Uncountable Republicans and conservatives express outrage over, loathing for, desperation about, fury with Obama, and are amply justified in doing so we believe.

But for sheer contempt for him and rage against him it would be hard to beat this rant – from the far left.

It comes from the pen, dipped in vitriol, of one David Michael Green, a professor of political science [!] at Hofstra University in New York.

His bitter denunciations and criticisms may in some instances coincide with ours, but they don’t of course arise for the same reasons. We deplore Obama’s rapid shifting of America to the left and his turning it into an impoverished, weak, welfare state.

Professor Green (how aptly named he is!) thinks that Obama is failing to take America far enough to the left, so that it is not rapidly becoming a disarmed, egalitarian utopia.

He hates Obama more for failing to transform America into a command-economy collective than we do for his failing to keep America free and strong.

He hates Obama so much – and this is truly astonishing – that he would rather have Sarah Palin as president if that would be the ultimate humiliation for ‘the little prick’.

That a man with such passionately leftist opinions as he obviously holds can become a professor of political science in an American university speaks volumes, if you’re looking for an explanation for how a disciple of the Marxist Saul Alinsky came to be elected to the presidency .

It can reasonably be assumed that the far left broadly shares the views uttered, or spat out, by Professor Green. But what did they expect? That as soon as he entered the Oval Office, Obama would nationalize every business, force the rural population on to collective farms, send all dissidents into re-education camps or forced-labor prisons, make heterosexual marriage illegal, execute Bush and Cheney, recall all American servicemen from Iraq and Afghanistan and punish them for having fought there, force Israel to surrender to Hamas, give trillions of dollars to the Third World to put out ‘the fire’ that the Greens claim is ‘burning up the world’, make us wait all day in line for a loaf of bread at a state store and put our names down for medical treatment at state-run hospitals in preparation for waiting patiently for years to be given the treatment that we might or might not eventually be allowed?

Has this Green, a professor of political science, never heard that politicians ‘cannot legislate too far ahead of public opinion’? Does he not realize, professor of political science though he is, that the Constitution and the institutions of government were designed to prevent such revolutionary change? The answer to both questions is, apparently not.

Here’s part of what he has to say (all of it can be found here):

You know, I’ve really been trying not to write an article every other week about all the things I don’t like about Barack Obama.

But the little prick is making it very hard.

Like any good progressive, I’ve gone from admiration to hope to disappointment to anger when it comes to this president. Now I’m fast getting to rage.

How much rage? I find myself thinking that the thing I want most from the 2010 elections is for his party to get absolutely clobbered, even if that means a repeat of 1994. And that what I most want from 2012 is for him to be utterly humiliated, even if that means President Palin at the helm. That much rage.

Did this clown really say on national television that “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street”?!?!

Really, Barack? So, like, my question is: Then why the hell did you help out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street?!?! Why the hell did you surround yourself with nothing but Robert Rubin proteges in all the key economic positions in your government? Why did you allow them to open a Washington branch of Goldman Sachs in the West Wing? Why have your policies been tailored to helping Wall Street bankers, rather than the other 300 million of us, who just happen to be suffering badly right now?

Are you freakin’ kidding me??? What’s up with the passive president routine, anyhow, Fool? …

But, really, are you going to spend the next three interminable years perfecting your whiney victim persona? I don’t really think I could bear that. Hearing you complain about how rough it all is, when you have vastly more power than any of us to fix it? Please. Not that.

Are you going to tell us that “I did not run for office to be shovel-feeding the military-industrial complex”? But what they’re just so darned pushy?

“…I did not run for office to continue George Bush’s valiant effort at shredding the Bill of Rights. It’s just that those government-limiting rules are so darned pesky.”

“…I did not run for office to dump a ton of taxpayer money into the coffers of health insurance companies. It’s just that they asked so nicely.”

“…I did not run for office to block equality for gay Americans. I just never got around to doing anything about it.”

“…I did not run for office to turn Afghanistan into Vietnam. I just didn’t want to say no to all the nice generals asking for more troops.”

Here’s a guy who was supposed to actually do something with his presidency, and he’s … being punked by John Boehner, for chrisakes. He’s being rolled by the likes of Joe Lieberman. He calls a come-to-Jesus meeting with Wall Street bank CEOs, and half of them literally phone it in. Everyone from Bibi Netanyahu to the Japanese prime minister to sundry Iranian mullahs is stomping all over Mr. Happy.

And he doesn’t even seem to realize it.

Did you see him tell Oprah that he gave himself “a good solid B+” for his first year in office? And that it will be an A, if he gets his healthcare legislation passed?

Somebody please pick me up and set me back on my chair, wouldya? …

I can’t even begin to describe how insulting Obama conducting a “jobs summit” is to me, or what an unbelievably ham-fisted piece of public relations that was for the White House, which is increasingly showing itself not just to be sickeningly regressive, but also fully inept. I think I speak for a whole lot of Americans when I say that, one year into his stewardship over a destroyed economy that was actually atomizing for at least six months before inauguration day, I don’t want my president sitting around a table, running a dog-and-pony show, pretending to kick around ideas on how to generate jobs. I wanted him to have those ideas, himself, before he was inaugurated. …

If Democrats think they’ll be screwed next November because of unemployment, wait till Congress passes this healthcare monstrosity. Or doesn’t. At this point, either way they’re gonna get slammed for it, and rightly so.

If they don’t pass anything, they will be seen as unable to govern. …

On the other hand, the Democrats and their hapless president are probably in worse shape if they actually pass this legislation. Especially now that it’s been stripped of nearly every real progressive reform imaginable, it has become an incredibly stupid bill, from the political perspective. …

This will be a total train wreck for the Democratic Party … You know, elite Republicans may be sociopaths, and they may be lower on the moral totem pole than your basic cannibal, but they’re not stupid. I bet they’re salivating at the idea that this thing passes. I bet they’d even have Olympia Snowe vote for it if necessary, just to put it over the top. They must be laughing their asses off at this gift. All they have to do is oppose it right down the line, then say “Told ya so!” at the next election, squashing the pathetic Demognats, one after the next. …

This is President Nothingburger’s great gift to America, along with doing nothing about jobs, doing nothing about the Middle East, nothing about civil liberties, nothing about civil rights, and now doing nothing at Copenhagen. Regarding the latter, the world is literally on fire, and he jets in, gives a speech haranguing the delegates that “Now is not the time for talk, now is the time for action”, then splits even before the vote in order to beat the snowstorm headed to the east coast that might delay him getting home to his comfy bed. I’m not kidding. You can’t make this shit up, man.

This guy is killing me, though at the same time I still can’t quite figure him out. …

Is he just massively deluded? I wouldn’t have thought so, but watching the guy give himself a very good grade for 2009 straight face and all during the same year he’s lost twenty points off his job approval rating, and at a moment when even blacks and gays are deserting him, you know, you have to wonder.

Is he happy just to be a one-term president just to say he’s been there and done that, and then sell some more books even if he is reviled as one of the worst in history? … Obama looked like he could’ve been something different. He ain’t. …

Fine and dandy. With the help of political enemies like this, the conservative right may regain the White House in 2012. Strange, though, to have to welcome such allies!

America is now being ruled by ‘a one-party gangster government‘, wrote Matthew Vadum recently in the American Spectator. He illustrates his contention with reference to ACORN whose criminal activity has precipitated ‘the largest corruption crisis’ in American history.

We think he is right.

For the first time in the history of the United States, there is a government that should more accurately be called a regime, or corruptocracy.

ACORN critic Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is mystified that both the Democratic-controlled Congress and the Obama administration aren’t doing much about the tax-subsidized organized crime syndicate ACORN even as evidence of its wrongdoing continues to pile up.

In an exclusive interview, the House Judiciary Committee member describes the ACORN saga as “the largest corruption crisis in the history of America.”

“It’s thousands of times bigger than Watergate because Watergate was only a little break-in by a couple of guys,” said King. “By the time we pull ACORN out by its roots America’s going to understand just how big this is.”

Unlike the Nixon-era Watergate scandal, the ACORN scandal reaches not only to the highest levels of government, but also to states and localities across America. The president himself and his political advisor Patrick Gaspard used to work for ACORN and the radical advocacy group has allies throughout congressional leadership who are bending over backwards to protect it. President Obama has also hired as White House counsel Bob Bauer, whom King described as “the number one defender of ACORN in the country.”

ACORN has ties to unions such as SEIU and has business relationships with Wall Street. It has offices across the globe in places like Canada, Kenya, and India. Quite apart from the hidden camera videos that emerged in September showing ACORN employees providing advice on establishing a brothel and financing it with government grants, in the U.S. it stands accused of political corruption, election fraud, racketeering, money laundering, and countless other violations of the law. It is involved in major campaigns pushing for socialized medicine, green energy and cap-and-trade, enhanced welfare benefits, higher minimum wages, greater federal regulation of the financial services industry, and for a major expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act.

“The legislative branch will not investigate. [House Judiciary Committee chairman John] Conyers will not. [House Judiciary subcommittee chairman Jerrold] Nadler will not. It’s not going to come out of [House Ways & Means Committee chairman Charles] Rangel’s committee. It’s not going to come out of [House Financial Services Committee chairman] Barney Frank’s committee or from anybody in the Senate. They’re going to protect ACORN.” …

In Congress Democrats “got out their arsenal and now they’re using everything to protect ACORN because that’s the machine that keeps them in office.”

King was particularly incensed by U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon’s ruling in favor of ACORN on Dec. 11. The Department of Justice has reluctantly filed an appeal of the judge’s ruling.

“Now the Democrats have the district court decision that Jerry Nadler solicited and now they will hide behind it if pressed. They will ignore it if they’re not pressed. They’re never going to move legislatively. They never wanted to unfund ACORN.”

Gershon, a Bill Clinton appointee, issued a temporary injunction prohibiting Congress from cutting off funding for ACORN. She determined that the funding ban was an unconstitutional “bill of attainder” that singled out ACORN for punishment without trial.

Only in the through-the-looking-glass world of a leftist activist judge could cutting off taxpayer funding to an advocacy group be deemed punishment. This injunction itself is unconstitutional and an affront to the separation of powers. It appears to rely on a novel, insidious legal doctrine known as “legislative due process.” Simply put, groups have rights in the appropriations process and have a right not to be deprived of government funding without some kind of cause being shown. In other words, Congress no longer has the power of the purse regardless of what the Constitution says. …

Congress, [King] noted, has voted overwhelmingly to defund ACORN, yet federal funds continue to flow to ACORN. “We haven’t proved that we have a non-punitive motive,” as Gershon’s ruling requires, he said.

Attorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear he has no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN. Holder’s Justice Department released a legal opinion late last month that allows the Obama administration to ignore the will of Congress. He’s also ignored the 88-page report on ACORN’s systemic corruption and flagrant racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. …

“This is one-party gangster government and they know what they’re doing,” [King] said.

Carol Platt Liebau, writing in Townhall, trumpets a note of optimism for the coming year:

Suddenly, the liberty and free enterprise most of us have taken for granted seem to be in the greatest jeopardy of our lifetime. Worse yet, Democrat politicians have ignored the public outcry, ramming through unpopular legislation that would put one-sixth of the economy (and every American’s health care!) under government control. Regular Americans – the ones more inclined to watch sports or go shopping than to organize protests – have taken notice. They’ve also taken umbrage.

By overreaching and arrogantly ignoring the widespread public discontent with them and their policies, Democrats from the President on down have succeeded in awakening a sleeping giant – regular Americans. They are people who may often take their freedom for granted, but who don’t intend ever to let it be taken away.

They are the male and female heirs to the Sons of Liberty of Revolutionary times, the people who understand the danger of a government leviathan, and who insisted on “No taxation without representation.” After watching the politicians they voted into power last year ignore the common good, instead seeking only power and political advantage for themselves, they’re appalled – and perhaps even a little frightened.

Certainly, 2009 was a dark and disheartening year for lovers of economic and individual liberty. But if next year shapes up in accordance with current trends, the tide is about to change. With a growing recognition of the preciousness (and fragility) of liberty and a renewed appreciation of our founding principles, America is poised for a rebirth of freedom. Hail 2010: The Year of the Citizen.

