Talk about upending accepted certainties! While Europe is now firmly in the hand of parties from right-of-center (France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and David Cameron pacing restlessly in the wings), America has gone socialist. Nationalizing the financial sector by the back door, contemplating massive subsidy of production industries, increasing government spending on health care and education, promising deep-pocket investment in all manner of greenery, and drastically limiting executive salaries: is Obama beating the Europeans at their own game? “We are all Socialists Now,” trumpets Newsweek. General Jack D. Ripper, Doctor Strangelove’s nemesis, who fulminated about fluoridation as another of Communism’s nefarious advances, must be rotating in his Valhalla.

How quickly things change. It seems just a few months ago that the toxic Texan presidency of the younger Bush – unilaterally going to war, refusing to submit to international treaties, ...