Now before you go and crucify me, keep in mind that there is a huge difference between someone who is “down on their luck” and someone who is able-bodied and “chronically poor.” There’s a big difference, and I’m only addressing the latter.

We see the stereotype everyday in Hollywood films: The wealthy, corporate, penny-pinching sell-out who inevitably becomes a slave to their own greed. Note: That stereotype excludes the rich, bloated constituents of Tinseltown themselves. The sad part is that oftentimes Americans believe it. As a largely blue-collar nation, I could think of nothing more satisfying than vilifying the “boss” (not a Springsteen reference, for those wondering). The only problem is that it’s dishonest.

Successful people aren’t inherently evil. I believe that more often than not people’s lives are a result of their actions. It’s silly, I know, but when you look at things within that context, you have to ask yourself: what kind of actions lead to poverty?

Now, I hate to throw a Proverb at you (particularly as it’s not of the trendy Chinese variety, but one of those scary Old Testament scribbles) but no matter what your faith, I would imagine that Proverbs 28: 22 would still have to be incredibly insightful.

A stingy man is eager to get rich and is unaware that poverty awaits him.

See, God isn’t condemning rich people. He’s condemning actions followed by a solemn warning of where they would lead. God seems to think that actions are a reflection of your heart. He’s a freaky dude when it comes to that kind of thing. Yes, I said “dude.” Feminists, start sending your letters.

Now statistically, it’s true. Poor people (particularly liberals) donate a lower percentage of their income than middle and upper-class Americans. To be fair, they have less to give… But then I guess it becomes the whole “chicken or the egg” deal. Do they have less to give because they’re stingy/greedy, or are they greedy because they have less to give?

Either way someone’s getting punched in the face for milk money.

I would say that the action of a perfectly healthy individual living a life on welfare provided by the hard work of others taken by force through taxation… That’s greedy.

The action of not stepping out of your comfort zone and creating a business, or helping OTHERS to prosper because of your personal contentment… That’s greedy.

The action of hoarding all the good-looking prom dates, leaving me no other date options than my cousin Kevin… That’s greedy.

Not giving to those who are seriously less fortunate than you… That’s greedy.

The problem with greed is that it has no understanding of logic and will constantly find a scapegoat… Sometimes it’s an actual goat (he deserved it), sometimes it’s a lemur (he didn’t deserve it) and sometimes it just ends up being a decent rich guy whom everyone loves to hate.

And no, I’m not talking about Sean Penn.

Albert was the last casualty of 9/11 that I know of. Although, I am sure there are more people who were indirectly impacted by the attack to some serious and even fatal degree. 

Albert was also famous for his devastating sense of humor, so when I read about the highly heralded eco-melodramatic documentary “No Impact Man,” I vividly imagined Albert ripping this self-righteous excretion of bored urban utopians a new one.

Here’s the premise from the “No Impact Man” film website:

Colin Beavan decides to completely eliminate his personal impact on the environment for the next year. It means eating vegetarian, buying only local food, and turning off the refrigerator. It also means no elevators, no television, no cars, buses, or airplanes, no toxic cleaning products, no electricity, no material consumption, and no garbage. No problem – at least for Colin – but he and his family live in Manhattan. So when his espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping wife Michelle and their two-year-old daughter are dragged into the fray, the No Impact Project has an unforeseen impact of its own.

This is so cute; I am going to melt now. This kind of eco-experimentation is cute when it is acted out in Manhattan of 2009 and it is tragic when it is experienced in Armenia of 1992 where Albert lived in the center of the capital, Yerevan, in a neo-classically influenced apartment building with massive wooden doors.

Those doors ignited my imagination; as a kid, I even wrote a poem in which I visualized the doors as a portal to a different dimension. Years later, in the cover of a pitch-black winter night of 1992, my friends and I dismantled and stole those century-old doors, chopped them into many pieces and shared them among ourselves for wood to heat our homes. We had to because we had no electricity and it was incredibly cold.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia found itself engaged in full-scale war with Azerbaijan.  As a consequence of the deliberately interdependent Soviet infrastructure, Armenian’s economic and energy routes lay through Azerbaijani territory. The Azerbaijani blockade that followed (and is still in place) cast the unprepared and newly formed Republic of Armenia into a horrible economic and energy crisis. 

Not only there was a scarcity of supplies in every arena, but there was virtually no gas or electricity to heat our homes. For two years, we would have electricity for a total of two hours a day. 

Those winters—which, of course, happened to be some of the coldest in the modern history of Armenia—caused many deaths of unprepared people in their own homes.

The daily two hours of electricity were anticipated with the devotional reverence of a desert tribe welcoming rain. People would try to squeeze in anything from laundry to cooking, watching TV to just enjoying the magic of the electric bulb. 

When the hours of electricity expired, like cavemen we would gather around the fireplace, quiet and collectively depressed, with no impact on the world or even on our immediate surroundings. Only in times like that is one capable of understanding the true magic and liberating power that technology gives to man. The ability to be free and proud, strong and happy, are based not on our merging with nature but on our ability to master nature, to control and oppose its powers, to use our reason and skill to elevate ourselves from the dark and wild realm of frightened beasts struggling merely to survive under the whim of capricious surrounding. 

Two hours of electricity during the cold winter was not enough to heat our homes and city apartments, so people started chopping trees on the streets and parks for firewood.

Old beautiful trees were rapidly disappearing from city streets, turning the famously green Yerevan into a bare skeleton of itself. People needed heat to survive—between preserving trees and watching babies freeze to death; there was not much of a choice. 

The demand for firewood was huge, though, and people became protective of their territories. Tree chopping gangs, armed with axes and machetes, formed to protect their neighborhood trees and distribute the wood among them. 

In savagery and ragged outlook, these gangs were not much different from prehistoric territorial tribes. Police would not dare to confront them, especially when their own reservoir of gas was almost non-existent and they could not even promptly respond to many serious emergencies.

Fierce fights would ensue if someone tried to cut a tree in someone else’s yard or park.  My friends and I, soft and spoiled city slackers, were now thrown into this anarchic struggle for life, spending hours in bread lines and chopping wood, dismantling wooden doors and benches in the parks to which we used to be taken by our parents in our not-so-distant childhood. 

It was through chopping wood that I came to identify with Abraham Lincoln in such a way that years later I would make a very personal film about his legacy.