Has a year of being ruled by a Marxist community organizer and the corrupt majority in Congress made tens of millions of Americans who are not usually much concerned about what their government does, suddenly become aware that they must sit up and take notice of what’s happening to their country? Realize for themselves that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom?

If so, the horrible year will have been worth living through. Obama will have served a worthwhile purpose after all.

We would like to believe that, but we read the signs differently and remain pessimistic.

Americans will be in deeper debt. Iran will have its nuclear bombs. Islam will wage its jihad ever more fiercely against the rest of us. Environmentalists will press on towards their impoverishing, collectivist, crushing goal of world government.

If the new Sons and Daughters of Liberty decide to fight it will be a tremendous battle. Do they have enough courage, passion, and tenacity for it?

We can only hope so.

With the federal government taking control of one sixth of the economy by means of ‘health care reform’, America is on the road to socialism and consequent decline, and it’s hard to see how the damage can be undone. Once entitlements are granted in law it becomes well nigh impossible to take them away again, as Europe has learnt the hard way.

Has America gone over the ‘precipice’, to use Obama’s word for this change? (We suspect he didn’t know what the word means, but it’s more apt than he could have intended.)

What sort of world is emerging with the connivance, or the capitulation, of the new weaker socialist America, which will no longer protect Western civilization?

Will America no longer be ‘the last best hope on earth’?

Is global government, the tyranny from which there can be no escape, inevitable?

Is there anything dissenting Americans – apparently a majority if the polls are right – can do to recover their liberty? Or is it too late to do anything?

Is there any point in looking to the Republican Party? Seems not, with its present leaders.

What if it had stronger leadership?

Here’s a suggestion by JB Williams at Canada Free Press:

This morning on Fox Sunday with Chris Wallace, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) conceded that Republican senators won’t be able to stop Democratic health care reform legislation from passing the Senate before Christmas.

“We will fight until the last vote,” McCain told Chris Wallace. “We owe that to our constituents, because we must do everything—we must look back and say we did everything to prevent this terrible mistake from taking place.”

I beg to differ with Senator John McCain… (which is nothing new) …

Another useless NAY vote is NOT everything they can do! …

McCain is right about one thing… Congressional Republicans have NO “legislative” POWER to stop the current assault on all things American taking place in Washington DC today. That’s because there is NO legitimate legislative process taking place in Washington DC today.

In the good old days, when the three administrative branches of the federal government kept independent checks upon each other, politicians were able to hide behind their NAY vote as a demonstration of opposition to anti-American and unconstitutional policies.

Those days are gone!

There is NO legitimate legislative process taking place in Washington DC today and even those who support this anti-American nonsense know it. More than 60% of American citizens strongly oppose every policy coming out of DC today – President Obama’s personal approval rating is in the toilet and still sinking, as is the approval rating of the leftist controlled congress.

Still, the left accelerates its rush into unbridled Global Marxism as if totally unconcerned with the “will of the people”, their limited constitutional authority, or the objections of Republicans in congress.

Republicans have only ONE chance left!

To save themselves from being painted with the same Marxist brush appropriate for today’s Democrats, stop the current slaughter of Americans sovereignty, security and prosperity, and unite the 60% of Americans in desperate need of leadership, congressional Republicans have ONE play remaining.

WALK OUT and STAY OUT!

Walk out of congress TODAY!

Force leftist Democrats to destroy this nation all alone!

Publicly name every vote bought off with state pork in the last ten months!

Call it what it is, a complete sham and rape of this nation!

Refuse to provide any form of cover for this sham and return home!

Once home, meet with state legislators to erect Tenth Amendment walls of defense at the state lines!

Once state defenses are erected, begin meeting with Tea Party and Town Hall patriots to begin the process of reclaiming the free republic.

Your Alternative?

Go down in flames with all other anti-American leftists in DC, currently running roughshod over the vast majority of American citizens opposed to everything going on in that sinking cesspool of political corruption called the federal government. …

Obama’s policies are set to tip these states and maybe others, over the brink in early 2010!

Trust me when I tell you, Congressional Republicans have NO other viable options.

