Barack Obama portrays himself as a moderate politician. He is not. He has strayed from his carefully scripted storyline just enough to give Americans a glimpse of what he would really do if elevated, after only four years in the U.S. Senate, to the most powerful position in the history of the world.

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--In January, Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that under an Obama administration if anyone tries to build a new coal-fired power plant, "it will bankrupt them ... ." What if America needs new coal plants in the short term before "green" technologies are as plentiful and as cheap? Too bad. If you think energy prices are high now, wait until Obama eliminates all but the most expensive options.

--In 2001, Obama told Chicago Public Radio that the Supreme Court didn't go far enough to "bring about redistributive change." He meant that he thinks the federal government ought to reorder society to his liking by force. It must take money and privilege from those whom the people in power don't like and give it to those they do like. (Sound familiar?) To Obama, government is not a guarantor of equal opportunity, but a guarantor of equal outcomes. It is a tool with which society must be reshaped, whether society likes it or not.

--On July 17, Obama said of Supreme Court justices, "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges." The law be damned, says Obama, the judicial branch should side with people based on their social status. That is the very definition of tyranny.

--On Oct. 15, Obama told Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher to his face that he would take Wurzelbacher's money and "spread the wealth around." Obama doesn't see Joe the Plumber as a working man trying to make it, an individual who has a right to his own earnings. Obama sees Joe, and each successful American, as merely a source of revenue for his own redistributionist agenda. What we earn is by right (because it's "fair") his to take from us and dole out to those he deems more worthy.

--On Friday, Obama called people who don't want the government to take more of their money "selfish," just as Joe Biden said on Sept. 18 that it was "patriotic" to pay higher taxes. We soon might have the government attacking as unpatriotic anyone who resists the confiscation and redistribution of wealth.

This is Barack Obama's agenda in his own words. You can choose to believe in empty slogans. But "hope" and "change" cannot be passed into law. The laws Obama has said he would give us will create the most radically left-wing government since the 1930s, and possibly in our nation's history. As Thomas Sowell explains in his column below, that would be a disaster of historic proportions.

Change? Yes. Sure. But not on this scale, not on these terms. We need to improve our government. We do not need to have it engage in a massive restructuring of the social order to better reflect the personal preferences of those in power.