[Bob Nunemaker]

The globalDescribe solution is decent and works.  However, it is VERY slow and takes a lot of time at Enterprise size orgs.  Can really kill performance.  Instead, if you know what you want, you can use:

string recTypeID = Schema.SobjectType.Campaign.getRecordTypeInfosByName().get('Program').getRecordTypeId();

and this also means you could pass the Record Type name to a method needing this.  However, the object can't be dynamic, so you might need a method per Object desired to use this.