There was something comforting in knowing that the President of that faraway country that my friends and I idealized so much would also chop wood and go through harsh times before he was able to make an impact… and boy, we wanted to make an impact! 

From our shared experience of the ‘dark age’ we carried out a zealous urge to make an impact, to claim our existence in the family of nations, to tell everyone that we are alive, that we are human, that we matter, that we want to achieve something, and that we don’t want to perish in this damn darkness of animal fear. 

And then there is, of course, Albert, who was fatally impacted by the acts of 19 evil men whom he’d never met or heard of. Sorry for the doors, my friend. I’ll plant a tree in your memory in this faraway land that you and your sister loved. I’ll plant it for all the trees that I had to cut back home. Those beautiful trees that helped us survive through the nightmares of those ‘unimpactful’ winters of ‘92 through ‘94.

Recently, actor Matt Damon narrated a video for the State Department, addressing the problem of chronic  worldwide hunger. The video is extremely well made; those who watch it can’t help but be touched by it.

This first minute of the three-minute video revolves around one problem: Hunger. Poor children are seen dying of starvation, others are lying on the streets of third-world countries, not able to walk. Damon explains that six million children die of hunger every year – needless to say, a shocking statistic.

Even the most egotistical viewer cannot help but get angry at and upset by so much suffering, most of which is needless.

But then, one minute into the video, the subject suddenly changes. We move from dying children to tornadoes and tsunamis. Damon forgets about the children for a while to focus on … you knew it was coming … global warming.

Dying, hungry, suffering children are used as tools to talk about leftists’ main obsession; the myth of man-made global warming. The opportunism of these people never ceases to amaze me. They truly know no shame.

Damon’s video likely has something to do with the upcoming climate change talk in Copenhagen, Denmark. The U.S. State Department is clearly stepping up its efforts to influence public opinion and to prepare it for a deal that would do tremendous, needless, damage to Western economies, all in a vain attempt to combat climate change.

That is sad. What’s even sadder, however, is that videos such as Damon’s can have a major impact in global policy. Although increasingly more Europeans are becoming skeptical of man-made global warming leading to catastrophe, they still form the minority – and a pretty small one at that. Videos such as the one produced by the U.S. State Department and narrated by the world famous actor Matt Damon will undoubtedly cause many Europeans to support whatever treaty comes out of Copenhagen.

Although Americans may be more critical about global warming than we Europeans, it’s hard to imagine they will be left untouched by the video. The average voter is likely to think, “but if we don’t do something, millions of innocent little children will die!” Who can argue against that?

Interestingly enough, the last thirty seconds of the video are dedicated to different subjects. Suddenly Damon switches to “opening strong markets” to African products (since when do leftists love globalization and the free market, you have to wonder?) and to “empowering women.” What that has to do with global warming, no one knows, but that is not the point. No, the real subject of this video is global warming and the goal is to prepare Americans for an overly expensive treaty, which will do nothing whatsoever to actually change the climate for the better.

Using imagery of dying children, hunger, and oppressed women to butter-up Americans (and Europeans) to embrace an unnecessary, expensive and probably counterproductive Copenhagen-treaty… for Hollywood, it’s business as usual.

Of course, this answer is really at the very heart of the current debate over global climate change (formerly global warming, formerly global cooling), because whatever the polar bears might think about their own species’ global population, it is obviously far more than most every human environmentalists seem to care about theirs.

“Their is an anti-human element to many environmentalists.”  That was what Phelim told me the day I first met him and his lovely wife Ann McElhinney early last year.  The two had just spoken, quite passionately I might add (everything the two of them do is quite passionate), at a private gathering of conservatives in Sherman Oaks, California. 

Like so many documentary film-makers, they needed a ride.  (Unlike so many documentary film-makers, the ride was to a fairly nice hotel in Santa Monica…)  In exchange, they offered to screen an early cut of their film, “Not Evil, Just Wrong,” for me and a few friends.  It was a bargain I was happy to take.  “Only an environmentalist could look at thirty million dead from malaria and think that the biggest threat to the world is the pesticide that would stop it,” Ann told me on the ride over the hill.  “You really should watch our movie.”

In a world where so much of the debate (if you could argue that there is any real debate…) over climate change is focused on the science, it is the human story that most interests and appalls Phelim and Ann.  More aptly, it is an anti-human story, and they have seen it first hand.

In 2005, the couple traveled to Romania with a mission.  It was being reported in the European press that a greedy western mining corporation was invading the quaint, idyllic Romanian village of Rosia Montana to extract the regions’ gold deposits and exploit its people.  For Phelim and Ann, both experienced documentarians, this seemed like a story worth telling.  The problem, as they soon learned, was that the story was a lie.  Far from quaint and idyllic, Rosia Montana was a badly impoverished village that modernity had largely passed by. “These people weren’t making a lifestyle choice.  They were in deep, deep poverty.  They couldn’t wait for the mine to open and inject fresh money and jobs into the local economy. But stopping that were activists from Switzerland and Belgium. These rich western environmentalists didn’t care.  They were content to watch people live in misery and view it as a “culture” that needed to be preserved, but if you talked to the local people they viewed poverty as a curse that was killing their children early and needed to be eradicated as soon as possible.”

What Phelim and Ann discovered was a far bigger story – one that would give their film, and their lives, a whole new shape.  It was the largely untold tale of western activists advancing Marxist ideology under the guise of environmental protection. “This romantic notion that starving people are ‘poor but happy’ has to stop.  Someone needs to tell these environmentalists that humans are actually part of the environment.”

In 2006, Phelim and Ann did just that, releasing their film, “Mine Your Own Business,” as a stern rebuke of what they see as a criminally disingenuous movement to destroy the west and the progress that modernity has brought.  The film is a brutally honest look at how much damage is done to actual humans by those claiming to save the world.  “Rosia Montana never got their mine, but the Romanian villagers facing another winter of extreme poverty can shiver to sleep secure in the knowledge that the greedy capitalists were defeated.”  Environmentalists called the movie “Nazi propaganda…”

“Not Evil, Just Wrong” picks up on the same theme, and carries it much farther.  If free-markets, trade, and employment are the only tools ever used to effectively end poverty, then what would it mean to take those tools off of the table, as the modern environmental movement seems bent on doing?  Who will suffer and who will gain?  According to Phelim and Ann, who will suffer is everyone, especially the poor.  Who will gain is Al Gore and the rest of the multi-billion dollar Big Environmental Businesses.  And of course, America loses the most.  Says Ann, “China produces more genuine pollution than any other nation on Earth, but none of the international regulations on the table do anything to curb them.China’s cities are badly polluted with dirty fumes. If Greenpeace wanted to stop global pollution they should move all their offices to China. And I’m talking about genuine pollution – not CO2 which is essential for life and one of the elements that keep our crops growing and our children healthy. But Greenpeace is not in China because there is a strong anti-business, anti-capitalist and above all anti-American element to the environmental movement.  If the world is really ending, why wouldn’t they want to stop everyone polluting and not just single out the American economy for destruction?.”  Or, as Phelim puts it, “They say America should lead by example, but what example is that?  Suicide?”

“Not Evil, Just Wrong” is the anti-”Inconvenient Truth,” not only because it exposes and rebukes the foundational premises of that film, but because it advocates humanity first, and nothing serves humanity better than morally checked, free-market capitalism.  As it turns out, that’s another topic Phelim and Ann know rather well.

“We’re trying to do something innovative,” Phelim told me on a recent call.  “We figure that lots of really interesting and intelligent ideas have come out of the American home and almost nothing interesting or intelligent comes out of the current American cinema.”  Phelim and Ann’s innovative answer?  They are going to launch their films in the former, not the latter.  The idea is as profound as it is simple.  In a world of flat-screen televisions, high-speed Internet, streaming media, and cell-phone movie rentals, “Not Evil, Just Wrong” is leading the way in direct-to-consumer marketing.

On Sunday, October 18th, the largest, simultaneous film-premiere in history will take place. “Not Evil, Just Wrong” will be screened in well over 4000 private locations in America, and more than a thousand more worldwide.  People from all walks of life are hosting screenings in their homes and churches, they are renting small theaters and community centers and school auditoriums.  It is a grassroots movie premiere.

You can visit their website for a map of screening locations. It is impressive.  Better yet, you can tune in to Big Hollywood and be a part of this historic premiere event yourself tomorrow night at  5PM PST, just like thousands of other venues around the nation and world.  It is a very human model for getting a very human movie out into the culture, and as Phelim and Ann are always quick to remind, humans are what this story is really about.  As Phelim told me recently in Texas, “The vast majority of human history has been spent in darkness and hunger and tyranny.  That’s what these environmentalists, by their actions, seem to want to bring back, only not for themselves, of course.  They just want everyone else living in huts and starving to death but with a “quaint” centrally approved lifestyle while the environmental elite run the show.  America’s existence and success is the only thing stopping them, and it’s the proof that they’re wrong, which is why they have to destroy it.”

Or, put more simply, “These people don’t give a damn about polar bears.”

Telling the story of an emotionally troubled American billionaire who travels the world in order to help desperately poor strangers in need, the show manages to condescend to the philanthropist himself, the society that allowed him to become rich, and the poor people he helps.

It condescends to the philanthropist, Teddy Rist (Phillip Purefoy) by positing that his quest was caused by an emotional reaction to a devastating personal loss–the death of his young son and subsequent breakup of his marriage. Near the beginning of the pilot episode, Rist establishes this theme strongly by saying that few people are happy these days, even people with money.

That will strike many viewers as a quite offensive notion, as it posits that happiness is based on an accumulation of material things and creature comforts. Even worse, it is false in all of its particulars: people in the United States are wealthier than ever, despite the current recession, and if material things and creature comforts made for happiness, we’d be happier than ever.

In addition to being untrue to life, this premise undermines the dramatic value of the show. By positing Rist’s philanthropy as an emotional reaction to a gnawing need within him for meaning in his life, the premise diminishes the moral praiseworthiness and dramatic power of his actions by characterizing them as not really freely chosen, as not flowing naturally from his character. Hence he cannot deserve full moral credit for his actions, as he’s really using them to fulfill his emotional needs.

Given its premise, the show can hardly help but condescend to the poor people he helps, as these ethnic people in Africa, Asia, and the like obviously need the assistance of this superior Caucasian person. Yes, their troubles are sometimes caused by natural events, such as a hurricane in Nigeria, but natural disasters in wealthy places such as the United States don’t result in the kind of devastation we see in The Philanthropist.

Obviously sensing this, the showmakers try to forestall any complaints of racism by having Rist’s business partner–designated as co-CEO of their multi-billion-dollar natural resources investment firm–played by an African-American, Jesse L. Martin (Law and Order). But that is an obvious sop to Hollywood’s absurdly unrealistic (though well-meaning) affirmative action plan in which African-Americans are continually cast in roles of corporate and government managers and common-sense conscience figures who keep flighty white people in line (those that aren’t portrayed as gang members or prostitutes).

The unreality and stereotyped nature of that premise destroys its effectiveness, and in the present case it serves only to underscore the artificiality and didacticism of the show’s concept and story lines.

The first episode of The Philanthropist even tries to blame businesses for everything that’s wrong in Nigeria, with a Nigerian official claiming that the rebel activities there are “a rebellion against the very corporate intrusion that companies like your routinely perpetrate on sovereign nations like Nigeria.

That’s absolute rot. Nigeria’s entire economy depends on Western corporations and consumers making the nation’s oil and other resources worth something. To claim that the one thing that brings wealth to that nation creates turmoil is to argue that the people there are better off scraping off a living in subsistence farming and starving to death whenever the weather isn’t just right.

In attempting to absolve the Nigerians of responsibility for their nation’s problems, the people behind The Philanthropist paint Nigerians as inferior beings who cannot even respond reasonably to being saved from starvation.

Later in that same episode, Rist is bullied by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents, whose presence in Nigeria is spectacularly inexplicable but of course thoroughly sinister. This scene adds the United States government to the disruptive American forces whose involvement in Nigeria is the cause of the nation’s problems. The Philanthropist exemplifies the phenomenon noted by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick when she noted that many people in the United States always seem eager to “blame America first.”

The second episode, “Myanmar,” has Rist explicitly asking whether economic sanctions against oppressive governments do more harm to the government or to the people of the nation thus punished. Naturally, Rist ultimately comes to the conclusion that his corporation must not be tainted by even a secondhand relationship with such a nation by doing business with a company that does business in Myanmar.

His partner and co-CEO refers to this as “the right thing, the moral thing, the financially responsible thing.” It’s certainly the sentimental and most immediately sympathetic response, but the morality of the situation is much more complex than that, just as Rist initially thought. After all, Cuba, North Korea, and Iran have not become more humane by being cut off from Western investments, or as The Philanthropist calls them, “corporate intrusion.”

The speech by the Nigerian official mentioned earlier exemplifies another element of the show, the characterization of Rist as hubristic and somewhat clueless about the practical difficulties involved in getting help to people, which requires regular rebukes and object lessons by the locals. Hence the locals are portrayed as morally superior and more practical than Rist. But if that’s so, why are they so poor?

The answer, of course, is in the Nigerian official’s rant: Evil corporations from the West exploit the nation and strip it of its resources. But that’s obvious nonsense, as those resources are worth nothing to the locals unless they can sell them to people who can make some use of them. Hence the show is mired in contradictions in addition to being untrue to life.

Finally, The Philanthropist condescends to the society that makes possible the riches Mr. Rist distributes. In an interview for a television news show, Rist begins to talk about how much his corporation gives to charity, and then stops, disgusted that 1.9 percent is so paltry. He storms off the set and heads off to Nigeria to “look them in the eye’ and personally deliver a large shipment of necessities such as food and blankets.

This is false in two important ways in addition to the aforementioned conceit of Rist using his philanthropy to fill a psychological and emotional need.

First, the notion that corporations do good mainly by giving to charity is false and pernicious. Rist’s company buys and sells natural resources such as oil, natural gas, etc. That in itself does society an incredible amount of good–which is why people pay for it.

Thus any profit that the corporation makes that does not go back to its shareholders in the form of (very well-earned) dividends should go back into doing the good things that the corporation is already doing, or other ones which the firm can do well. The big amounts of money the corporation earns, after all, come about because they are fulfilling needs and desires which people are willing to pay for.

Yes, charity is a fine thing, but the real function and ability of corporations is to make money for their stockholders, which they can only legally accomplish by selling goods and services people want or need. In fact, many corporations have been notably pernicious in their philanthropic endeavors, often funding organizations that undermine the market system, personal liberty, and freedom of association that make the increasing wealth of the nation possible. We’d all be much better off if they stuck to what they do best.

Corporations make money by doing social good (unless assisted by government in making money from unnecessary or harmful things), and the surplus they generate–their profits–goes to additional investment (which leads to more good or decreases the corporation’s value) or to shareholders, who may then distribute it as they choose. The latter, over the entire economy, are the source of much of the nation’s monetary and in-kind philanthropy.

Even if a corporation gives no money at all directly to philanthropic endeavors, it cannot help but do good, as all the money corporations make can only go to reinvestment, debt pay-down, distributions to shareholders, or taxes. Of all these categories, the only one not especially likely to do good is the tax payments.

The second false and condescending notion in The Philanthropist regarding American business is the conceit that the forcible redirection of corporate profits by an individual is morally good and proper. It is, in fact, quite wrong for Rist to divert even what he considers a piddling amount–1.8 percent–to pet charities that will make him feel better about himself.

That is an outrageously elitist notion, that Rist knows more about what’s good for society than his stockholders do. The money he gives to charity would be much more productive, as noted earlier, by being reinvested, paying down debt, or distributed to shareholders. All of those things have the potential to create further economic value, from which all of society ultimately benefits.

Rist is doing exactly what governments do, forcibly extracting money from other people and claiming moral superiority for doing so. He does show courage, determination, and self-sacrifice in bringing help to people in need, but that doesn’t make what he’s doing morally right.

Finally, the notion that what really makes the world a better place is philanthropy is entirely false.

What makes the world better, at least in simple material terms and in the creation of opportunities for personal fulfillment, is increasing wealth. And although many people–such as the producers of The Philanthropist–make extravagant claims about how philanthropic activities created various breakthrough developments, the reality is that the wealth of nations is created by the daily effort on the part of millions of people to earn their keep by doing things that benefit other people sufficiently that the latter are willing to pay for them.

Philanthropy is a good and fine thing indeed, but it’s a choice best made by individuals to give of their own wealth in a compassionate hope of doing good for others. Forcible extraction of other people’s money, even for charitable purposes, is not philanthropy; it’s tyranny.

Like its protagonist, The Philanthropist means well, but its premises undermine the very things that make philanthropy possible.

Now, first of all: I find hard it to believe that this DNA question never came up over breakfast at the Edwards’ home. But no matter – that`s not what boils my bacon. If John, as his wife claims, cares enough about poverty to make it a campaign issue, then why doesn’t he care about the poverty of a single baby? Even more, you’d think Elizabeth – so proud of her husband`s stance – would urge him to take the test, and be a father to a baby who probably needs cash for diapers – and in a few years, hair gel. I mean, the baby can’t hold a job yet – and Edwards is beyond loaded. If you’re going to talk about the despair of poverty, put your money where your big mouth is.

Well, progressivism doesn`t work that way. It`s the maxim of the typical lefty: if you think globally, you can screw everyone else locally. Those grand ideals – evident in greater concern for the world – always disappear when it’s closer to home, where it matters most. Anyone who has ever had a lefty roommate knows this: he will protest against greed, but he won`t pony up for the groceries. He will rail against injustice, but he will never clean the bathroom – which is a real injustice. He screams about war crimes, but refuses to take responsibility for his own crummy life.

So, as a strike against poverty – Edwards should take the DNA test.

And then his poor wife can write another book about it.

Those two groups are made up entirely of narcissists.  Who else would want or need to exist entirely in the spotlight?  They’re like moths.  The irony is that, physically, the two groups couldn’t be more different and, yet, on a per capita basis, they probably spend the same amount on Botox, collagen and plastic surgery.   When it comes to nips, tucks and hair transplants, alone, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, have spent enough money to keep several poor families in vittles for years to come. 

