Dreaming the Impossible Dream and Laughing All the Way to the Bank

To dream ... the impossible dream ...
To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...

Man de la Mancha, a play based on the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

A People's Organization is dedicated to an eternal war. It is a war against poverty, misery, delinquency, disease, injustice, hopelessness, despair, and unhappiness. They are basically the same issues for which nations have gone to war in almost every generation.

Saul Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals

Self-styled "radicals" have been tilting at windmills as long as there have been windmills. They are projected in the culture as lovable dreamers, perpetual underdogs "fighting the good fight." But it is no coincidence that these cuddly defenders of the little man always pick impossible "wars" to wage, all while expending other people's resources to carry out their quixotic fights.

Dreaming the Impossible Dream
One strategy for draping coercion in the garb of nobility is to brainwash people into "sacrificing" themselves for a "higher cause." This is the root of religious and pseudo-religious exhortations to motivate people to "sacrifice themselves" on behalf of others. Ayn Rand consolidated such sacrificial ideologies under the rubric of "altruism."

One dominant pseudo-religion of the twentieth century is marxism. This belief system lost its prophetic weight at the termination of the Cold War. However, the radicals of the former faith did not really require that marxism be true, only that it provided a good "myth" (as George Sorel points out; explained by Jonah Goldberg in Liberal Fascism). The dejected cast-offs from the marxist flotsam and jetsam easily regrouped after the Soviet ship sank, and they subsequently transmuted marxism into the manmade climate change religion. The resultant radical environmentalism, a page straight out of neomarxist critical theory, takes on all the features of a great religion: It has guilt (carbon dioxide emissions), grace (carbon credits and redistribution of wealth to non-industrialized nations), and a Manichaenistic struggle between good and evil.

Yet there is always a window of opportunity that can be slammed shut once a "big lie," a "noble lie," or a Sorelian myth is exposed. While it may be true, as Mark Twain put it, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes," once the truth is properly clad, it has a Jesse Owens like tendency of catching up to lies. So while pseudo-religions can cause people "to dream the impossible dream," in the long-term it is better to be feared than to command delusional "true believers," who can eventually become disillusioned.

Fighting the Unbeatable Foe
The modern radical nearly always employs martial rhetoric when berating others to take up their causes, apparently envious of the "command and control" that generals wield in wars against actual foes. In fact, much of Rooseveltian and Keynesian economics is based on the assumption that society can be constantly mobilized exactly as it is in war-time. Of course, this economic plan requires a constant state of fear and a strong dose of "agit-prop" instilled in the populace to boost productivity enough to overcome the inefficiencies of central planning. As Jonah Goldberg explains in a section on "militarism" in Liberal Fascism:

Every day we hear about the "war on cancer, the "war on drugs," the "War on Poverty," and exhortations to make this or that social challenge the "moral equivalent of war." From health care to gun control to global warming, liberals insist that we need to "get beyond politics" and "put ideological differences behind us" in order to "do the people's business." The experts and scientists know what to do, we are told: therefore the time for debate is over. This, albeit in a nicer and more benign form, is the logic of fascism...(5-6)

Along with politicians claiming to know the self-interest of individuals better than those individuals; and establishing a cult of personality that poses a false "savior" to rescue citizens from the economic disasters the government itself creates; promoting a sense of "crisis" in order to accomplish political objectives is an important accompanying feature of fascism. As prominent American fascist Rahm Emanuel put it quite well, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Fear is a potent weapon against rationality, and progressives have a long history of wielding it effectively.

Tilting at Windmills
When the left combines the critical theory tactic of creating chimeras to battle (or what Alinsky referred to in puritanical terms as "mak(ing) the enemy live up to its own book of rules") with employing the rhetoric of moral "war," the predictable spawn is dozens of activist organizations with quite risible missions. Among these are the following:

PETA or the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - Lecturing human beings, who are omnivores, on the virtues of giving up meat. They carry on this crusade knowing full well that humans need the amino acids found in meat, eggs, milk, and fish in order to have proper brain functioning (this also happens to explain why most vegans are blithering idiots).

Christian Children's Fund (now the more politically correct ChildFund!) - Commits nightly emotional blackmail of the elderly who think they'll make up for their past sins by giving money to starving children. But if this organization really wanted to help, they would either pay for mercenaries to remove the dictators whose jackboot is on their throats, as is the case in Zimbabwe; provide people with U-Hauls and take them to where the food is; or promote industrial development, which would not only improve quality of life, but stabilize the population (as Lord Monckton points out).

WWF or The World Wildlife Fund - It's mission of promoting wildlife "diversity" and protecting endangered species is even more phony than the pro-wrestling WWF. The WWF's nonsensical goal of promoting species "diversity" in a world where tens of thousands die out every year is as blatant an anti-industrial policy as they come. While the WWF's claim to fame is pimping out panda bears for contributions, it recently chimed in at the socialist international convention at Copenhagen: ""The only way the world can be sure the US is standing behind its commitments is for the president to clearly state that climate change will be his next top legislative priority."

Friends of the Earth or FOE - Apparently named in contradistinction to its arch-nemesis the Friends of Humanity, FOE believes that its goddess Gaia will reward them in the afterlife for punishing man's transgressions against nature. If the policies it promotes leads to misery by putting non-industrialized nations in a state of dependency on others, than so be it. This is what FOE said at Copenhagen: "Obama has deeply disappointed not only those listening to his speech at the UN talks, he has disappointed the whole world." This is how FOE responded to Obama's initial bid to spend $100 billion of other people's money to give out to tinpot dictatorships and perpetual backwards nations around the world.

WDM (WMD?) or World Development Movement - Promoting development by hampering trade and attacking industrial civilization. This group's name matches its mission about as much as that of "The Trade Federation" in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which enforces a blockade of "Nabu" for apparently no good reason whatsoever (must-watch explanation). This was WDM's take at Copenhagen: "The president said he came to act, but showed little evidence of doing so. He showed no awareness of the inequality and injustice of climate change. If America has really made its choice, it is a choice that condemns hundreds of millions of people to climate change disaster."

Bearing the Unbearable Burden
The organizations listed above are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg of neomarxist front-groups who parade their altruistic banners before an army of anti-capitalist foot soldiers. We can easily do such a vivisection as performed above on Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Earth Liberation Front, DemocracyNow!, the Public Broadcasting Service, National Public Radio, or any publicly funded "service" that does not otherwise cut it in a marketplace, of ideas or otherwise. The myriad of parasites and panhandlers fashioning themselves as "Non-Governmental Organizations" (NGOs) or "public charities" are the newest of neo-statist frontmen to prey on mankind's continual foolishness, of which there is apparently no short supply.

It is with this backdrop that we can appreciate the absolute moonbarking lunacy that transpired at Copenhagen, and why society must mobilize to put an end to lunacy itself. With no real appreciation for objective reality, mankind will continually be bamboozled by mystics and charlatans brandishing any apocalyptic, absynthian delusion that they can come up with. There is big money to be made from gullible buffoons, and a giant buffoon factory is precisely what Western education has become.

So when such laughably pathetic clowns of corruption and graft as the late Edward "Teddy" Kennedy are lionized with the mawkish pomp of "The Impossible Dream" (ironically, a man who had fought against the installation of windmills on Cape Wind) - one best be on the guard for more fairy tales like manmade global warming and impossible dragons to slay like controlling the earth's climate. What's a few trillion dollars anyway if that means saving the world from a giant windmill?