by Star Parker,

If there is one overriding theme of the Biden years, it is the systematic degradation of American freedom, pushing the lives and freedom of private citizens aside as government expands and takes over. This is done under the rubric of the Left that “government knows best.” Day by day, we are becoming what the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia described as “a country I do not recognize.” In a new paper published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, Casey Mulligan, professor of economics at the University of Chicago and former chief economist of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, estimates the current and future costs of regulations imposed so far by the Biden administration as close to $10,000 per household.

In a paper published last year, Mulligan and economist Stephen Moore estimated that Biden administration policies, driven by climate change dogma to shut down the oil and gas industry, have resulted in 2 million to 3 million barrels per day less oil production and 20 billion to 25 billion cubic feet less natural gas production had these policies not been in place. Mulligan and Moore estimate the cost of this foregone energy production to the U.S. economy is on the order of $100 billion per year. Now we have the latest move by the Biden administration to remove millions of acres of land in Alaska from oil and gas drilling and development.

These moves may leave President Joe Biden‘s climate change dogmatists happy, but less so Americans who care what they pay for energy.

This means even more government. More government controlling our economy, more government controlling our lives. It is all a kind of backdoor socialism. But rather than increasing government control coming from some abstract ideology, we get the same result from belief that “government knows best.” The result is armies of government bureaucrat micromanagers controlling our lives. Let’s recall our own Declaration of Independence, which states our founding based on individual rights— life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration says “that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men” and “that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.” It is time for Americans to act to restore our free nation while we have a few breaths of freedom left.

More From Daily Signal: