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Uto·pia Pronunciation: \yu̇-ˈtō-pē-ə\ Function: noun Etymology: Utopia, imaginary and ideal country in Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More, from Greek ou not, no + topos place Date: 1597 1: an imaginary and indefinitely remote place. 2 often capitalized : a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions. 3: an impractical scheme for social improvement Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible. (Mark 10:27)

Here is a Sky News video report on one of Russia's richest men who is building a housing complex on the outskirts of Moscow that is designed to be "Utopia," a Russian "Paradise." It is only for Russia's richest and most exclusive people - "no poor people allowed." Some of the other rules - no dogs or bodyguards! . . . . (Watch Video)

As Franklin Roosevelt understood, Americans will postpone immediate gratification and endure hard sacrifices--if they must--so long as they are convinced the future can be better than the past. But we face a far more difficult problem at our moment in history. What do you promise people who have been told they can have anything they want, who are repeatedly congratulated for living in the best of all possible circumstances? How do you tell them "the good times," as we have known them, are not coming back? Americans need a new vision that helps them deal with reality, a promising story...

First lady Michelle Obama says everyone should have what she has: a chief of staff and a personal assistant. Speaking Thursday in support of sick days with pay and flexible work schedules, Mrs. Obama said that, as challenging as her new life may sometimes seem, hers is a "very blessed situation, because I have what most families don't have" -- support from her mother and a staff. "Everyone should have a chief of staff and a set of personal assistants," she said at a meeting of Corporate Voices for Working Families, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works to develop and...

My son and I went to AT&T Park today to watch the Giants play the Colorado Rockies. It was pretty rainy driving up and I thought the game might be cancelled which would a pretty rare event for San Francisco in May. As we entered the park, we received free ball caps to commemorate "Solar Day," sponsored by PG&E. Before the game started, PG&E ran a commercial on huge TV screen extolling the virtues of solar and how wonderful the PG&E company is because of their efforts to build a solar-powered baseball park, a solar powered utility and a solar...

When I was younger, I thought he had just showed why free-market capitalism is the fairest, freest and most productive, why would he allow any scope for anything else? Now I realize why. What nearly 40 years of intellectual debate on these issues has taught me is that the Left's adherents are not interested in reason or truth. They fight instead with a religious fervor that reflects blind faith in socialism, and what they are after is nothing other than total power to implement their catechism. They are not the slightest bit interested in facts or logic or any counterarguments....

The Chosen “Grandpa Abyssal, what did he mean today at Synagogue, that the Jews are the chosen? Chosen for what? What were we chosen to do?” “Ahh, Chaadrean, that is a long story. We would have to venture far, far out into the future to try to see that clearly. It is too late now. I came up here to tell you that your light was supposed to be off fifteen minutes ago. If your mother sees your light on, there will be trouble…. Now go to sleep!” “But grandpa! Deep religious questions are torturing my mind, they will not...

[In The death of Socialism Roger Kimball wrote:] [Joshua Muravchik's Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism] provides a devastating anatomy of the socialist dream -- a dream that with clocklike regularity becomes a nightmare. If, as Muravchik suggests, "socialism was . . . the most popular political idea ever invented," it is also undoubtedly the bloodiest. Of course, many who profess socialism are decent and humane people. And it is worth noting that socialism comes in mild as well as tyrannical versions. Muravchik, who was once a socialist himself, pays frequent homage to the generous impulses that...

When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev talked at the 1986 Reykjavik summit about giving up all of their nuclear weapons within a decade, it was dismissed as a trick or more frightening proof that the American president was out of touch with strategic realities. The deal fell apart over Mr. Reagan’s refusal to limit testing of a missile defense program that was notional then and is still. In the days after, Mr. Reagan’s advisers denied that he had seriously entertained any such idea, until the Russians released quotes from the meeting. Britain’s prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, flew over to bludgeon...

Why a Human Utopia Won't Happen by Bill Bradford My children started watching it first. I happened to see it on television occasionally. Then I found myself drawn into this social drama by the endless manifestations of ever-evolving technology. Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry, is the popular space-odyssey television adventure in which man in the 25th century is expanding his philosophy and near-utopian coexistence among other, less-sophisticated, inhabitants of the galaxies.It's an idea older than Plato that man can somehow engineer a civilization that brings peace, happiness and prosperity to all who can be persuaded to embrace its philosophy.In...

Neil Clark says that he went to Havana in search of a left-wing Utopia and discovered instead an island fortress of poverty, corruption and currency apartheid It’s a country where the vast majority live in poverty, while a tiny, corrupt elite live in luxury. It’s a place where, 14 years after South Africa abolished apartheid, a form of it still operates. Welcome to Cuba, the ‘socialist’ paradise built by that great egalitarian Fidel Castro, who after 49 years at the helm has finally decided to hand over power — in the manner of a true democrat — to his brother...

