Obama is a leveler, Charles Krauthammer writes, and so – 

The credit crisis will pass and the auto overcapacity will sort itself out one way or the other. The reordering of the American system will come not from these temporary interventions, into which Obama has reluctantly waded. It will come from Obama’s real agenda: his holy trinity of health care, education and energy. Out of these will come a radical extension of the welfare state, social and economic leveling in the name of fairness, and a massive increase in the size, scope and reach of government.

If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: "fair," leveled and social democratic. 

 From an article (find it all here) in Front Page Magazine:

The Obama administration has turned the Mexican government’s gun-violence problem into a “blame-America-first” crisis in order to advance a gun-control campaign that will be spearheaded by the likes of Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton. The gun-control lobby fully understands this and consequently has lauded Obama’s quest to prevent civilians from obtaining so-called “assault weapons” (which, as noted above, are often nothing more than semi-automatic shotguns). American citizens at large also understand this instinctively, as evidenced by the frenetic pace at which they have been purchasing guns and ammunition ever since Obama was elected President last November.

When Hillary Clinton laments that America’s “incapacity” to limit gun access has “unfair[ly]” led people to hold “the Mexican government and people responsible” for the violence of its drug cartels, she is merely laying the groundwork for further encroachment on Americans’ right to bear arms. Her modus operandi is to depict the U.S. as the cause of gun violence in Mexico, and to characterize her mission as a pure-hearted quest to save innocent lives.

But in reality, the Clinton-Obama approach will have a number of undesirable consequences. It will hurt the United States by imposing ever-stricter gun-control laws, thereby making it increasingly difficult for law-abiding Americans to protect themselves. It will be ineffective in curbing the violence of the Mexican drug cartels, who clearly can obtain the guns they desire from a host of sources. And, ultimately, it will hurt Mexico by failing to pressure the Mexican government to acknowledge the real cause of its problems and to institute meaningful reform.

 The Heritage Foundation comments on the G-20 talks:

From the beginning, the Obama Administration and European Union leaders have been clear about what they wanted from Thursday’s meeting. Obama wants European nations to engage in more deficit spending (even though they have to pay significantly higher interest rates) to help jump start the global economy. EU leaders want firm commitments from the Obama Administration to agree to global financial regulation. Slowly but surely the two sides have come together.

For example, on March 14 German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would not enact any further economic stimulus until the first round had time to take effect. But just twelve days later Merkel injected 82 billion euros ($110 billion) into the German economy, the largest bout of European stimulus spending to date.

Returning the favor, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner signaled the Obama Administration was more than willing to submit to global financial regulations telling reporters: “Our hope is that we can work with Europe on a global framework, a global infrastructure which has appropriate global oversight.” This is just about the worst agreement that the summit could possibly have produced. It’s the worst of both worlds: more so-called stimulus spending for everyone, a globalization of Europe’s slow-growth economic model, and a subversion of U.S. sovereignty by a new global super-regulator. Heritage analyst Theodore Bromund explains:

Europe’s call for a global regulator with a mandate to ensure the stability and balance of the world economy would be a tremendous step toward forcing its slow growth model on the rest of the world. … These policies are a return to the concept of one size fits all and to the belief that politicians and unelected bureaucrats on the global level can effectively manage the world’s economy. Europeans should ask why, if this model works so well, it failed to stop the build-up of systemic risk in Europe.

Instead of more deficit spending and increased bureaucratic control G-20 nations should be working to fight rising protectionism worldwide and addressing the common entitlement crises that they all share.

 Phyllis Schlafly writes (see the whole column here):

On the eve of the opening of the G20 Summit in London on April 2, Geithner expanded on his views for "new rules of the game." He said, "Our hope is that we can work with Europe on a global framework, a global infrastructure which has appropriate global oversight, so we don’t have a Balkanized system at the global level, like we had at the national level."

It’s no wonder that commentators are starting to refer to a possible world currency as the "globo." …

Surely the Obama administration must know that loose talk about a global currency is not acceptable to the American people.

Ever since President George W. Bush went to Waco in 2005 to meet with Vicente Fox and announced the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the Internet and the blogs have been buzzing with speculation about a plan to put the United States into a North American Union along with a common currency already labeled the amero. Government officials and various elites have been issuing impassioned denials that any such plan exists.

But now we have it from our highest financial authority, Geithner, that a world currency is on the table of international discussions. And he implies that we shouldn’t be surprised because it is "evolutionary" in our existing financial "architecture."

That is how the Europeans were tricked into the European Union by their governments, mostly without any vote by the people. The EU started out as just a trade agreement, but it evolved into a political union that ultimately replaced national currencies with a common currency called the euro.

Here’s a first-hand account of the goings-on in that devilish covern, the deceptively named UN Human Rights Council (read more here):    

The Inquisition is back, and this time it has set up shop at the United Nations. Consider the resolution “Combating the Defamation of Religions” passed by a comfortable margin last week at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva (and passed by the General Assembly every year since 2005).

