Scott Sperling, co-president of private equity firm THL partners, writes in todays Wall Street Journal that “Obama’s Auto Plan Is Capitalism at Work.”

Mr. Sperling is ignorant of the ideology of which he speaks.  Capitalism’s creative destruction, which he cites to support his argument, is a process of spontaneous order, not central planning.  Letting Chrysler and GM go bankrupt without government meddling would have been an example of this process, not what Barack Obama is doing.  For while the President’s policies are destructive, they are anything but creative.

President Barack Obama announced today that he had effectively fired the CEO of General Motors.  His announcement was nothing short of extraordinary:

GM has made a good faith effort to restructure over the past several months — but the plan that they’ve put forward is, in its current form, not strong enough.  However, after broad consultation with a range of industry experts and financial advisors, I’m absolutely confident that GM can rise again, providing that it undergoes a fundamental restructuring.  As an initial step, GM is announcing today that Rick Wagoner is stepping aside as Chairman and CEO.  This is not meant as a condemnation of Mr. Wagoner, who’s devoted his life to this company and has had a distinguished career; rather, it’s a recognition that will take new vision and new direction to create the GM of the future.

Translation: “I just fired the CEO of a U.S. corporation.  No one is beyond my reach.”

Who are these “industry experts?”  What makes them more qualified to evaluate GM than investors who are willing to put their own money on the line? To put it another way, who do you think has more incentive to get it right: investors betting their own money, or “industry experts” betting yours?

In this context, my administration will offer General Motors adequate working capital over the next 60 days.  And during this time, my team will be working closely with GM to produce a better business plan.  They must ask themselves:  Have they consolidated enough unprofitable brands?  Have they cleaned up their balance sheets, or are they still saddled with so much debt that they can’t make future investments?  Above all, have they created a credible model for how not only to survive, but to succeed in this competitive global market?

Despite this announcement describing all the ways in which government is now dictating the direction of GM, Obama made sure to assure us plebes that, in fact, he really has no desire or intention to run GM from Washington D.C.

But that’s not all.  The government is now going to guarantee the warranty’s of GM and Chrysler.  This, The One proclaimed, will make your warranty “safer than it’s ever been.”  Well, isn’t that reassuring?  No.  To any person who has observed even a fraction of the history of government run anything, it’s not in the slightest bit credible.

What we’ve witnessed in the first few months of this Presidency is the opening stage of a war on capitalism, a blitzkrieg on free enterprise.  GM is just one battle in this war.  There will be more casualties and further government transgressions into the territory of freedom.  And make no mistake, freedom itself it what’s ultimately under assault.  Economic freedom is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for political freedom.  Or to put it another way, no people have ever had political freedom without economic freedom.  By doing his best to take away the latter, Barack Obama is undermining the foundations of the former.