Business execs arrested for refusing to cut prices By Angus Shaw ASSOCIATED PRESS July 9, 2007 HARARE, Zimbabwe – Police arrested 16 more business leaders in a crackdown on those suspected of violating the government's order to slash prices by 50 percent, the official media reported yesterday. The mandated price cuts ordered more than two weeks ago are a desperate attempt to confront inflation that has spun out of control during Zimbabwe's economic crisis. The falling prices have caused stampedes, panic buying and near-riots. Among those arrested in the latest sweep were the directors of Edgars, a leading clothing and...

          First let's look at what "universal" healthcare actually means: The British government says that, at any one time, there are about a million people waiting to get into hospitals. According to the Fraser Institute, almost 900,000 Canadian patients are on the waiting list at any point in time. And, according to the New Zealand government, 90,000 people are on the waiting lists there.           As for “guaranteed” healthcare, Canadian and British doctors see 50 percent more patients than American doctors do, and, as a consequence, they have less time to spend with each patient. Furthermore, being the 100th person...

A national healthcare system may be the Holy Grail of American liberalism. If only the government managed medicine, the argument goes, costs could be restrained, quality assured, and access extended from the poshest beach house to the humblest shotgun shack. On NBC’s “Meet the Press” last fall, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D.–Ill.) advocated a “universal health-care system over the next 10 years.” If Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D.–N. Y.) reaches the Oval Office, she likely would take another crack at socialized medicine, as she did so disastrously in 1994. Amy Ridenour of the National Center for Public Policy Research sees this...

A day or two after the Democrats swept the midterms, I made a promise to finally finish reading an incredible little book called “The Road to Serfdom.” (1944) The following are direct quotes from the English author, F.A. Hayek. I offer excerpts from the first couple of chapters with the intention of motivating as many Freepers as possible to read it themselves so as to be fully armed when the Democrats and Rinos attempt to further socialize and ultimately destroy a once proud republic. Foreward Dedicated “To the Socialists of All Parties” Fascism and Communism are merely variants of the...

Introduction: utopia vs. nationhood By Roger Kimball | Volume 25, January 2007I think I know man, but as for men, I know them not.—Jean-Jacques Rousseau In a memorable passage at the beginning of The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant evokes a soaring dove that, “cleaving the air in her free flight,” feels the resistance of the wind and imagines that its flight “would be easier still in empty space.” A fond thought, of course, since absent that aeolian pressure the dove would simply plummet to the ground. How regularly the friction of reality works that way: making possible our...

... Schwarzenegger will need the same people skills to repair another fracture on his right — his deteriorating relationship with the legislative wing of the Republican Party. Right now, that relationship is headed from critical condition to "do not resuscitate." LEGISLATIVE Republicans have every reason to gripe. The governor's most notable "conservative" accomplishments are defensive in nature: He hasn't raised taxes (now debatable, depending on how one interprets the revenue provisions of his universal healthcare plan); he hasn't signed a same-sex marriage law; and he refuses to provide driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. ... There is an underlying irony to...

A random, violent crime wave is sweeping the most urban parts of the Bay Area, producing 150 killings in Oakland, San Francisco and Richmond and inspiring controversial initiatives to help stem the murderous tide. In Oakland, where recent victims have included innocent grandmothers and teenagers, murders are nearly on pace to shatter a 13-year record. This summer, killings are happening on average, every three days. In San Francisco, a man's Wednesday evening roll in his wheelchair ended in his death when a stray bullet pierced his heart. His fiancee could not push him fast enough to elude the wild shot...

Explaining the monumental failure of the Soviet system and empire, Gen. Dmitri Volkogonov, a former official Soviet military historian, stressed that "the roots of the catastrophe lay in the ideology itself, in Leninism." All told, the "catastrophe" of attempting to impose a Marxist-Leninist utopia in the Soviet Union resulted in the deaths of as many as 25 million people, according to recently released and hitherto inaccessible Soviet archives -- a death toll that was the direct consequence of centrally planned massacres, mass deportations, labor camps, torture and famine. ... Within months of his rise to power, Lenin provided the definition...

Sigmund Freud was the fellow who had the copyright on the ego, the id and the superego. He was also the guy who managed to turn the couch, formerly just another piece of over-stuffed Viennese furniture, into a legitimate business expense. But even he acknowledged that he was unable to decipher what it was that women wanted. Strangely enough, that happens to be one question to which I actually know the answer. Women want men to be manly chaps, strong and virile, while at the same time they want us to be completely open and in touch with our emotions....