"And to whom do I have the pleasure of providing my services?" the genie asked.

"Liberal Genie," replied one of the beneficiaries, "we are a group of graduate students trying to enjoy this beach before global warming destroys it."

The genie's excitement was boundless. He had finally found what he had long been searching for--beneficiaries who had already attained Enlightenment, and who could thus use the provider's awesome powers to the fullest. "At last!" he exclaimed. "At last I have the attention of a truly Virtuous Liberal--er, I should say, Liberals! Listen, and listen carefully, for we have no time to waste. The world has suffered long enough, and now that we have the opportunity to fix it, we must not endure a moment's delay." The genie cleared his throat and furrowed his brow. "Let me be perfectly clear: you have three, and only three wishes. I promise to grant you whatever you desire, for I have great power, and nothing is beyond my reach. There is but one caveat: choose your wishes wisely, for once you have used all three, this opportunity will never arise again. I urge you to use them to promote Social Justice. Now tell me, what do you desire?"

The Enlightened grad students were thrilled. They had found what they had been searching for, just like The Liberal Genie. They had finally discovered someone who had enough power to enact their long-held wishes, to realize their dreams, their ideals, their Hopes. For what had seemed like ages--ever since high school--they had been mere bystanders, observing with mounting frustration the inability of the old guard to produce meaningful Change. The rich, the privileged, the powerful, the special interests had maintained the whole rotten capitalistic and imperialistic fraud, stymieing the forces of Progress, and preventing the establishment of the regime of Social Justice. But now that the grad students had power of their own, things were different. Unlike the Neanderthals who had obstructed their quest for Change, they had actually paid attention in class, imbibing all the knowledge they ever needed to know. Their teachers had trained them well. They knew just what to do.

"I know just what to do," said The Virtuous Liberal. "My first wish is for the redistribution of wealth." The Liberal Genie felt shivers up and down his leg as his beneficiary continued. "Let me give you some details so that you know what I have in mind. I want the permanent establishment of a steeply progressive tax structure so that The Rich finally pay their Fair Share. We have to increase income taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, impose a value added tax, and--and--well, we'll think of some new ones."

"Surtaxes!" one of the other beneficiaries ejaculated.

"Yeah, that's it--surtaxes, and corporate taxes, and cigarette taxes--whatever. We have to use the state to expropriate the expropriators. The Rich have stolen all their money from The Poor, and made them, well, like, y'know, more poor. We'll use these revenues to--what's the word?--invest billions of dollars on social programs for The Less Fortunate, including a public health insurance system, which the masses have irrationally opposed for too long, when it's actually about time that they matured and realized that we have to provide for our fellows--that we have to be our brothers'--and sisters'--keepers.

"Which brings me to my second, and related, wish: the expansion of the government's power to direct private property for social ends. We must regulate all business activity to control all these greedy fat cats, and to ensure the proper use of resources, which can't be trusted to the chaotic marketplace. The government has to control everything that is harmful to people and to the environment. We need to impose a smoking ban, to regulate trans fats in restaurants, to control the nutritional content of foods, to impose a cap-and-trade system to regulate greenhouse gas emissions--in fact, to use the state to significantly reduce the use of all fossil fuels and nuclear power too, and to subsidize wind and solar power so that we stop warming the planet. We have no choice; there are no alternatives!

"My third and final wish is for disarmament at home and abroad. Americans need to evolve beyond their petty, parochial concerns--like their obsession over their gun rights. In their wisdom, the Founding Fathers framed a Living, Breathing Constitution, and I'm sure that if they were around today, they'd agree that their original provisions are outmoded, and that we thus have the authority to impose new meanings on the old words as we please. We need drastic gun control--maybe even a ban. As for foreign relations, we need to lead from behind rather than, y'know, lead. Just like The Rich have exploited The Poor, America has exploited the other nations of the world. We must stop imposing our values on Others, and we have to stop thinking of ourselves as a superpower. We are no more exceptional than any other country, and we should reduce our own power, so that all nations, like all persons, are equal. We have to get rid of our nuclear arsenal, and scrap our missile defense system. We need to divert our resources from war and imperialism to social services at home." The passionate beneficiary paused to catch his breath, and then he concluded, "That, Liberal Genie, is what I wish for."

The genie was in a state of ecstasy, for, with a snap of his fingers, he would finally, once and for all, establish the utopia for which he had long yearned. He lifted his hand into the air, pressed his thumb against his middle finger, and then--

"Wait!" someone shouted.

One of the grad students, a young man named Cass, had interrupted the majestic proceedings. He stepped forward and timidly said, "You shouldn't do this so abruptly. Wait a little while so we can think this through, because maybe these policies might have some bad unintended consequences--perhaps."

"Oh really?!" said The Virtuous Liberal.

"Yeah!" seconded the genie. "Don't you want Change? Do you just want to maintain the status quo?"

"What if these changes are harmful?" asked Cass. "What if gun control leaves a greater share of all the guns in the hands of criminals who won't obey gun control laws, making it harder for the law-abiding to defend themselves? And your defense policies will place this country at the mercy of some really bad people out there."

"How can you say that?!" exclaimed one of the students.

"And your new taxes and regulations will just make it harder to create and expand businesses, and the result will be more unemployment and more poverty. Expanding welfare won't make people's lives better; it'll just make them dependent on the state so that they can't do anything for themselves anymore."

The grad students and the genie were amazed at Cass's ignorance, with some of them showing their disbelief by throwing their arms up in the air and emitting little snorts of derision.

