History shows that great changes (I mean "great" in the sense of huge or tumultuous, not necessarily good) are almost invariably accompanied by great changes in political rhetoric. Barack Obama not only wants to be remembered as a man who brought great change to America, he is well on his way to having done that.

Considering what he was reported to have said yesterday, I'm not sure people can begin to appreciate the enormous nature of the change which is coming. Americans have a tendency to take what they have for granted and assume that everything will be OK. An entitlement to an affluent lifestyle and a free economy is taken for granted as a birthright, as something that could never be taken away.

Again, the president's words:

we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don't reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can't get control of the deficit.

So, one option is just to do nothing. We say, well, it's too expensive for us to make some short-term investments in health care. We can't afford it. We've got this big deficit. Let's just keep the health care system that we've got now.

Along that trajectory, we will see health care cost as an overall share of our federal spending grow and grow and grow and grow until essentially it consumes everything...

Except Barack Obama hasn't the slightest intention of ending these entitlements. As he says, using the high future cost of the entitlements as an excuse, he wants to change "the health care system that we've got now" into something else. There is no way to do this without socialized health care and mandatory rationing. While it would be one thing to mandate such policies for citizens on Medicare and Medicaid, he wants to do it to everyone else too.

When most people say "there isn't enough money" to pay for something, the logical meaning is that therefore, they aren't going to buy it. That is not what Obama means. The assumption behind his "there isn't enough money" is that there should be, there has to be, and there will be. If there has to be, there are only two ways: printing money, or taking it from citizens through socialism.

Rhetorically speaking, I think we have reached that point of no-return I have discussed, only it happened a lot faster than I thought it would back in September:

What worries me is that the closer we get to full-blown socialism, the more the word becomes politically unmentionable. Even discussing an end to the entitlement system is politically taboo. This puts politicians who might want to do something about it in a very difficult position.

It's all too easy for me to shoot off my mouth. I'm not running for anything, and I couldn't get elected to anything. Not unless I moved to one of those outlying areas where people go to imagine that they're fleeing socialism, but even there I'd be unelectable, because I refuse to respect things like the war against condoms on bananas. (So for now I can just shoot off my mouth against socialism in the hope that its final triumph might be postponed.)

As Jim Kearney pointed out, Barack Obama (at least in the context of abortion) likes to talk the talk:

...He wants to change the tone, and he calls for mutual respect. He wants civility!

The president -- let's call him that, even though a scornfully uttered surname was the most respectful appellation certain parties accorded his predecessor -- the president is praying for a "presumption of good faith" about his political opponents.

If his followers are listening and taking this seriously, Republicans are in for even more serious trouble.

Imagine a Left where MoveOn and Kos and Keith and all their spinners and yakkers suddenly turned rhetorically even-tempered. Imagine Carville as gentlemanly as Calvin Borel, or Howard Dean speaking with the calm, measured assurance of an NPR anchor.

Meanwhile, the Right would still be represented by (let's be honest now) shrill, antagonistic, accusatory, and sometimes downright snarling Savages and grating Great Ones. Double digit electoral votes for life my friends, that would be our fate.

When it comes to political rhetoric, we've got to go to school on this guy, this eloquent Mr. President. He's taking about style, saying he will argue with "passion and conviction", while still extending a "presumption of good faith" through "fair-minded words." We need to do that. We need to sound like that.

One is that abortion is an undeniable reality, freely acknowledged to be a fact by both sides. Socialism in the United States has historically been denied by its proponents, so much so that its ugly little closet has been a been a built in feature from the start. In the words of Socialist Upton Sinclair,

"The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label."

The other major difference between the abortion debate and the socialism debate is that abortion is by definition chosen, and never imposed. It is thus very easy for people to duck the debate as not really applying to them. Not so with socialism. There is no way to opt out.

We can't not have a debate -- and we cannot have a "debate that will not speak its name" over something this serious, and this potentially devastating to the American birthright.

What really shocks me is that so many people -- responsible people like business leaders who are most affected and who should know better -- are afraid to have this debate:

at a neighborhood barbecue, a businessman who ran a manufacturing concern spent a good quarter of an hour railing against Obama's plans to nationalize health care. He had informed himself about the pending legislation in minute detail. He had devoted hours to studying the effects on hospitals and HMOs. He had become utterly convinced that Obama's plans would harm millions.

Well, then, one of his listeners asked, why had the businessman failed to say any of this in public?

The businessman paused, astonished.

"Isn't it obvious?" he replied. "I have an obligation to my shareholders. Keep your head down. Don't speak out. In this climate, that's just being responsible."

Few are that afraid to say what they think about abortion. Yet this is socialism. As the author of the above concludes,

"This is America," Asness concludes. "We have a free enterprise system that has worked spectacularly for us for two hundred plus years. When it fails, it fixes itself. Most importantly, it is not an owned lackey of the Oval Office to be scolded for disobedience by the president."

I'd like to have a polite debate over socialism based on mutual respect and civility, of course. But considering that "violent revolutions have been fought over less wrenching economic changes than this one promises to be," what's with the idea of dispensing with debate altogether?

To put it simply, can socialism be imposed without debate? In the United States?

If so, shame on us!

UPDATE: Don't miss Roger Kimball's analysis:

what is needed is not a 12-step support group fro damaged souls but a network of back-stiffening resource groups equipped to sound the alarm over the governments astonishing encroachments upon prosperity of the United States and the freedoms of its citizens.

As it happens, I am in the mid-West at the moment. A couple of days ago I addressed a group of businessmen, doctors, and ordinary concerned citizens in a suburb of Chicago. Outrage at what the Obama administration had done, and fear of what it was planning to do, to this country was a common theme in the questions I entertained and in the conversations I had with people at the dinner following my talk. Two emotions predominated among the men and women I spoke to. One was a disorienting astonishment at what was happening in the country: Chrysler. The government bail outs. The prospect of nationalized health care. The environmental follies even now being drawn up by the Obama administration. There was a palpable sense of shell shock: a sudden paralysis brought on by the inexplicable intrusion of the incomprehensible.

I hope and expect that the more we learn about what the Obama administration has planned for us, the more people will stand up to oppose it.

UPDATE: "Anecdotal and quantitative evidence ... would appear to confirm a decided bias against dealers who donated to GOP causes or to anti-Obama Democrats." (Link via Glenn Reynolds.)

Little wonder businessmen think that keeping their heads down and not speaking out is "just being responsible."