Speaking of appearances, I can see the attraction of politics.  In no other field, except perhaps for rock and roll, are so many homely people described as highly photogenic sex symbols.  I first became aware of this phenomenon when John Kennedy, a man who in his early 40s already had an impressive set of jowls, was sold to us as a combination of Tyrone Power and Cary Grant.  Then along came Bill Clinton, a pudgy fellow with a big red nose and little piggy eyes, and yet even he apparently made liberal women swoon.  Now we have Barack Obama, a man boasting ears that would put Dumbo to shame, a man who looks like he could leave Air Force One in the hangar and just let a strong breeze carry him wherever he has to go. 

It’s not just the politicians, but also their mates, so long as they’re Democrats, who get the star treatment.  Take Michelle Obama…please.  Every time I turn around, there she is on a magazine cover.  Now, normally, like the Mafia, I lay off the spouses, but inasmuch as this particular spouse attended the same racist church as her hubby for 20 years, I’ll make an exception in her case.  After all, in spite of the fact that affirmative action got her an Ivy League degree and a $7,000-a-week salary and, moreover, has sent billions of dollars for no particularly good reason to Africa, she insists this is a mean country. 

Naturally, the left-wing media is now trying to convince us she has all the allure, glamour and fashion sense of Jackie Kennedy.  I have even heard her upper arms described in the sort of language Wordsworth devoted to flowers in the morning dew and that Keats lavished on nightingales.  Frankly, if I were Mrs. Obama and the geeks started rhapsodizing about my triceps, I might consider wearing sleeves. 

But there’s no getting around the fact that Barack is the bigger menace.  His latest money-burning crusade is universal health care.  It was bad enough when the Clintons pushed for it 15 years ago.  It hasn’t improved with age. 

If it were up to me, basic health insurance would only cover catastrophic injuries and diseases.  If hypochondriacs feel they have to see a doctor every time they sneeze, that kind of coverage can be handled the same way as car, life and fire insurance.  They’d pay through the nose for it.  As P.J. O’Rourke observed: “If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it’s free.” 

A friend of mine thinks that one way to lower the price of medical care is through tort reform.  He thinks that so long as lawyers can put physicians through the meat grinder, doctors will be forced to keep raising their fees in order to cover their insurance bills.  It was my friend’s suggestion that if somebody sues a doctor for malpractice and loses the case, he should be liable for all the court costs.  I pointed out that no poor person, no matter how badly maimed, could then afford to sue and run the risk of losing and that no lawyer could afford to take the case on a contingency basis. 

My solution was that no lawyer would be allowed to sue a doctor if he had sued a medical practitioner, say, twice before and lost.  That would at least prevent the worst sort of shyster from making a career out of chasing ambulances. 

One of the things that concerns me about Obama’s presidency is that every time he opens his yap, he sounds so darn naive.  Just recently, he spoke about reaching out to moderates in the ranks of the Taliban.  A moderate in that society is a cretin who wants to murder Christians, Jews and any woman who refuses to wrap herself in a bed sheet before leaving the house, but who draws the line at beheading his victims for Al-Jazeera’s TV cameras. 

I find it hard to believe that the majority of saps who voted for Obama last November would do it all over again even though he has been spending money in a way that would give drunken sailors a bad name, while Wall Street and Main Street both begin to resemble Tobacco Road.  It seems that when people described Obama as charismatic, they didn’t mean he was particularly bright, only that he was able to convince a lot of dummies that liver-and-onion flavored ice cream tastes better than chocolate or vanilla. 

The way things are headed, it seems that Khrushchev almost got it right.  The Soviet Union didn’t bury us, as he predicted, we simply dug our own grave.  We went Socialist without a bomb being dropped or a shot being fired.  The coup took place in election booths all over America, and anyone who doesn’t regard it as a tragic event didn’t deserve to be born here. 

Recently, the following message has been all over the Internet: It’s a Recession when your neighbor loses his job.  It’s a Depression when you lose your job.  It’s a Recovery when Obama loses his job. 

Amen. 

BurtPrelutsky@aol.com

Some conservative commentators are demonstratively wishing President Obama well. My heart admires their good intentions, but as I watched Obama’s inauguration on TV, my mind couldn’t help but ponder the possible consequences thereof. As someone coming from another country (ex-USSR) I don’t participate in racial debates nor do I want to. Being post-racial is fine by me. So let’s accept Obama’s post-racial premise, leave the issue of melanin content aside, and judge the man solely by the content of his agenda. And the more I look at Obama’s agenda the more I realize that wishing him well is like wishing luck to Don Quixote in wrecking the windmill that feeds me and my family.

It’s not a matter of taste. The spectacle of a bombastic crackpot in medieval armor poking his lance at random objects is disquieting if you own and operate an industrial facility. It sends thrills up your legs if you share the noble hidalgo’s conviction that the perfectly functional, cereal-grinding, income-generating windmills are the embodiment of evil, spreading death and destruction. As far as popular entertainment goes, I’ve seen worse. But when Don Quixote organizes a community to fight windmills and receives massive support, anyone with a job should be worried. When he becomes president with a popular mandate to wreck windmills at taxpayers’ expense, using the government apparatus, hope becomes all but absent.

Being light on details, Obama’s inaugural speech briefly remunerated his views – which we already knew from his previous comments, associations, voting record, and cabinet appointments. Here is a partial list of the windmills he pledges to fight:

Windmill #1: Greed is bad for the economy.
Greed is a known “progressive” code word for the freedom to keep what you earn – the sort of freedom that made the United States the economic wonder of the world. To be fair, during the presidential debates McCain also attacked greed in rather quixotic terms, although next to Obama he sounded more like the simple-minded Sancho Panza.

Windmill #2: Lack of government control is bad for the economy.
The ones out of control here were the Democrat politicians who created corrupt government-sponsored companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, later defending them to the death against Republican calls for stricter oversight. At the same time they overburdened the banking industry with Utopian requirements to give mortgages to people who couldn’t pay them back – a quixotic move that sparked the current economic meltdown.

Windmill #3: Partisan discord must give way to “unity of purpose.”
A debate between political parties is healthy for a democracy. The trouble is, the debate itself became toxic when Obama’s own party was hijacked by leftist radicals whose idea of unity is the suppression of dissent. If we unite with them for that purpose, it will be the end of American democracy. Observe examples of political unity in Cuba, North Korea, and Hollywood. One-party rule was stipulated in the Article 6 of the Soviet Constitution that singled out the Communist Party as the leading and inspiring force of the Soviet people. We know how that ended.