But we have entered a new era in America… The enemies of freedom and liberty are in full control of all three branches of the federal government. There is NO legitimate constitutional process in Washington DC today. Republicans have NO “in chamber” power to stop the dismantling of America and only three defenses of the free republic remain.

Republicans MUST separate themselves from the sham immediately or go down in flames with the Democratic Socialists of America in charge!

The state legislatures MUST erect Tenth Amendment walls of defense at the state lines.

The people MUST unite in patriotic resistance, with or without Republicans!

The Republicans in Congress are very unlikely to take such bold action. So what remains? Many recognize that this is a critical moment for America and the world. Even among the well-behaved, mild-mannered Tea Party protestors there are some who talk of secession, and some even of revolution.

Many Americans are arming themselves. Is the revolution, if it comes, likely to be a violent one?

You have to admire the man!  He made gold out of hot air, and bends the world to his will, holding it in a state of terror, in the name of a superstition that dwarfs all the god-cults of history. How did he do it?

Starting off as a railway engineer in India, he rose to become Chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. From that pinnacle he directed billions of dollars into his own businesses. Then, being powerful beyond the wildest dreams of all the conquerors who have ever lived, this wizard had only to crook his little finger to bring the leaders of every country on earth, from the  richest to the poorest, from the weakest to the strongest, to gather together and strive frantically to impoverish and subjugate everyone else, and finally to establish a single dictatorial power to rule over the whole world.

From the Telegraph:

No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international ‘climate industry’.

It is remarkable how only very recently has the staggering scale of Dr Pachauri’s links to so many of these concerns come to light, inevitably raising questions as to how the world’s leading ‘climate official’ can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC’s recommendations.

He even has Barack Obama, the other would-be dictator of the world, dancing on a string!

Read the whole stunning story here.

In a Townhall article which we quote from here, Roger Chapin sounds a warning about the weakening of America. He may be exaggerating when he speaks of a ‘nuclear doomsday’, but we do think that Obama is selling America down the river, wants world government and global redistribution of wealth, and that the transformation of America into a weak, decaying, impoverished, socialist country is a danger all too real.

Never before in our history has an American president, deliberately and by design, risked our very survival to a maniacal enemy power sworn to remove America from the world. Yet from all appearances, this is exactly what Obama is doing by failing to vigorously oppose Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. But in spite of the fact that over 60% of the public favors militarily destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, there’s nary a word of protest from the Republicans in opposition. They’re so paranoid about being labeled warmongers, they have shamefully abdicated their own national security responsibilities, just as John McCain did during his presidential run.

Obama is weakening rather than strengthening our missile defenses. That’s how seriously this Administration takes the Iranian threat.

The reality is that the fanatical, messianically driven radical Iranian zealots will pay any price, including Iran’s virtual obliteration, in order to render the U.S. and its major allies non-players on the world scene. The mullahs expect to emerge from the ruins no longer hindered by the “Great Satan,” free to use their huge oil and gas reserves to fund the imposition of their tyranny throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Not only does Obama’s psyche make him incapable of understanding the radical’s mentality but he chooses to totally dismiss their own pronouncements spelling out their sinister intentions. Obama’s determination to make the United States subservient to an international body of nations is now driving him to systematically reduce our nation to a mere shadow of its former power and influence. …

The practical consequences of Obama’s extreme radical left agenda can only be to put our nation at the mercy of a new world order dominated by ruthless tyrants, thugs and spineless states who sell their souls for commercial gain. His first allegiance is to such an international order – not to the United States.

Obama is not only unfit to serve as commander-in-chief in a time of war, he is a menace to our national security. His obvious intent to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, perhaps under the guise of what would undoubtedly be a totally meaningless agreement not to do so, presents a risk so grave to our survival that it can only be rationally viewed as tantamount to national suicide. Under no circumstances can the mullahs be trusted to honor any agreement, as they’ve proven time and again. …

By almost any standard, Obama is flagrantly guilty of dereliction of duty. It cannot be overemphasized how extraordinarily perilous a situation we are in, especially at a time when virtually the entire Republican Party is AWOL on bombing Iran and strengthening national security. There is no counterweight to Obama’s disastrous policies. Obama himself recently acknowledged that if terrorists get nuclear weapons “we have every reason to believe they will use them.” Despite this admission, he refuses to take the only action that will stop them from acquiring such weapons.

