The Fairy Tale that Really was

Kyle-Anne Shiver
Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:00:00 -0700
Opinion

There once was a young man named Barry, living in the magical land of Kumbayah, aka Oz. Barry had a vision, he did. And, oh, honey, a fine, fine vision it was.

He imagined a world without nation states beating up on each other, a world that could be molded and controlled by a beneficent, newly minted committee of kings. He dreamed of being the king of kings, single-handedly making the seas recede, healing the sick and saving mankind from all tribulation.

The world of Barry's making would be a magical place in which all people would be born, not with a bent toward evil as the Bible says, but with innate goodness and innocence. These magical people would never suffer unjustly.

Barry knew in his heart that injustice, not human nature, was the cause of all wrongdoing. Barry's world would be fair, utterly fair, never producing unequal outcomes, but giving to everyone the entitlements of one-size-fits-all everything for every need.

Barry's new world would be a Social Darwinist's Eden, offering itself up freely to the whims of control-freak academics, his own kind of people. These pseudo-intellectuals would conjure tons of malarkey for society to gratefully swallow, and concoct a never-ending array of cockamamie ideas over which the people would swoon with nary an dissenter in sight.

In Barry's world, wrongdoers would fall to their knees in contrition at the touch of his magical wand and all defenses would be laid to rest. Group therapy would take the place of soldiers and tanks. Hugging, bowing and scraping would be his new world's strength.

It could be done. It could be done. Oh, he just knew it could be done.

Still, he lacked a plan. Even with a degree from Columbia and lawyer creds from Harvard, he had no genuine ideas. He had never really done anything concrete. In order to remake the whole world, one surely needed a plan.

Then, one day it happened, exactly as his fortuneteller, Jeremiah Be-right, said it would. Out of nowhere, as he casually strolled a back street in Chicago, he spied that socialist grab bag in the window of an old junk shop.

One man's junk is another man's treasure, don't you know.

There, in that raggedy old burlap sack lay the rotting, reeking corpse of Marx's grand schemes, mortally wounded by ignominious defeat around the globe. But where everyone else saw death, destruction and despair, Barry saw hopey-changey paradise. The plan lacked only one thing that could bring utopia to fruition — HIM.

He alone could see the elusive butterflies of hope, change and a perfect world, trapped within the stinking corpse in that old socialist grab bag. Only he possessed the magic incantation that could bring the dead dream back to life.

Renewed with the vigor of hope in his loins, Barry marched right into that junk store and asked, "How much is that socialist grab bag in the window?"

"Nothing," replied the devilish fiend, Billy-Blue-Ayers, from behind the counter. "You only use other people's money, and when you run out, you just print more," he added with tempter's glee.

"Done," cried Barry, as he hefted his stinky bargain onto his Armani-clad shoulder.

He had the golden plan. Now all he needed was a golden goose to lay the golden egg that would get him to the golden printing presses of Oz.

Along came Georgie Porgie Soros, an alchemist with the Midas-touch and hosts of powerful friends. Soros even shared Barry's vision, having long known the world must be reordered with elites like them in charge.

Once Georgie Porgie and Barry got together, wrote the script and called it ACORN, they took their show on the yellow brick road all over Oz and Facebook. The crowds came; they rejoiced and fawned and fainted.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Now, folks, there are three morals to this story.

First, there really is a sucker born every minute. Second, at least once every century, a majority of suckers somewhere unite for imbecilic, suicidal change. And last but not least, for those under the mental age of 10, something that looks too good to be true nearly always is.

This fairy tale continues, of course, and I can think of only one good ending, which goes something like this.

Thomas Paine is so upset that he throws up in heaven, which causes awakening tsunamis on both coasts. Thomas Jefferson spits out his tea in disgust, which sends torrents of intellectual rainfall to the land. George Washington, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin get so angry they slam their books crashing to heaven's floor, causing earthquakes in patriot hearts on both sides of the yellow brick road. And, finally, all glitter falls from the fool's gold the suckers bought.

The people awake and with powerful voice they speak. And never again do the inhabitants of Oz swallow socialist poppycock wrapped in lipstick-on-cow-dung speechifying.

Alas, it could prove a fable worth living.