"How can you be so cruel and heartless as to oppose our attempts to help people?" the genie asked, with a pained look on his face--that look that Liberals make to show the depth of their feeling (you know the one).

"Yeah, what is wrong with you?" said The Virtuous Liberal. "And, for your information, Liberal policies never fail. I know this because Paul Krugman said so--and he's a Princeton economist and Nobel Prize winner, so whatever he says must be right. It's your stupid free market policies that fail."

"No, that's not true; it's our relatively free market that has made this country the most prosperous in history. And all over the world, freeing up economies even a little has resulted in greater prosperity and less poverty."

The grad students and the genie were growing ever more frustrated at Cass's perverseness, at his failure to listen to reason and to see the error of his ways, at his seeming inability to accept the truth--that is, the grandeur that is Liberalism. The genie and most of his beneficiaries were content with merely shaking their heads in both disappointment and pity, but The Virtuous Liberal began to feel genuine indignation at Cass's stubborn nescience.

"It's always the market with you people!" he exclaimed. "The truth is that the common good comes before the private good. And The People are finally realizing that we have to sacrifice selfish individualism in favor of public right."

"Who gets to decide what's in the common good?" asked Cass. "We all have different beliefs about that, and your attempts to impose one answer on all of us will lead only to oppression and strife. The only truly common good is liberty under law."

"You just don't know what you're talking about," The Virtuous Liberal responded.

"You should read some books before you decide to talk to me about this stuff again. I suppose you also think that everything is all just a big government conspiracy, right? You should become Enlightened for a change."

At that, Cass lost his temper and shouted, "You arrogant asshole!"

The Liberals gasped and murmured among themselves, in shock that anyone could be so "Mean-Spirited," while the incensed Virtuous Liberal exclaimed, "How dare you insult me?!"

"Yeah, are you crazy or something?" said the genie.

"Your tone is extreme and beyond the pale, Cass," one young lady said. "I think you'd better go."

Cass stared at those whom he had thought were his friends. After that last rebuke, no one spoke to him. Another young lady wouldn't even look at him. Meanwhile, The Virtuous Liberal was smirking, having emerged as the victor. And so Cass slinked away, defeated, humiliated, and dehumanized by his moral and intellectual superiors, whom he left basking in their own compassion and righteousness.

With the troglodyte gone, The Liberals could resume their mission of perfecting the world. The excited genie could wait no longer, so, without ceremony, he snapped his fingers, turned to his beneficiaries, smiled, and proclaimed, "It's done! Your wishes have come true, and I have fulfilled my destiny!"

The fates of the genie and his virtuous beneficiaries--these saviors of personkind--are unknown. All that we do know is that soon after he granted the beneficiaries' wishes, the genie decided to relax by smoking a cigarette, which prompted the beneficiaries--afraid that the secondhand smoke would give them cancer--to banish him from their midst. After that, they and their provider disappeared from the historical record.

But they did leave us such a wonderful legacy. It is they whom we have to thank for our many blessings, such as our crushing, Sisyphean debt, and our extreme taxes--after all, the more we have to pay, the more generous and patriotic we can consider ourselves to be. And so what if there are more poor and unemployed people than before? The more of them there are, the more objects for our compassion we have. You claim that there is less opportunity for individual effort and achievement; fewer intact families; less spirituality; and less voluntary and spontaneous benevolence, cooperation, and community feeling than there used to be? But the government is taking care of us, so what does it matter? There are more criminals, you say? Well, that just means that there are more lost souls to rehabilitate. And what does it matter if we are weak and vulnerable, and that our enemies attack us and our allies with impunity? These attacks merely provide more occasions for The People to come together in one glorious Community, and participate in displays of national solidarity. Nor should we worry about little things like inflation, stagnation, shrinking real incomes; for, in contrast to the bad old days, we are all equal now--unhappy, resentful, disgusted, miserable, but equal in our unhappiness, resentment, disgust, and misery.

And besides, it doesn't matter if things don't go exactly according to plan. We mustn't judge The Liberals according to such pedestrian criteria as results. Rather, we must extol the loftiness of their visions and intentions. They are good, idealistic people. So what if they tax away our money, impoverish us for the sake of equality, grow government at the expense of our liberties, and oppress us for our own good? So what if they discriminate in the name of equality, keep the poor mired in dependency on the state, institutionalize covetousness for others' wealth and call it "welfare" (all while denouncing those who earned that wealth as the truly greedy), and foster grievances and discontent, pitting the races and the sexes and the classes against each other, by promoting the interests of some at the expense of others, all in the name of the common good? So what if they congratulate themselves for supporting human rights, while ignoring the plight of those living in radical states, and overlooking the depredations and depravities of certain favored cultures? And so what if, in the name of justice, they let criminals loose to prey on law-abiding citizens, and protest the executions of those who willfully took the lives of others? So what if they undermine free speech for the sake of political correctness, and persecute for the sake of tolerance, and, while applauding themselves for their own open-mindedness, replace education and free inquiry with indoctrination and dogma, training the young to distrust and reject the values of their families, their faiths, and their country? And so what if, while claiming to love humanity, they treat countless people with hatred, abuse, and contempt--so what if they say we have to understand our mortal enemies, while they unhesitatingly demonize those fellow citizens who happen to disagree with them, defaming these citizens as liars, stereotyping them as bigots, and browbeating them as bullies?

What do we have to complain about in this wonderful utopia of ours?

Can You Write Better Than Maureen Dowd?

A LIBERTY ISLAND CONTEST

The Enforcement of Happiness

By Jamie Wilson

What does it mean to be black?

For some husbands, zombification is almost an improvement.