"[A] foolish man devours all he has." -- Proverbs 21:20

In 1776, when Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, Great Britain was faced with a monumental sovereign debt crisis that would not be seen again until the 21st Century -- when the U.S. finds itself with a $12.4-trillion national debt, rising to 100 percent of the Gross Domestic Product within a few years. The last chapter of his opus magnum, "Of Public Debts," was dedicated to persuading the British Parliament of the calamity the British Empire was faced with. And, alas, they did not listen.

Reading through it today, one might easily surmise that Adam Smith, the Scottish economist and Enlightenment political philosopher, was actually a time-traveler who had foreknowledge of the crisis that faces the world today. For the crisis he describes in exquisite, haunting detail eerily suggests the calamity that now threatens the economic survival of the modern world -- and threatens to enslave future generations for decades to come.

Ominous developments in America have been a long time coming, in part precipitated by "we the people" -- a citizenry that has been asleep at the wheel for too long. And while there have been wake-up calls, we have failed to heed the warnings.

Just consider the state of our nation:

We're encased in what some are calling an electronic concentration camp. The government continues to amass data files on more and more Americans. Everywhere we go, we are watched: at the banks, at the grocery store, at the mall, crossing the street. This loss of privacy is symptomatic of the growing surveillance being carried out on average Americans. Such surveillance gradually poisons the soul of a nation, transforming us from one in which we're presumed innocent until proven guilty to one in which everyone is a suspect and presumed guilty. Thus, the question that must be asked is: Can freedom in the United States flourish in an age when the physical movements, individual purchases, conversations, and meetings of every citizen are under constant surveillance by private companies and government agencies?

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." - James Madison

Over the course of his first year in office, Barack Obama has shown himself to be a skillful and savvy politician, saying the things Americans want to hear while stealthily and inexorably moving forward the government's agenda of centralized power. For example, in one breath, Obama pays lip service to the need for greater transparency in government, while in another, he issues an executive order that will result in even more government secrecy.

He is aided in this Machiavellian mindset by a trusting populace inclined to take him at his word and a mainstream media seemingly loath to criticize him or scrutinize his actions too closely. A perfect example of this is the media's relative lack of scrutiny over Obama's recent transformation of Executive Order (EO) 12425 from a document that constitutionally limits the domestic activities of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to one that establishes it as an autonomous police agency within the U.S.

"A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls -- with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship." -- Ayn Rand, "The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus," 1965

The Republicans, it seems, often cannot do anything right -- and, now, we are hearing that directly from the mouth of no less an authority than the chair of the Republican National Committee himself. Michael Steele, in his new book Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda, is convinced that Republicans have "screwed up" for the most part since Ronald Reagan was president.

Well, there's certainly no doubt of that. From Bush Senior's violation of his now-famous "Read my lips: no new taxes" pledge to Bush Junior's bogus "weapons of mass destruction" invasion of Iraq, the Republicans have presided over, and been directly responsible for, some of the most explosive and imperialistic growth of government in history -- while, it should be added, enjoying a majority in both houses of Congress from 2003 through 2007.