Among other peculiar things about the Obama White House, we just found out that El Presidente can't be called by his first name, except by three or four special intimates.

It all adds to the imperious pose of this White House.  Mr. Obama is a man of destiny, we are told, like Napoleon or Karl Marx.  The bottom-dwelling press has sold its very soul to make Americans believe that.  Still, he needs to hear a lot of "Mister Presidents" from his followers.  Apparently he loves it.

Pretty trivial,  maybe, but little things add up. In the last election, Mr. O made a point of telling the fawning media not to mention his ears because he got teased as a boy for having big ears.  This man was 46 years old and running for president, but he hadn't lost the feeling of shame from being teased 35 years before.

A mite touchy, would you say?

Obama and his crew are acutely aware of the symbolism of pride and submission, as we know from the famous bowing episodes -- giving a humble bow to King Abdullah of the camel tribes, then to the former Bushido Emperor of Japan, followed by China's Emperor Hu.  The Chinese made him do it on a stage, pointing two giant spotlights at his deep bow to Hu to make sure the media couldn't miss the picture.

China knows all about bowing and obedience.

Last week, China claimed 3.5 million square kilometers of disputed territorial waters by putting an imaginary Chinese "city" on a tiny island in the South China Sea.  They acted right in the middle of the presidential campaign.  Chances are that Hu Jintao, who used to be the tyrant of Tibet, drew the obvious conclusions from that bowing episode -- and maybe from other things we don't know about.  Thugs use intimidation to test your will, and if you back down, they keep pushing.  It's how wolves pick out the weakest sheep -- basic predatory behavior.

The world is full of thugs.  Vladimir Putin likes to show his ferocious black dogs to his intimidated visitors -- just for fun, of course.  Half the countries of the U.N. are run by thugs. Some are worse than thugs; they are the ones on the Human Rights Commission.

Still, Obama can also dish it out -- to our allies.  Last year Obama demanded that the president of Egypt, a sovereign ally, resign -- because Obama said so.  That was pure imperialist thuggery, on par with Leonid Brezhnev slapping the chief of the Czech Communist Party in 1968 for not obeying the Kremlin.

When Obama pulled his "Obey Me!" act on Egypt's Mubarak, none of the usual noisy protesters piped up.  Not even the Arabs and European socialists.  Odd.

Marxism is European imperialism, no different from the Carolingian Empire or the Austro-Hungarians.  But it's good imperialism, you see.  In the 19^th century Queen Victoria became empress of India to spread Christianity and civilization to the heathen Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, and Buddhists of the British Empire.  Victoria was just as purblind, self-righteous, and cocky as liberals are today.  Every imperialistic creed is all about peace and love, except in practice.

Practically every capital in Europe has its own imperial palaces, complete with equestrian statues copied from the Romans.  American visitors think those buildings look cute in Stockholm and Paris, until they read some history.

Today, the EU is supposed to be a new model for world government.  But so was ancient Rome, and it hung on a lot longer than the European Union.  The euro is crashing on the rocks only a few decades after that other socialist empire crumbled.

But don't worry.  They'll be back.

As long as the left controls the "organs of propaganda," the schools and the media, they will just educate another generation in massive ignorance, bigotry, and American self-loathing.  It's a parasitical infestation, like herpes or intestinal worms.  The left doesn't produce anything.  They just take, and then take over.  If you don't educate your kids to be immune, they will come down with the mental mumps again.  Control of the schools and the media means everything to the left.

After Obama fired the president of Egypt, Mubarak ended up on trial for his life in Cairo, an eighty-year-old Arab man sitting in his white hospital bed behind big iron bars.  It was an update of the ancient practice of putting a prisoner in stocks in the public square, to be jeered at and pelted with trash by the mob.  This kind of public humiliation of a fallen head of state is unprecedented in modern history -- a throwback to the old Ottoman Empire or the Caliphate of Baghdad, when you didn't just kill your predecessor; you had to strangle him in public just to make sure people got the message.

Hosni Mubarak wasn't just fired; he was disgraced, like his Defense Minister Tantawi last week.  The Muslim Brotherhood is a totalitarian gang.  Like the Khomeini regime in Iran and the neo-Ottomans in Turkey, they know with perfect faith that they have Allah on their side.  The Koran tells them so. 

Obama is too much of a Marxist to be a Muslim, but the spirit of totalitarianism is alive in him, just as it is in Mohammed Morsi, the new dictator of Egypt, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.  Different labels, same unconquerable arrogance.

The craving for power is an ancient disease.  The Bible describes a thousand years of power abuse and popular protest, starting with the pharaohs of ancient Egypt.  Socialism is a cover for the same temptation.  Human beings don't change just because they memorize a few new platitudes.  They just put on new hats and shout new slogans.

For his bedtime reading Mr. Obama likes to read about American decline, like in Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World.  But American decline and defeat are just other names for imperial conquest -- maybe by the transnational left, but more likely by China, or by Muslim radicalism, both of which are now rising because Obama keeps pulling the rug from under our allies.  There's a reason why China claimed those 3.5 million square kilometers of ocean territory.  There's a reason why Muslim Bro Morsi is now dictator of Egypt, and why the modernist Green Revolution in Iran didn't receive even a mention from Obama, the Leader of the Free World.  There is a reason why Russia, for the first time in decades, is now sending naval fleets into the Eastern Mediterranean, where the U.S. Sixth Fleet used to keep the peace.  It's the same reason why Putin, with a severely weakened Russia, is capturing oil and gas rights wherever he can, and is sending missile submarines to the Gulf or Mexico, to cruise there undetected.  There is a reason why Israel will have to go it alone against a near-nuclear Iran, with the United States standing by and doing nothing.

The other side of imperialism is the propagation of defeatism.  The Muslim conquerors of history taught defeatism to their enemies to make conquest easier.  They are following a thousand-year-old strategy today.  It's the same strategy any imperial power follows.  Obama and the Democrats are anti-American defeatists, because they hate America when it is victorious, no matter how good that may be for world peace.

"Peace" is not the goal of the left; peace comes only after surrender.

Islam does not mean "peace."

It means surrender.