The resolution decries a “campaign of defamation of religions,” intensifying since 2001, in which “the media” and “extremist organizations” are “perpetuating stereotypes about certain religions” (read: Islam) and “sacred persons” (read: Muhammad). It urges UN member states to provide redress “within their respective legal and constitutional systems.” Capitalizing on cartoon riots and Western anxieties over the excesses of the war on terror, the language conflates peaceful criticism of Islam with anti-Muslim bigotry and seeks to stifle speech in the name of “respect for religions and beliefs.”

In my capacity as UN representative for the secularist think tank Center for Inquiry, I spent a surreal two weeks at the Council participating in the negotiations over the language of this resolution, sponsored by a 57-member intergovernmental body called the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or OIC.

After one of these sessions, I found my way into a private conversation with the chair of the negotiations, a delegate for the government of Pakistan. We were soon joined by the representatives of the US, Canada, and the European Union. There we were, “the West,” standing at the front of an empty conference room, gingerly trying to reason with this feisty, yet solicitous, Pakistani diplomat.

The American delegate noted that, “History shows that criminalizing speech doesn’t work,” when the chair interrupted her to propose a case he hoped would hit home. Suppose someone were to say that the Virgin Mary was not a virgin but a promiscuous woman? What could be the purpose of this statement, he asked, except mockery?

Canada pointed out that ‘defamation’ has a specific legal meaning—involving the spread of falsehoods that harm some individual—which is not applicable to cases of religiously offensive speech. For starters, religious personages like Mary and Muhammad are not alive, so they’re not, legally speaking, persons who can be harmed. Undeterred by the Canadian’s reductio ad absurdum, the Pakistani delegate responded that this is precisely why we need the authorities to protect them against insult: they are not around to defend themselves.

Never mind how one would demonstrate, in a court of law, the falsity of a scurrilous rumor about a far-distant and long-gone (and quite possibly never-there) religious figure. Ironically, all the world’s heretics could never do more damage to the reputations of gods, saints, and prophets than has already been done by their devoted followers. The odd thing about God is that no matter how much He is slandered, his livelihood never seems to suffer as a result. One of the perks of being a necessary being, I guess, is that you never lose your job no matter how unpopular you become. In that respect God may be the ultimate bureaucrat. I didn’t bring this up.

It would all be absurdist comedy if it didn’t have such grave consequences. Defamation of religions resolutions are far worse than useless; they are a direct threat to human rights. While they will have no impact on blasphemy in western democracies (which already censor themselves far too often), they serve to legitimize the suppression of peaceful political and religious dissent elsewhere—first and foremost in the Islamic states themselves.

 

 Mark Steyn points out:

Writing in the Chicago Tribune last week, President Barack Obama fell back on one of his favorite rhetorical tics: "But I also know," he wrote, "that we need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people."

Really? For the moment, it’s a "false choice" mainly in the sense that he’s not offering it: "a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism" is not on the menu, which leaves "an oppressive government-run economy" as pretty much the only game in town. 

 Here comes world-wide socialism, enforced by world government.

From Canada Free Press: 

 A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations "information note" on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an "effective framework" for dealing with global warming.

One of our editors, C. Gee, comments:

 Is it unAmerican to want Obama to fail?

 There is a storm in the teacup of the right blogosphere. Charles Johnson of LGF, whom we greatly admire and usually agree with, opines that Republicans are wrong to say they want Obama – who has called himself  ‘The Ones we have been waiting for’ –  to fail, as the vast middle of the nation will hear this as wanting America to fail. These people, apparently, do not want any American president to fail.

Well, it is time the vast middle of the nation opened its ears and really listened to what is being said. If they had done that during 2008, they would not have voted in a president that wants America to fail. The vast middles may have liked The Ones’ positive message of hope and change. But his actual policies are already undermining this nation, preparing the way for the international socialist utopia. 

The left wanted Bush to fail, because they wanted America to fail. They still do. Wanting The Ones to fail is not tit-for-tat, or descending to the Left’s level. It is a  principled political stance, whether articulated or not.

We want The Ones to fail so that America can survive and protect what is left of civilization in this increasingly nasty world. And it is senselessly prissy to draw a distinction between saying we want The Ones to fail and saying we want his policies to fail. The Ones has no political existence other than in his policies.

Some pills should not be sugar-coated, some messages should not be massaged.

We draw our readers’ attention to the comments made by ‘roger in florida’ on our post below, The budding American dictatorship.

We do not agree with all that he says. We do not think that one should put the needs of society above one’s own. We think it is when individuals put their own needs first that an economy works best. Reversing the Marxist formula, we say: ‘From each according to his need, to each according to his ability.’ A person working for his own gain (within the law) will have to provide what others will buy; how high a reward he gets will depend on how well he carries out the task he has chosen.  

But on the whole we value the thoughts in these comments. They are intensely pessimistic, painfully enlightening, and – we think with sorrow –  all too probably right in their predictions.