The left is screaming that President Donald Trump is on some kind of ideological crusade.

Some recent headlines: “Trump and Musk’s Purge Isn’t Cost Cutting — It’s a Coup”; “Doge is About Ideology and Mindless Budget Cutting”; “Elon Musk’s Indiscriminate Carnage”; “Dems Must Stand Up Against the Bully in the White House.”

It’s sort of like labeling a company CEO ideological because he is driven to keep his company profitable and competitive.

One column in The Guardian says Trump is “lacerating the structures of U.S. democracy.”

In other words, protecting taxpayers and running the country efficiently is anti-democratic. But forgiving $189 billion of student loan debt — done under Biden — and dumping it all on taxpayers is not. Or government spending trillions and larding it all onto the federal debt rather than raising taxes is not.

The Congressional Budget Office just issued its latest 10-year outlook, and it is not a pretty picture regarding today’s economic realities of the nation.

It forecasts that the federal debt will grow from 100% of GDP in 2025 to 118% of GDP by 2035, the highest in American history.

CBO forecasts GDP growth over this same 10-year period to average 1.8% per year. It is not ideology to point out that this is pathetic and dangerous.

It’s about one-half the 3.5% per year that the U.S. economy grew over the half century from 1950 to 2000.

Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane has pointed out that if the U.S. economy grew 2% per year from 1950 to 2000 instead of 3.5% per year, per capita income would have been less than half what it was in 2000.

Ideology is about words — slogans with no reality check. Business is about numbers, measurement and performance.

The failure of socialism, the failure of societies with oversized intrusive government and the failure of ideas like social justice falling into the realm of politics is politicians seize more and more power and take less and less responsibility. When government expands at the expense of individual freedom, productivity and creativity suffer, and economic growth shrinks. These are not words. They are quantitative results.

In a recent Pew Research survey, 74% of Americans said they feel that our children will be worse off financially than their parents. These are Americans living in a country with government bigger and more intrusive than that of their forebears.

The Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada, publishes annually an Economic Freedom of the World report.

Fraser measures economic freedom in 165 countries around the world. For every country, they measure the size of government, the extent of regulation, the extent to which the legal system works to protect personal freedom and private property, the extent to which every country is careful to not debase its national currency, and the extent to which it allows citizens and firms to trade freely internationally.

Every nation is quantitively scored in each of these areas and given a score for overall economic freedom.

The top 25% of countries in overall economic freedom scores have average per capita income — $52,777 — 7.6 times higher than average per capita income of the lowest 25% — $6,968.

These are numbers, measurements, performance. Not ideology.

It’s much harder to diet and lose weight than to overeat and get fat. It’s much harder to sober up than to drink in excess.

But every individual, every country, sooner or later, must deal with reality.

Our country has lost its way.

Those on the left who are verbally assaulting the new Trump administration are the ideologues. They are in love with empty words and bankrupt ideas.

Fortunately, we now have tough and courageous leadership willing to do the very hard work of getting a great country that has lost its way back on track.

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