On Nov. 6 of last year, the country narrowly voted for a self-described centrist to be president. At the same time, it handed Congress to the Democratic Party in such an exquisitely slender fashion that it would not be clear until the beginning of January whether control of the federal government was to be divided or unified. Once the “moderate” president was sworn in, he and his barely-in-the-majority party proposed restructuring the country from top to bottom, making permanent alterations to the constitutional order if need be. Finally, President Joe Biden has embraced his supporters’ and liberal pundits’ pronouncements that he can and should be “another FDR or LBJ.”

To the historically literate, it all should be nothing less than baffling.