Joe Biden is determined to ‘Leave No Washington Sham Behind’ before his presidency ends on January 20. On Saturday, Biden presented Presidential Medals of Freedom to a rogue’s gallery of shysters, donors, bootlickers, as well as some innocent bystanders and dead people.

Biden presented failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a Medal of Freedom—perhaps for her crusade to Make Censorship Great Again. Hillary has long been one of America’s foremost censorship advocates. In 2022, she wailed that “tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability” and endorsed European Union legislation to obliterate free speech. She wants the same muzzle slapped on the “deplorables” in this nation.

Biden presented a Medal of Freedom to George Soros—perhaps for his lavish spending to elect prosecutors who would Make Shoplifting Great Again—by letting shoplifters loot to their heart’s desire. OK, only $900 per store visit in California until recently, but you get the gist. The New York Times noted, “After weeks in which Mr. Trump has showcased Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, as a member of his inner circle, Mr. Biden appeared to want to say: We have our billionaires, too.”

Anna Wintour received a Medal of Freedom for twice heroically placing Jill Biden on the cover of Vogue.

Bill Nye got a Medal of Freedom—perhaps for his hysterical condemnations of anyone who refused to get injected with the COVID vaccine that Biden falsely claimed would protect people from COVID infections.

A Medal of Freedom went to Tim Gill, who, as The New York Times reported, “has been among the most important donors in the gay community, working to push L.G.B.T.Q. rights first in his home state of Colorado and then nationally. He gave $355,000 to the Biden Victory Fund during the 2020 race.” Why not print out a million Medals of Freedom and send one to everyone who donated $5 to the Biden or Kamala Harris campaigns?

According to The New York Times, Medals of Freedom are “seen by historians as a final use of the presidential megaphone to say to Americans: This is whom we should admire and emulate.” Biden “conferred one of the nation’s highest honors on core members of the political, financial and celebrity establishment of which he has long been a part,” the Times reported. Does this mean that we will never again have to hear Uncle Joe’s BS about being part of the middle class? I was disappointed that Biden didn’t give a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Vice President Harris for her pathbreaking service allegedly making french fries at McDonald’s.

Four years ago, a Washington Post editorial condemned Donald Trump for giving Medals of Freedom to a football coach and a couple congressman and harumped: “Thankfully, the Oval Office will soon be occupied by a president—himself a rightful recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom—who understands and will honor the traditions of the presidency.”

Actually, Medals of Freedom are one of the cheapest ways for rulers to reward their lackeys. The names of many of the medal recipients look like confirmation of the famous passage from Friedrich Hayek’s chapter in The Road to Serfdom, “Why the Worst Get on Top.”

Presidential Medals of Freedom have long been far more squalid than The Washington Post recognizes—in part because the Post cheered the wars that spurred many of the most tainted awards.

President Lyndon Johnson distributed a bucket of Medals of Freedom to his Vietnam War architects and enablers, including Ellsworth Bunker, Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk, Clark Clifford, Averell Harriman, Cyrus Vance, Walt Rostow, and McGeorge Bundy. When he gave the award to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, he declared, “You have understood that while freedom depends on strength, strength itself depends on the determination of free people.” In reality, Johnson treasured McNamara for his ability to help deceive Americans about how the United States was failing in Vietnam. McNamara’s lies helped vastly expand an unnecessary conflict and cost more than a million American and Vietnamese lives. The Washington Post editorial page didn’t complain about those awards, because the Post avidly supported that war. (After exiting the Pentagon, McNamara joined the Post’s board of directors.)

President Richard Nixon inherited the Vietnam War and expanded and intensified U.S. bombing of Indochina. Nixon gave Medals of Freedom to Pentagon chief Melvin Laird (who helped shroud the war’s continuing failure) and his secretary of state, William Rogers. President Gerald Ford gave the Medal of Freedom to his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and his chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld—two persons notorious for tarnishing the honor of the United States in foreign affairs. The Post didn’t denounce the Medal of Freedom for Kissinger; instead, they made the Great Deceiver a columnist.

President George H.W. Bush blanketed Medals of Freedom on top officials involved with the first Gulf War, including Norman Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, James Baker, Dick Cheney, and Brent Scowcroft. The Post didn’t complain about those awards, because that was another war that the Post editorial page whooped up all the way.

The Global War on Terror made Presidential Medals of Freedom even more craven. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich observed, “After 9/11, the Medal of Freedom went from being irrelevant to somewhere between whimsical and fraudulent. Any correlation with freedom as such, never more than tenuous in the first place, dissolved altogether.” After he deceived America into supporting an attack on Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush conferred Medals of Freedom on his Iraq War team, including CIA chief George “Slam Dunk” Tenet, Iraq viceroy Paul Bremer, General Peter Pace, General Richard Myers, and General Tommy Franks. The Post was outraged, because—no, wait, the Post editorial page thunderously supported that war, too.

Presidential Medals of Freedom encourage Americans to view their personal freedom as the result of government intervention—if not as a bequest from the commander in chief. Ironically, the individual who poses the greatest threat to freedom has sole discretion to designate the purported best friends of freedom. The media usually provides gushing coverage of the award ceremonies, never mentioning that the arbitrary power of the supreme leader was why the Founding Fathers fought a revolution.

No president can be trusted to designate the true champions of freedom. At a minimum, Presidential Medals of Freedom should be suspended until presidents cease acting like czars or elective dictators. Or, in the interests of candor, the current awards could be replaced by citations for presidential bootlicking above and beyond the call of duty.