catch up. But Electric Vehicles (EVs) are not much of a technological or environmental advancement over vehicles with internal combustion engines. Most of the comforts that EV makers claim to offer have been features of gas-powered cars for decades. EVs hardly improve on this technology, yet they are a regression in terms of cost, practicality, and comfort. If EVs are efficient and cost-saving as administration officials claim, then manufacturers would have produced them without coercive measures. But the problem with Democrats is that consumers already have perfectly useful and affordable gas-powered cars that could once be inexpensively fueled and driven for long distances without needing to stop.

Fossil fuels are the most efficient, affordable, portable, and useful sources of energy, and they still make up the predominant source of energy that power electric cars. The US has a massive fossil fuel supply and became the world’s largest oil producer in recent years, with tens of billions of oil barrels that are easily accessible. There are vast amounts of fuel worldwide. When we eventually exhaust our supply, we will have invented better ways of powering automobiles than through obsolete windmills requiring an EV battery that emits twice as many gases into the atmosphere as a vehicle engine does.

Michael Regan of the EPA said, “I want to let everybody know that this EPA is committed to protecting the health and well-being of every single person on this planet.” However, no one is safer in an EV than a gas-powered vehicle. The authoritarian justification for economic control almost always includes “safety”; in this case, it is tethered to the disproven theory that our society cannot adapt safely and relatively cheaply to climate change’s slight changes. If the government can regulate greenhouse gases as an existential threat, it has the power to regulate much of the economy. That is why politicians treat floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes as apocalyptic events. Despite all the scare tactics that they utilize, climate change is less detrimental to humankind today than it has ever been, and the more they try to frighten us, the less people care.

Therefore, let the Chinese Communists worry about the safety of their people, and not follow in their footsteps. We should keep our country innovative, open, and free.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, and the Happy Warrior columnist at National Review. He is also an author of five books, including the most recent Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News, and radio talk shows throughout the United States. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.