If we citizenry will not take the bull by the horns and demand a total reversal of our nation’s suicidal course, we could very soon experience the apocalyptic end of the America we love and all western civilization. Let us understand that the maniacal, radical Islamic enemies confronting us are irreversibly committed to making such a cataclysmic event happen – no matter how horrific the cost to them. To think that an olive branch of brotherly love could change their goals is sheer madness.

Take heed America, Obama’s policies may be paving the way for a nuclear doomsday.

Roger Simon looked in on the Copenhagen Mysteries. These apt observations of his are quoted by Power Line:

On the last day of COP 15, staring at a Jumbotron where Hugo Chavez was addressing the conference, something was nagging at me besides the obvious (that half the audience was enthusiastically applauding a maniac). I was trying to figure out what it was about the conference that so perplexed and disturbed. And then, before the Caudillo had concluded his tedious remarks and long before the “meaningful deal” between the world leaders was announced, I realized what it was. We had returned to the Middle Ages.

A high tech Middle Ages, of course, but still the Middle Ages. Forget the Renaissance, forget the Enlightenment, forget Spinoza, Locke, Galileo and everybody else, we had returned to our roots as gullible and idiotic human beings, as willing to believe in the primacy of anthropogenic global warming [AGW] as we would in the sighting of the Madonna at a river crossing twelve kilometers south of Sienna in 1340.

What puzzles us a little is that Roger Simon is a self-confessed believer in ‘God’. In a recent Pajamas TV video he advised atheists to pray to ‘God’ every day for 30 days to cure them of their atheism. But surely ‘God’ is no less of a superstition than ‘AGW’ or a ‘Madonna’ manifestation?

Might Heaven be best described as simply the opposite of Hell: an eternal experience of pleasure, happiness, success, desirable company, instant gratification, hope fulfilled?  Most people would probably agree on that being ‘heavenly’ in a general way. But just what brings pleasure and happiness, who in particular provides the right company, exactly what wishes need to be gratified and what hope fulfilled, are questions to which there will be as many answers as there are people.

No one has been able to describe ideal conditions for life on this earth that would be attractive to all or most people – or even ‘equally as much to my friend as to myself’. One man’s ideal state is another man’s purgatory. How many would choose to live, for instance, in Thomas More’s Utopia?

It is a communist, slave-owning society. The slaves are foreigners or criminals. (Their chains are made of gold, but that’s unlikely to be much of a consolation to them.)

All the citizens, both men and women, live by compulsory labor on the land and in handcrafts, except a minority who are scholars and may choose to become ruling officials or priests. The ruling officials, the ‘administrators’, watch over and control the rest. They monitor and correct activity in every household, and uniformly govern the affairs of the towns. They constitute the state.

All religions are tolerated. Atheism is too, but it is despised and feared, and atheists are subjected to constant counseling by the priests to cure them of their perversity.

Meals are eaten communally, households taking it in turns to prepare them. The administrators get the best food.

There is no private property. Everyone is dressed in the same simple garment. People ask for what they need and officials dispense it to them.

Everyone gets free health care. Euthanasia is administered by the state. Citizens feel protected from the struggle for survival and the need to make hard decisions, but at the cost of self-determination.

No one may choose to leave the country, which is an island, or travel about in it without a permit. To do so is a crime punishable by enslavement.

Women toil in the fields and workshops equally with the men for the same six hours a day.  But they are subject to the will of their husbands. They may not wear make-up. They have to confess their sins to their husbands once a month. They alone carry out the domestic chores (in addition to their other work). A few may become priests in their old age, but not administrators.

Both men and women are given military training, but women are never put in command over men.

Gambling and hunting are forbidden to all.

It is a vision that partly matches and partly differs from that of the Left in our time. One notable difference is that in Utopia there is no sexual freedom. Pre-marital sex is punished by forced celibacy for life, and adultery by enslavement.

In Karl Marx’s ideal egalitarian society the state will eventually ‘wither away’, there’ll be no private property, and the only authority will be one that administers and distributes things (as in More’s Utopia), ‘to each according to his need’  – the need being judged by the distributors. But where his theories were put into practice, in Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea, the state remained robust, the people lost their liberty and suffered poverty, misery, arbitrary incarceration, summary execution, forced starvation, massacre, torture, enslavement, labor under the lash.

