We're Number Five! We're Number Five!

"There's no substitute for victory." "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." Outdated notions like those should not be allowed to get in the way of America's slide into mediocrity. The Obama administration put America in fourth place last year in global competitiveness. Fearing it might offend other "lesser" nations, they have succeeded this year in dropping the US to number five.

In its scramble to the bottom by way of rabid egalitarianism and bureaucratic control of business and free enterprise, the Obama administration has come up with a new mantra: "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you throw the game." Switzerland came in at number one in competitiveness, again. I guess if your major attractions are chocolate, anonymous banking, cuckoo clocks and Nazi stolen art, your competition isn't going to have much of a chance.

Singapore came in second (they cane you there if you don't produce), followed by Sweden (a socialist nation, no less) which had previously held the second-place spot. America got pushed out of fourth place by economic powerhouse Finland. The rankings come from the World Economic Forum which bases its conclusions on input from 15,000 global business executives analyzing complex economic data. Don't let the Forum's headquarters in Davos, Switzerland affect your opinion of the accuracy of the survey.

The Forum has been producing these rankings for about three decades now. In almost every instance, America ranked number one. As recently as 2008, America was still number one. Refresh my memory. Did something happen in 2008? Oh, yeah, now I remember. America elected a President who had no business experience whatsoever, no executive experience outside of "community organizing," and who surrounded himself with advisers who hate capitalism.

The Obama administration has modeled its economic program after that of Greece, which is currently holding its own in 90th place. Germany, which is quickly undoing its worst democratic socialist enactments is in sixth place, shooting to push America out of the fifth position next year. Also close on America's heels are Japan, Denmark, the Netherlands and England, all of which are rapidly abandoning the policies which the Obama administration has embraced and is shoving down America's throat through legislation and executive order.

While America continues to slide, countries which were considered hopeless just a few years back are gaining. Moving up are China, Brazil, India and Russia. Though none of those four would be considered paragons of enlightened capitalism, they are moving in the opposite direction from America. While the Obamists feed bureaucratic proliferation, over-regulation and over-taxation, each of those four nations is removing its own roadblocks from the path of competitiveness. At this rate, they'll be able to abandon slave labor, forced work, starvation wages and environmental ignorance in just a few years, making them true competitors.

When the premier of China, officially still a communist nation, has to lecture the President of the United States on fiscal responsibility, poor economic conditions, high unemployment, and low productivity, it should come as no surprise that America is on a downhill slide lubricated by foreign oil. This condition gives all-new meaning to the words "slippery slope."

Perhaps Barack Obama can solve this problem by making another speech, this time in front of a joint session of Congress and the United Nations General Assembly.