Windmill #4: Wealth creation must give way to wealth redistribution.
“Without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control – and … a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.”
In real life, free market favors everybody who participates in it. Excessive regulations give unfair advantages to large corporations that can swallow the extra cost while their smaller competitors will choke on it. This stifles competition, reduces economic opportunity, lowers the quality of life, and spreads misery. In the end the elites remain prosperous while everybody else is worse off. Quixotic policies always result in the exact opposite of the original intentions. The only winner here is the growing government bureaucracy.

Windmill #5: Discipline the government bureaucracy.
“And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day.”
It’s what Leonid Brezhnev also said when he figured Khrushchev’s liberal reforms had unleashed government corruption that had been previously held in check by Stalin’s rule of terror. Let’s face it – terror is the only way to run a state-owned economy effectively; that’s why Stalin kept his apparatchiks trembling with fear and waking up at night in cold sweat. Without the show trials and executions, to manage an army of sticky-fingered bureaucrats became a gigantic windmill that the country had been fighting for a few decades before it collapsed from exhaustion. The moral here is that, short of the gulag, nothing can control the corrupting powers of an exponentially-growing government bureaucracy. Attempts to fight it will only result in a quagmire. The obvious answer is to stop feeding this monster, by removing the unessential regulating functions; the government will deflate to a manageable size and will become people-friendly again.

Windmill #6: Finance government construction projects by taxing private industries.
Talk about “meeting the demands of a new age.” Throw away your computer and grab a shovel – the future is here! Putting government in competition with the private sector helps neither, but corrupts both. FDR tried this on a massive scale; his well-meaning programs turned a recession into a depression, prolonged the suffering, and delayed the recovery by a decade. The subsequent lionization of FDR for this man-made disaster could only occur in a mindset where good intentions mean everything, and the results mean nothing – a classic example of quixotism.

Windmill #7: Ward off the specter of Global Warming.
“We will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet.”
Nice try bundling terrorism with Global Warming, but no cigar. While the industrial impact on climate cycles remain a questionable hypothesis, its ideological underpinnings are getting more and more visible. Not two weeks ago Obama created the position of global warming czar and gave it to known socialist radical Carol M. Browner, whose solution to any world problem is the curbing of capitalism and shrinking the economy. Swapping Karl Marx’s “specter of communism” with a more convenient “specter of a warming planet” may have changed the lyrics, but the song remains the same.

In this light, Obama’s promise to “restore science to its rightful place” is merely a code phrase for the politicization of science. In the USSR, where scientific consensus was created by government mandate, politicization of science resulted in a colossal waste of national resources on absurd agricultural hoaxes, while state-appointed “scientists” denounced the emerging cybernetics as a “bourgeois hoax.” Every single one of these people acted out of good intentions.

Windmill #8: Global poverty exists because the US taxpayers aren’t throwing enough money at it.
“We can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect.”
If global poverty still exists after trillions of dollars in foreign aid over the decades, shouldn’t we already start looking for the root of the problem elsewhere? Say, not in the lack of donations, but perhaps in the despotic quasi-Marxist regimes that cause poor nations to stay poor? A bizarre quixotic-despotic symbiosis has emerged, for example, in Africa, where well-meaning Western activists and politicians are promoting socialist reforms and nationalization of resources – while local despots, who otherwise couldn’t care less about Marxism, find this system very useful in maintaining power and keeping populations in economic serfdom.

As long as everything is owned and governed by the state, the head of such a state automatically becomes an absolute monarch, owning and governing the entire land and its people. Such governing typically consists of stealing foreign aid, pilfering the country, looting the neighbors, and fighting off coup after coup, led by an endless swarm of similarly inclined wannabe despots, who want their share of foreign aid, gold, diamonds, or whatever else the educated Western geologists happen to find in that God-forsaken, state-owned land. No such despot will ever step down voluntarily, because that would make him like everybody else in his country – dirt-poor and vulnerable to abuse from the new despot.

Perhaps, in order to eliminate bloody civil wars in Africa and elsewhere, Obama could throw a few billion of our dollars at a posh retirement facility for tinpot dictators that would help them soften the blow and deal with psychological stresses, thus facilitating a peaceful transition of power from one crook to another. A better solution, of course, would be to introduce those countries to capitalism with its freedoms, incentives, property rights, and the rule of law – but apparently this is too ignoble a prospect for a soaring quixotic mind to consider.

* * *

These are the facts that Americans, of all people, should be able to recognize as obvious. How did it happen that the usually realistically-minded Americans not only elected a man who is withdrawn from reality, but overwhelmingly wish him to succeed in carrying out his fallacies?

The answer is probably in the changing nature of our age and its heroes. How it is changing and why is being increasingly determined by those who set the tone in the American popular culture.

Obama’s popularity indicates that a new archetypal American hero has emerged – a sentimental, selfless idealist, preoccupied with perceived crises and injustices – real or imaginary – and is determined to fight the cynics for the people’s right to have good intentions – consequences be damned.

In his speeches, Obama often derides cynics, positioning himself as the ultimate anti-cynic, which is also how Don Quixote is viewed in today’s popular culture – the same popular culture that for several decades has been a plaything in the hands of liberal trendsetters in Hollywood, TV, and mass media.

Apparently even celebrities, who spend their days pushing the limits of egotism and degeneracy, have moments of clarity and feel an occasional need to redeem their meaningless existence. But to pause and rethink their lives, grasp the reality, and get out of the rut may be too much to ask from people whose idea of happiness is to snort cocaine off oneanother’s buttocks. Instead, they engage in what they perceive as the opposite of cynical depravity. So they start pushing the limits of selfless idealism. That’s when they donate to radical groups and politicians, make movies about Che Guevara, and act as spokespeople for ultra-liberal causes.

Never mind that what they see as the opposite of degeneracy is just a mirror reflection of the same old rut. Reality has never been their strong suit. Nevertheless, their quixotic efforts have already shaped a culture of scatterbrained idealism that trumps reality. Last November, millions of consumers of this culture gasped and decided that it would be very cool to elect, not the real man, but a cultivated archetypal image of a well-meaning, starry-eyed dreamer, who they hope will somehow help them avoid taking responsibility for their own lives.

