Free Markets: The federal government's continued assault on capitalism hasn't gone unnoticed overseas, where even bitter and virulent former foes see this for the tragedy that it is.

It was more than a little jarring to read the following statement in a foreign newspaper under the headline "American capitalism gone with a whimper":

"It must be said that, like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed, against the backdrop of a passive, hapless, sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people."

And where did it appear? In Pravda, the one-time voice of the Soviet regime, which noted our great fall from the mightiest capitalist nation in history to a government-run debtor on the way to becoming something akin to a large Venezuela.

It's not hard to see what's prompting such opinions. Every day we learn of another incursion into the private sector, another attack on private wealth, another liberty diminished. At this pace, given the near-total disregard for the Constitution evident in the last year and a half, our very freedoms will soon be imperiled.

Exaggeration? Consider that:

• The financial "reform" bill, which has passed the Senate Banking Committee and has President Obama's backing, creates a new bureaucracy with power to subpoena any and all data from any financial company - erasing, in essence, the boundary between public and private in our economy.

• The IRS, soon to be strengthened by $10 billion in new funding and 17,000 new agents, promises to take fines under ObamaCare out of your tax return, as it also launches a new worldwide program to go after what it calls "high wealth individuals."

• U.S. government debt, swollen by a record $45 trillion surge in spending over the next decade, will hit 63% of GDP this year - what economists consider a danger level - and is on its way to an economy-killing 90% of GDP by 2020.

And that's just the news from the past couple of weeks.

All this, of course, is in addition to the just-passed $2.3 trillion health care takeover, which gives the government unprecedented powers over our most intimate health care decisions; the $700 billion TARP program, which has turned into a Democrat-run slush fund; the $862 billion in phony "stimulus" and the government's forced buyout of 61% of General Motors and 18% of Chrysler (with the Canadian government taking another 11%).

It wasn't supposed to happen here. The Constitution was supposed to stand between us and an oppressive state. But that bulwark is being chipped away, piece by piece, right by right.

Can Americans regain control of their country from the ever-expanding progressive state? Can our once-healthy free-market economy be taken back from its federal overseers?

Recent studies show that Americans are more dependent than ever on government - the biggest threat to their freedom of all. According to the Tax Foundation, 60% of households in America in 2004 received more in benefits and services from government than they paid in taxes. Under President Obama's massive spending hikes, that will soon rise to 70% or more.

For these folks to remove the yoke of government will take great willpower. Little by little, they are swapping their freedom for the comfort of government support and the top-down control that goes with it.

We find ourselves led by people who would weaken the Constitution's literal and ancient meaning in favor of a "living document" that guarantees literally nothing. As a result of the state's creeping hegemony, the republic we inherited and the unalienable rights we were guaranteed have never been more threatened.