It's socialism any way you slice it

The sense of inevitabiliy and sighing by John Q. Public in accepting the federal bail-out of financial institutions and the economy is breathtaking. The mass socialism being foisted on us by the pols, and our meek acceptance of it, is unprecedented.

You'd hope people would fight if Vladimir Putin marched onto U.S. soil and did the the same thing to us, imposing his collectivist will by military might. The old saying is that there are two ways to rob a man--with a gun or with a fountain pen.

Our freedom is being taken by the latter, and yet there is barely a whimper.

The notion that only government can save us from ourselves has never been generally accepted before. Today, everyone is laying down and saying "kick me one more time, it feels good."

The Weimar Republic in Germany and numerous other governments have fallen, and systems came crashing down, by diluting the soup of the currency with the government printing press. But that's what we're doing now, and no one seems to be the wiser.

It is like Nikita Krushchev, the grizzled shoe-pounding Soviet dictator, said in the 1960s, "We'll bury you, and some capitalist will hand us the shovel."

We're doing that to ourselves right now, right before our very eyes--and no one is lifting a finger to protest or complain. We've seen the enemy, the old warrior said, and it is us.