Few people say this out loud, but there is a contingent in America that unabashedly wants communism or socialism or whatever "-ism" that will allow them to take from others in the name of the greater good. And, oh by the way, they're the ones who determine what the "greater good" is.

They've always been there, protesting against this or that, smashing chairs into McDonalds' and Starbucks and other evil engines of dreaded capitalism.

But this year there's no need for protest. This year, the protest goes mainstream and all civil-like. The fringe has become institutionalized, after all. This year, the "Robin Hood" party has a major presidential candidate.

Barack Obama.

We're not sure why he doesn't just drop all pretense and say he'll "nationalize" America's oil companies the way Hugo Chavez took the oil fields in Venezuela.

Obama, mind you, is now suggesting that the government here -- not just in leftist dictatorships in Latin America -- should take a "reasonable" amount of the oil companies' profits and give them to the American people.

What is the difference between that and what the Marxist tyrant Chavez has done -- except the degree of the taking?

Isn't taking still taking?

Where in the Constitution, or in the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence or in Christopher Columbus' Mapquest directions does it say the United States government can determine how much profit is fair and can just take the rest?

And, as the Wall Street Journal asked this week, "What is a 'windfall' profit anyway? How does it differ from your everyday, run of the mill profit? Is it some absolute number, a matter of return on equity or sales -- or does it merely depend on who earns it?"

"The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy," Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Obama's friend in the oil-bashing business, has said.

"Really?" inquires the Journal . "This extraordinary redefinition of free-market success could use some parsing."

Investors Business Daily has done some parsing. In Barack Obama's world, "Economic justice," the newspaper says, "simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism.

"In the past, such rhetoric was just that -- rhetoric. But Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state."

Is anyone wondering why American oil companies should be punished anyway? Wouldn't that just hurt American consumers and our global competitive position?

And what industry is next? If the government deems one industry's profits unreasonable, what's to stop it from stepping in and taking money from others? Where's the line? Or is there one? It's much more convenient when there is no line; that way, a government that has all the answers can move about freely, "leveling" the playing field as it sees fit wherever and whenever it wants.

We're not sure what Barack Obama calls that kind of government. But we're pretty sure its "-ism" isn't preceded by "capital."