The Big Daddy Syndrome

When I was small, my family always celebrated Christmas.  We were not Christian and so we didn’t observe the religious aspects of the holiday.  But we always had Santa Claus.  While we didn’t have a tree, the jolly old elf left lots of gifts by our bookcases.

We kids loved this idea.  We could barely fall asleep at night in anticipation of the wonderful morning to come.  Then, when it finally arrived and we got to unwrap our unearned bounty, each new item was an adventure.  All of them had to be played with to reinforce how lucky we were.

My father was not a notably generous man, but he loved being our secret Santa.  He too would beam with joy as he watched us kids appreciate his bigheartedness.  This made him feel like a protective and loving father.  He was our Big Daddy; the epitome of a real man.

Today we are being treated to the spectacle of liberals playing the role of Big Daddy.  I could have said Big Santa, or maybe Big Momma, or even Lady Bountiful.  The meaning would be the same regardless of the formulation.  The point is that in their liberality, leftists hope to demonstrate what noble humans they are.

This is paradoxical in that liberals are forever chiding Americans for trying to be the policemen of the world.  We are told that we have no business sending military assets around the globe in order to maintain the peace.  Doing so is both wasteful and arrogant.

On the other hand, progressives are proud of encouraging illegal immigration.  Although they deny it, they champion open borders.  Not only are they against building a wall, but they do everything they can to undermine enforcement of our boundaries.  This includes dismantling ICE.

Why do they do this?  It is because of the Big Daddy Syndrome.  Those on the left always want to help the poor and downtrodden.  They perceive themselves as the defenders of the weak. This puffs up their self-image and convinces them that they are among nature’s aristocrats.

So honorable do they feel that they never examine the implications of their alleged kindness.  When it comes to military interventions, they are quick to point out the unsustainable costs. As for the undocumented migrants, however, no expense is too great, no gift too lavish.

As a result, we are treated to a display of unbounded hypocrisy.  We are now being told that spending five billion dollars on the border wall is too much.  This leaves out the fact that Democrats were willing to spend twenty-five billion earlier this year.  Nor do they acknowledge that this is only three billion more than they are currently prepared to authorize.

What makes this so absurd is the multi-multi-billions liberals are willing to spend on the illegals.  When we add up the costs of welfare, schooling, medical care, and law enforcement over the course of many decades, we have probably ventured into the realm of trillions.  Nor does this include the impact of the jobs lost to American citizens.

Yet none of this matters to the Big Daddy crowd.  Their munificence costs them very little.  As research has repeatedly shown, they contribute less to charities than do conservatives.  They are also less likely to volunteer to help the poor.  The source of their liberality is actually tax dollars, which means they are spending other people’s money.

Genuinely moral folks are more honest about their recommendations. They don’t pretend that the caravans assaulting our borders are composed solely of women and children fleeing from oppression.  They don’t portray hard working federal law enforcement agents as an American version of the Nazi SS.

Even a nation as affluent as our own has limitations.  Just as we do not have the resources to intervene in every international conflict, so we don’t have the wealth to admit every indigent person who seeks the good life in our country.  The point comes when too many millions of refugees are too many.

Santa Claus is a fictional character.  Nor is Big Daddy as charitable as those who play him contend.  When immigrants are encouraged to break the law, they are stealing from those who created our nation’s stability.  When liberals hide the truth about what they are doing, they impoverish us all on a moral level.

A little realism about immigration is long over due.  It would be far more praiseworthy than the false magnanimity of political partisans intent on inflating their reputations.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Kennesaw State University