Between financial rescue missions and the economic stimulus program, federal spending in the United States accounts for a bigger share of the nation's economy – about 26% -- that at any time since World War II. Today, the president made a series of addresses explaining that this governmental role is temporary, unless Congress and Wall Street fail to change the fundamental rules governing the financial system in order to prevent a repeat of the excesses that caused the crisis in the first place. I doubt very much if the financial institutions, let alone the interlocking global corporations with whom they work, will accept such changes. They haven't given much indication of doing so in the last year, and it's pretty much business as usual everywhere you look. This means that the federal government, having given the corporate world a chance to pull in its talons and to try to return to its role as a good and productive member of the community, will have to take an even bigger part than it has since last September.

During World War II, the United States (and most of the rest of the world) was engaged in a struggle for world domination. The enemy at the time was the combined military (and growing economic) power of countries rigidly controlled by a political and economic class that had no interest in the inefficiencies of democracy or socialism, of individual freedom or free spirits. Political repression in the name of the state was only part of a program to run society as efficiently as possible from a strongly centralized business model. Hate, mistrust, and fear were used to rally a citizenry that would blindly follow its leaders, while at the same time meekly surrendering whatever decency and rights to free expression they might have once possessed in exchange for a promise of security and predictability (and, quite possibly, purity). The United States came dangerously close to adopting a similar model of governance to more efficiently manage its war effort, and even though critics of the Franklin Roosevelt administration to this very day misrepresent what he did for perceived political advantage, it was only because Roosevelt was at his very core a democrat (purposeful use of the small "d") that capitalism and democracy survived the experience.

Today, we are engaged in a very similar global confrontation. This time, the enemy does not deploy tanks and bombers and battalions of infantrymen around the planet in order to seize territory. Occupation of territory is not its primary goal. But with operating budgets nearing those of the most advanced nation-states, and dwarfing the budgets of most countries in the world, they will not hesitate to employ mercenary forces to do their bidding. They are additionally finding increasing success in using state military forces to accomplish their aims. These people make and sell things, and they seek to monopolize and control everything related to the operations central to their endeavor … from resource extraction and manufacturing or production, to distribution, advertising, sales, employment, law-making, and even influencing or controlling government itself.

Profit and unrestrained growth are their two central ambitions. They ruthlessly exploit everything and everyone in order to accomplish those goals. They are literally transforming the planet in their haste to extract raw materials or to turn otherwise unproductive regions into something more useful … for them. They are poisoning the air, the water, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and even the toys we give to our children in order to make stuff faster, cheaper, and in greater quantities. Their shortsighted actions are causing the atmosphere to heat up, and they will stoop at nothing to stop anyone who tries to place limits on their short-term objectives. They will even spend billions of dollars to prevent us from enacting legislation to make them spend those billions of dollars for better health care.

Ironically, most of them are motivated by a sense that they are doing the right thing … that the world will be a better place if everyone can get everything they need for as little money as possible. They even operate, I think, under the false assumption that the very technology they use to destroy the planet and make it uninhabitable will soon provide secrets to help them save it. But in this sense, they are no different from the fascist dictators of Germany, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Union and China that brought us World War II. Those leaders, too, thought that their actions would end world struggle and bring a lasting peace into which efficient state-run systems would meet the needs of passive world population.

Well … as in World War II, it is time for the American people … heck, for people all over the world … to unite in an effort to stuff these petty tyrants, these well-heeled gentlemen who operate behind closed doors and have never met a group of citizens they didn't think they had the right to control, back into their boxes. The same governmental commitment that was necessary to win the Second World War is needed to wage battle against these would-be-conquerors. Instead of just telling Wall Street to shape up so the government will back off, Barack Obama should be firing a warning shot over the bow of the corporate world. He should tell them, in no uncertain terms, that they are not our masters; instead, we, the People, decide what is best for us. He should instantly nationalize any company that does not immediately cut the salary and bonuses of executive officers, that refuses to take the steps necessary to clean up the world around their places of operations, or who refuses to pay a decent salary to its employees. He should next lead an effort to make it illegal for corporations to participate, in any way, in the electoral process. And finally, he should bring incorporation statutes as they existed just after the War of 1812 to the public's attention, and then lead an effort to re-adopt them all.

There is nothing wrong with doing business. There is nothing wrong with making a profit while doing a necessary business. But businesses, and the individuals who own or operate them, should not be making the rules that govern us all, nor should they have inordinate influence over those laws (or the lawmakers). Business exists to serve our needs, not the other way around.