It seems that the plans of a few for how everyone should live will always turn out to be hellish. No one can plan a public heaven, because heavens are made of infinitely variable individual choices.

Hells are communal projects, but every real Heaven is a private enterprise.

Jillian Becker  December 18, 2009

Obama has sent a letter to Kim Jong Il, the contents of which are not disclosed to the American people who pay the president to conduct their foreign relations. What on earth has he written? Does he imagine that something he says can suddenly transform the murderous little squirt who tyrannizes over North Korea into a nice reasonable guy who only wants the best for everyone?

Or does the letter ask for advice on how to attain absolute power?

From Investor’s Business Daily:

The fact is, Kim, while cunning in his pursuit of self-preservation, is a sociopath, a mass murderer of his own people, responsible for the death by famine and torture of as many as 3 million North Koreans. The idea that you can make a rational appeal to his moral conscience is, well, beyond silly. …

By some estimates Kim has killed 3.5 million people or more out of a population of 23 million. The murder toll includes children and infants. The deaths have come from starvation, beatings, torture and inhumane incarceration in hellish concentration camps.

It’s bad enough that we tolerate genocide. But someday soon, he — or his ally, Iran — will have the means to attack us. Just last week, a North Korean plane was detained in Bangkok carrying 35 tons of missiles, explosives and other weaponry. Where it was going, no one’s sure. No doubt we’ll send them a stern letter in rebuke.

What persuaded us to believe that socialism, having begun everywhere so badly, should possess the power to reform itself into something better? To be something other than it has been? To pass through the inferno of its Stalinist tragedies to become the paradiso of our imaginations? – from a letter by David Horowitz

Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it – from ‘Dr. Faustus’, by Christopher Marlowe

Hell is other people – from ‘No Exit’, by Jean-Paul Sartre

*

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the years of the New Left, there was a commune of young revolutionaries in Vienna, housed in a beautiful old building with wide curving stairways and grand halls, monuments to the skills of architects and builders, and to the achievements of owners who had won fortunes in manufacturing, commerce, and the professions round the turn of the twentieth century, in the belle époque.

When the communards moved into one of the spacious apartments – as squatters, not rent-paying tenants – its walls were richly clad with glowing, dark, polished wood paneling. They tore it off. They considered it ‘too bourgeois’. Holes remained where the panels had been pinned into the brick. The communards – every one of them born of bourgeois parents who indulged and supported their idleness, along with the welfare state that the affluent young revolutionaries ached to overthrow – said they liked the damaged look because it ‘proletarianized’ the apartment.

One wall only they had repaired: the holes filled in, the surface plastered smoothly. There they planned to paint a mural. One of them drew a vertical line down the middle. On the left they would depict Hell, and on the right, Heaven.

They started (‘There’s an artist in all of us’, they opined) painting their vision of Hell, but soon became disappointed with the way it was shaping up and decided to hire a professional artist to realize their vision.

The artist, an American, was found, agreed to terms, and arrived on the appointed day with brushes and paints ready to carry out their instructions.

The communards were unanimous on what Hell looked like. It was Vienna; its streets, traffic, monuments, palaces, art galleries, houses, theatres, open-air market, department stores, banks, schools, sports grounds, factories, a prison. There were shoppers, children, prisoners, police brutally breaking up a protest rally, fat men in big shiny cars smoking cigars (‘capitalists’), and so on. Everything had a dingy look, the colors predominantly ‘’like mud, excrement and vomit’, as per the communards’ orders.

It took the painter about a month to finish Hell to their satisfaction.

‘Now,’ he said, moving to the other side of the line, ‘describe your Heaven to me. ‘

‘Um,’ they said. ‘Take a few days break while we think about it.’

They never did come up with a vision of Heaven. It wasn’t that they couldn’t agree among themselves on what it should look like; the trouble was none of them had any idea of it at all.

They paid off the artist with their parents’ money, and the right side of the wall remained permanently blank.

Jillian Becker   December 16, 2009