What do we call the United States today? Surely no longer free in the classic sense of the word. How can the nation be considered "free" when the government takes billions of dollars on a whim from taxpayers to use to prop up failing businesses?

So, how do we characterize the United States today and where, as a nation, are we going? Yuri Maltsev, an economics professor at Carthage College in Wisconsin, has some ideas.

"The US today resembles that of Russia in 1917, Cuba in 1959 or China in 1948," he says in a recent essay.

That is an interesting statement indeed, coming from a man who in a previous life worked as an economist under Gorbachev in the Soviet Union. It is definitely food for thought. Read his essay here.

Change. That was the rallying cry from the Obama campaign. Of course, it was mere rhetoric. Need proof? Consider this...

The Bush administration used every crisis, particularly 9/11, to change fundamentally some aspects of the federal government and its relationship to the citizens. Some examples: the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, warrantless wiretaps, DHS, torture of detainees, rendition.

From the Bush administration's actions, it is clear that they believed that a crisis should never be wasted, for times of crisis offer opportunities for change, usually from conditions of greater freedom and smaller government to less freedom and bigger government.

If you think the Obama administration represents "change" from this manner of operation, you're wrong.

From the New York Times, comes this quote from Rahm Emanuel, Obama's new Chief of Staff:

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” Mr. Emanuel said in an interview on Sunday. “They are opportunities to do big things.”

A portent for the future? An ill-omen? Or just empty rhetoric? We'll have to wait and see, but one thing is certain:

In most things, the Obama administration represents a continuation of sorts.

The kind of change we really need, back to the Constitution, is not likely to be part of the new President's plan.

The attitudes of presidents past toward the Constitution is examined by Judge Andrew Napolitano.

In an October 29 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal online, Napolitano shares his thoughts on the almost continuous expansion of power in all three branches of government from John Adams to the present president.

The Framers of the Constitution, he said, would not likely recognize the present form of government that has evolved over time. Citing several examples of the expansion of presidential power via the criminalization of political speech, suspension of habeas corpus, compelled support for war, warrantless wiretapping, etc., he rightly calls such expansion unconstitutional, diametrically opposed, as it is, to the wording in that document.

Even the air we breath, our drinking water, the gallons of water that flush our toilets, driving speeds, and words we speak out loud are regulated through congressional legislation. FDR authorized an unconstitutional central planning program within the field of agriculture and in doing so laid claim that the Constitution was “quaint,” and in essence outdated.

But Napolitano points out that there is no power delegated to the federal government to enter or control the marketplace. He notes that when government does enter the marketplace, it will indeed “favor itself over its competition.”

Explaining that states cannot interfere with private contracts, as in the case of mortgages, that no government can take away property -- real estate and stock shares are private property -- without due and just compensation, and government cannot release one from an obligation to pay one’s debts, as in the case of failing companies, he goes on to say that these are risks one assumes freely, and that have consequences in a real and free market.

On the recent bailout he says:

The $700 billion bailout of large banks that Congress recently enacted runs afoul of virtually all these constitutional principles. It directly benefits a few, not everyone. We already know that the favored banks that received cash from taxpayers have used it to retire their own debt. It is private welfare. It violates the principle of equal protection: Why help Bank of America and not Lehman Brothers? It permits federal ownership of assets or debt that puts the government at odds with others in the free market. It permits the government to tilt the playing field to favor its patrons (like J.P. Morgan Chase, in which it has invested taxpayer dollars) and to disfavor those who compete with its patrons (like the perfectly lawful hedge funds which will not have the taxpayers relieve their debts).

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updates:

Chuck Baldwin points out the partisan hypocrisy of calling for selective enforcement of the Constitution.

JBS Commentary: Lawsuits are misdirected efforts.

The New American commentary: The Constitution is worth defending

Background on the issue

It is difficult to weigh in on the issue of the "natural born" citizenship status of Barack Obama without sounding like a GOP partisan or a sore loser supporter of Hillary Clinton.

We do however want to make people aware of the Constitutional crisis that would ensue if, after November 4th, it was determined that president-elect Obama was found short of meeting the strict application of "natural-born" citizenship status. In such a case, we would be presented with a situation far more serious than in the contested 2000 election.