It is, for example, at least conceivable that the British automobile industry might be able to supply a car cheaper and better than cars used to be in the United States if everyone in England were made to use the same kind of car or that the use of electricity for all purposes could be made cheaper than coal or gas if everybody could be made to use only electricity.

I realized in this weeks reading that today’s statist is the new central planner.  Their goals are the same, their place in time is the only thing that has changed.  The statist believes the government can solve almost any problems put before us.  The central planner believes the government can better organized our lives than we can.  Both believe that the only way to a utopia is through heavy interference from the govenrment.

Is there any doubt that the President is a central planner?  I am sure there are a number of posts here at Red State that have pointed out his statist tendencies.  The health care bill, cap and trade, and the financial bill from this week are all examples of legislation our President is very proud of and that heavily interfere in an individuals freedom of choice.

To take this argument one step forward, in the reading on The Road to Serfdom, I believe Hayek is trying to argue that socialism leads to fascism and tyranny.  A society can’t just stop at a “beneficial socialism” because central planners (or statists) will see more and more problems that need the governments benevolent hand.  Fixing these problems through government interference will continue to suck away the liberties of its citizens.  President Obama has also shown this in the last few weeks.  Not happy to settle with the courts determining if BP was guilty of crimes in the Gulf, he forced them to set aside $20 Billion for the White House to manage (despite what he claims in public) to help “those affected by the spill in the gulf”. The President has no authority to do this under the Constitution. Yet, President Obama believed the government had to act and act quickly.  The government had already driven the price of BP stock down by bad mouthing the company daily, and by threatening to kick their a@@.  Why, we had to get the money before the company went bankrupt.  To wait for the courts, and to go about suing BP, would simply take to long.  The government had to act, and it had to act now.

The scariest thing about this is how many people believe what the President did was right. Central Planning has come a long way in the United States, and I am worried about how far it can go before we stop it.