Compare a modern liberal to Don Quixote, and he will take it as a compliment. In my years of living in America, I have met a number of people who proudly claimed they were fighting windmills – a generic code phrase meaning “actively working to undermine American cultural, social, military, and economic institutions.” Destroying property and sabotaging business operations made them feel good, as each imagined himself a noble hidalgo, fighting the powerful and defending the oppressed masses.

One might conclude that in their feverish Marxist brains, the story of Don Quixote was about a glorious rebellion against imperialist powers by a romantic freedom fighter with no life (his female comrade thought he was a Trotskyite), and so he took on the revolutionary road to utopia, struggling for social and economic justice, liberating the oppressed, and destroying means of production privately owned by capitalist exploiters.

They didn’t believe me when I said that Cervantes named his protagonist after the horse’s ass, using Catalán slang for it, that “mancha” in his full name also meant “stain” (as on one’s honor), his horse’s name Rocinante meant a “reversal,” and the novel itself was actually a satirical farce about a mentally disturbed retrograde, whose fight was against societal progress and the human nature itself.

It’s only fitting that people who are withdrawn from the reality end up misjudging the history of thought and societies. Another seminal book that the quixotic left has completely misconstrued is 1984, but that is a whole different story.

Let me put it in terms that a Marxist can understand: the original Don Quixote makes fun of a fossilized remnant of the feudal era, who is confused by rapid social changes and the emancipation of the working man. He is sickened by the idea that a lowly commoner who works for a living has suddenly grown more important than he – a blueblood who has neglected his estate, squandered his fortune, and spends his days in bed reading chivalric novels. So he escapes into a fantasy world of romanticized chivalry, courting a woman who thinks he is a crackpot, and destroying property of a hard-working miller because it makes him feel good to imagine that he is defending humanity from evil.

In this sense, Don Quixote is an ultimate liberal elitist who despises the bourgeois class that feeds him, feels nostalgic about the idealized past when benevolent kings bestowed favors upon the destitute subjects, and treats other people as mere objects of his exaggerated emotions, in complete disregard of their true nature.

To continue in Marxist terms, the story is an allegory of the painful reaction the discarded nobility had to the breakup of feudalism, and the rising overall prosperity brought in by the new class of capitalist entrepreneurs who were happy, well-fed, and held their head high, despite their obvious lack of grooming and heredity. These insolent former peasants ridiculed the idea of having a benevolent lord protector to care about their needs – which was what our anachronistic “knight-errant” was offering.

As if disrespecting the bluebloods was not enough, the new bourgeois class defaced the landscape with clusters of ugly, prosaic windmills that squeaked and creaked, increasing the number of well-fed, freewheeling plebeians, and decreasing their collective dependency on the charity of the powerful – or, for that matter, on anything else larger than themselves.

In today’s industrialized, world old windmills may be seen as sentimental relics of a bygone, bucolic era. But in the early 1600s they were as much part of an industrial landscape as power plants and oil rigs are today. Think of Big Oil as today’s equivalent of Big Windmills.

Thus, Don Quixote’s attack on a windmill was an emblematic act of resentment by a feudal diehard against the symbol of the newly-emerged capitalist system – a much more progressive, efficient, and successful socio-economic order that ushered in prosperity, equality, and individual liberty.

In a parallel development, observe Sen. Edward Kennedy’s fight against power-generating windmills that threatened to ruin a bucolic view from his patrician Camelot mansion. You get the idea.

* * *

All things considered, wasn’t the entire socialist movement, from the very start, a fearful, allergic reaction to capitalism and industrialization? Wasn’t the longing for a powerful welfare state born from nostalgia for the idealized safety net of feudalism, with its certainty of social roles and obligations? Didn’t the notion of a benevolent government official, caring about the helpless masses, originate from the romanticized myth of a noble lord caring about his loyal peasants – without the anxieties associated with freedom to make individual life choices? And wasn’t it darkly ironic that apologists of such a backward, regressive idea chose to call themselves “progressives”?

What motivated and united the quixotic “progressive” elites was their impulsive, irrational loathing of the perceived materialism of the markets and the coarse, ill-mannered bourgeoisie, which had become the designated windmills of the new era. Free markets broke up the rigid social structure and fostered upward mobility, discarding the certainty that aristocrats would keep their wealth without having to work for it – and that they would not be out-shined by the dreaded “nouveau riche,” which was the aristocratic slur for the “previously poor.” Anyone’s chances to succeed in life now depended on their abilities, rather than pedigree.

As life was becoming increasingly “unromantic,” more commoners were enjoying higher living standards, hygiene, education, and improved life expectancy. Industrial innovation steadily reduced the share of stupefying hard manual labor and increased the share of clean, professional, high-paying jobs, further shrinking the dependency of the commoners on the elites. Mass production brought down the prices, allowing every yokel to own things and travel places that used to be an exclusive privilege of nobility. And what did these oafs do to deserve it – except making, delivering, and marketing food, clothes, houses, tools, medicine, and the ugly prosaic machinery?

It was probably somewhere in the midst of such mental entanglements that a longing for a romantic anti-industrial hero first produced the “revised and improved” interpretation of Don Quixote – no longer a horse’s ass, but a selfless idealist fighting the windmills of greed and materialism, impervious to the mocking and jeering of the unrefined cynics.

The key word here is “cynics.” To understand the whole quixotic phenomenon, one must realize that the cynics in this case are the people who build, own, and operate windmills – and who don’t want to see them leveled by some well-meaning loon. It is these people – not the elites – who make life possible. And if you talk to them outside of the contrived quixotic dichotomy, they don’t sound like cynics at all.

“Cynics” is also the key word in Obama’s code language, which stems from the same quixotic paradigm. Once you decipher the key word, other code elements begin to fall into place. Let’s see…

“Change” signifies a backward movement to the idealized Utopian times that never really existed. More specifically, it can mean anything Obama’s team does – from staffing the government with old Clinton drones to exhuming and reviving the corpse of the “Fairness Doctrine” – a mothball-smelling liberal zombie programmed to kill radio stations that broadcast dissenting voices

“Hope” means a conscious effort to fire up a quixotic vision of a government-appointed knight in shining armor, galloping to your rescue – and to spread this illusion to the scale of a massive hallucination.

“Crisis” denotes a fortunate turn of events when the frightened masses are more likely to elect a quixotic leader. Nothing bolsters collectivism like a stampede.

