1. On November 7, GOP Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia labeled President-elect Barack Obama a "Marxist" in a talk delivered to a local club in his northeast Georgia district. "In my opinion, we've elected a Marxist to be president of the United States," he said. Broun pointed to a speech given by Obama last July where the then-candidate recommended formation of a "civilian national security force" to relieve the military of its obligation to defend the nation. "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun explained. He added that he expects Obama will move to ban gun ownership. Qualifying his remarks, Broun stated that Obama's "policies" calling for larger government and sharing the wealth are Marxist. His accusations elicited a spirited defense of the President-elect from a club member.

2. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown used a recent speaking engagement to call on the U.S., Britain and Europe to create "a truly global society." Employing such phrases as "new world order" and "international order" during his remarks, the British leader made clear his intention to lead the world toward internationalism as the way to solve the current economic crisis. He wants action to enhance the power of the International Monetary Fund while creating a global trade arrangement. His message stressed the need for nations to be "internationalist not protectionist; interventionist not neutral; progressive not reactive; and forward looking not frozen by events." Mr. Brown seems not to have learned from history that placing such power in any single repository guarantees that it will be used to create tyranny.

3. The Heritage Foundation, considered by neoconservatives and Establishment favorites as an important dispenser of conservative wisdom, has recently announced the results of its investigation into claims about the existence of plans to build a "NAFTA superhighway and a "North American Union." After conducting "extensive independent analysis" garnered from "friends on Capitol Hill and in the Bush administration" as well as "from news outlets such as The Washington Post and The Washington Times," and from "our policy experts here at Heritage," this Establishment-favored organization concluded that the rumors are "baseless."

4. Many liberal commentators have placed the blame for our nation's current economic difficulties on "laissez-faire capitalism," which they never define. George Reisman, Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics, insists that the term should be defined as "private ownership of the means of production [with government] limited to the protection of the individual's rights against the initiation of physical force." He would welcome a return to such a system. He states: "There are presently 15 federal cabinet departments, nine of which exist for the very purpose of respectively interfering with housing, transportation, healthcare, education, energy, mining, agriculture, labor, and commerce." Claiming that these intrusions are the underlying cause of America's economic travails, he adds, "Under laissez-faire capitalism, 11 of the 15 cabinet departments would cease to exist and only the departments of justice, defense, state and treasury would remain."