“Unity” means that everybody must play this game without exception. Which reminds me of the old Soviet make-believe game of building the communist society long after people had stopped believing in it, but continued to pretend out of habit, convenience, fear, or career prospects.

And so on.

If we pretend to play Obama’s game for a moment, we may start seeing America as a downright mean country – without hope, in bad need of change, and overtaken by crisis that we can overcome if we only have unity.

In contrast, if we listen to the “cynics,” we may learn that America is a land of optimistic can-do people, who disposed of the abusive nobility, created a government of, by, and for the people, and achieved unparalleled historic successes by taking a rational, freedom-loving, and self-reliant worldview to the farthest frontiers – in the process benefiting not only themselves, but also the rest of the world.

But such low-brow American “cynicism” couldn’t completely vanquish the noble spirit of “social awareness” and “economic justice” – also known as collectivist feudal co-dependency, disapproval of individual judgment, fear of risk-taking, reliance on the charity of the powerful, and the romanticized utopian view of the collectivist past. This spirit had lived latent for many decades, fueled by socialist movements overseas, and fortified by the influx of immigrants infected by collectivist ideologies that, in the Old World, later metastasized into Fascism and Bolshevism.

But no matter what we call things, and what code words we use to disguise them, no matter how we try to change, alter, condition, accommodate, convert, modify, modulate, redo, restyle, reshape, transfigure, transmute, warp, invert, reverse, swap, transpose, or bend the public perception of reality, in the end we will still be living in the same old reality, governed by the same, unchanging, objective laws. And according to these unchanging laws, any quixotic intentions to curb the industries and rein in the materialistic capitalist class will, with absolute certainty, result in degradation and reversal of the real progress that the human race has achieved in the last few hundred years.

When the romantic concepts of “renewed spirituality” and “communal living” come in direct contact with the unchanging laws of human nature, they inevitably result in punishing the achievers, removing incentives, reducing productivity, shrinking industries, shortening life expectancy, decreasing skilled high-paying jobs, and increasing the share of stupefying hard manual labor. You wanted Obama to succeed? Here’s your shovel-ready project.

The code word for this in Obama’s Pig Latin is “progress.” In case you were looking for the definition of cynicism, this is it.

When Obama talks about taking America into the 21st century, he insults everyone in this country who has worked hard to take it there, before they first heard his name. However, now that we’ve partially cracked the code, we can make an educated guess that the time where Obama intends to take us, is actually not ahead but behind us – the early 20th century, the era of first socialist revolutions and the Great Depression. But it might as well be 1605 when Don Quixote was first published.

Occasionally, Obama lifts his visor and speaks to the masses in plain language. The New York Times slavishly reports: “In his commencement speech last month at Wesleyan University, Barack Obama … sounded an impassioned call to public service, and warned that the pursuit of narrow self-interest – ‘the big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy … betrays a poverty of ambition.’” He continued, “Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.”

This is purely quixotic claptrap. Come to think of it, in today’s world, Don Quixote might as well take up “progressive” activism and become a “community organizer.” Or he could be an unfunny comedian with his own talk show on Air America Radio, campaigning for one of Minnesota’s seats in the US Senate.

While the ascension of Don Quixote as a new American idol is a grotesque comedy of errors by itself, the political effort to take advantage of this cultural trend was hardly a coincidence.

Every utopian revolution ends up in corruption. The more altruistic the heroes are, the faster the plutocrats move in. If Obama really is the dreamy idealist from his own campaign poster – allergic to dirty politics, with his head fixed permanently above the clouds – then, naturally, the real power will be quickly divided among his crafty puppeteers. But let’s give the newly sworn-in President credit – it takes an extremely shrewd politician to sense the cultural current, catch the wave, and ride it all the way to the White House the way he did.

Whether Obama is a starry-eyed dreamer, or a manipulative pragmatist preying on public fears, will be revealed soon enough. Whatever the case may be, his inauguration marks the beginning of a new age in America and the world. Some may call it the belated dawning of the Age of Aquarius. I call it the Age of Don Quixote.

Let’s face it. It takes a fuzzy pair to stare down a chap like Gorbachev.

Have you ever tried to stare down a Russian? It’s virtually impossible. They have cold, lifeless eyes. Eyes that pierce straight through you… They have the devil’s eyes.

Proof: Take a stroll down the shadiest parts of your city, observe the tough “gangsta’s,” and you’ll quickly notice that they avoid Russians (particularly the fresh off the boat variety) like the proverbial plague. While over the years the American thug culture has bred an intense, angry scowl, the Russian stare says, “I don’t need to try and look tough…. I am simply going to kill you.”

Why do “American Gangsta’s” fear them? It’s quite simple.

While many people in America continually complain about how “tough” life is, or how ”hard they’ve had it,” they are all too often fully aware that their circumstances pale in comparison to those of citizens abroad. The same thugs who claim to have been “raised on the streets,” know deep down that the crazy Russian gentleman next to him probably had to fight a bear for his food or kill his neighbor for toilet paper.

We Americans can just be so damn whiny! We complain about how terrible things are – the current economic trials we’re facing, the country’s state of crisis and imminent demise – while foreigners come here, having faced much MORE adversity, and flourish (with a smile on their face).

I feel like a terrible pansy.

It wasn’t too long ago that I was scurrying across the tundra-desert wasteland that is Quebec, searching for scraps of food and government-provided painkillers.

Oh, how quickly I’ve become spoiled. What Americans call “crisis” immigrants call “a great life.”

Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying as some sort of “feel good” message proclaiming the joys of contentment with mediocrity. What I’m saying is that there is a very large pie out there. Go out and get a piece. Black, white, brown or yellow (Jaundice-sufferers, I’m talking to you), go out and get a piece. Or better yet, go out and bake more pies.

And if we want to get into the whole “who’s more oppressed?” or “who’s had it tougher?” contest,  I would formally like to submit my nomination for the Russians. Let me explain why.

It is said that throughout history, the more oppressed people of the times dominate combat sports. For years it was the Irish, then it was the African Americans… And finally, now it’s the Russians (or as they prefer, “Ruskies”).

That’s just science, people.

How is this relevant to politics, you ask? It’s not. I just like to talk about how tough the crazy Russians are. Not only is it true, but by default, it makes The Gipper look even more awesome. God, I miss him.

Note: My video column will resume next week.