By Garry J. Moes

One of the frightening signs of the great and terrible condition of our time is the enduring popularity of John Lennon's song "Imagine." One of the most diabolical artistic expressions of all time, it is yet regarded far and wide as among the greatest of all time. Rolling Stone, in 2004, named it the third greatest song ever. A year earlier, former President Bill Clinton joined 80 children to sing it to Shimon Peres on his 80th birthday. Former President Jimmy Carter once said, "In many countries around the world — my wife and I have visited about 125 countries — you hear John Lennon's song 'Imagine' used almost equally with national anthems."

The song, originally produced by once-accused murderer Phil Spector, was one of the most performed songs of the 20th century. It has been used in countless films and television programs. It was played as a wake-up song on the Space Shuttle Columbia during its ill-fated mission. It was played just before midnight on New Year's Eve in Times Square for several years. Hardly a year went by without it being featured by one or more contestants in the once fabulously popular TV singing contest American Idol — including the Mormon singer, then 17-year-old contestant David Archuleta. At least, the young man had the good sense to skip the first and second verses, which call on the world to "imagine" no heaven, hell or religion and everyone "living for today," a world with "no countries," where no one has anything "to kill or die for" and everyone is "living life in peace." Explaining to suspicious Idol judge Randy Jackson that he skipped those verses because he lacked time for a full-on performance and that the last verse had such a wonderful message, the smiling, breathless young Archuleta had, however, just reminded us musically to . . .

Imagine no possessions;
I wonder if you can;
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world.

You may say that I'm a dreamer,
But I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.

There can be no dispute that the entire song, even that last verse, is pure utopianism. In fact, the absence of possessions, greed and hunger was one of the hallmarks of Utopia, Sir Thomas More's fictional 16th-century island nation and prototype of communism. It was a land in which, among other things, all production was readily given over to a common store, and everyone could take freely from it—in a "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" sort of way. Utopians disliked wars and fought them, not by themselves but through mercenaries, only when forced to do so in self-defense. Money, even gold, was evil and useless to Utopians, who believed that as long as money and private property were standards of living, there could be no justice or happiness.

Lennon plainly stated, as noted in a book by Geoffrey Guliano (Lennon in America), that his song was "anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic."

Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, on April Fool’s Day 1973, created their own conceptual country and called it Nutopia, a nation (?) with "no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people. Nutopia has no laws other than cosmic." Its national flag is all white — never mind that the white flag is the flag of surrender. Lennon and Ono defended that association, saying that only through surrender and compromise can peace be achieved.

Yes, John Lennon, you were a dopey dreamer. The greater tragedy, though — the tragedy that now threatens our body politic and very existence — is that you were "not the only one." Indeed, our nation is being increasingly populated by succeeding generations of dreamers like yourself who continue to sing and love your dangerously stupid song and really believe it to be reasonable. I fear that this growing naïveté may be reaching critical mass in much of the West and in these United States.

All this is written, not primarily to critique a song or review an old American Idol performance, but to note with alarm that the "philosophy" of Lennon's song became deeply ingrained in a political wave that swept this country for some years. It was the undercurrent of its modern embodiment, Barack Obama and his "audacity of hope." It launched a surging tide of swooning support across the land, particularly among the young, but still swelling well beyond that demographic — to the point that even global capitalists were embracing it. It was particularly audacious because it demagogued a "hope" without any foundation that could truly deliver on its vague but powerfully emotive promises.

Hope without a reasonable basis for its realization is, of course, not true hope. It is wishful thinking. It is sentimentality and romantic longing, nothing more. It is fancy at best and delusion at worst. It is utopianism, pure and simple.

The New Testament of the Christian Bible tells us what true hope is and how hopes may become reality. A hope that is worth holding is one that has a foundation in faith — faith placed objectively in a Source that can deliver with certainty the thing that is hoped for. Faith gives substance to that which is hoped for and evident certainty to things unseen, says the writer of an epistle addressed to first-century Hebrews. The faith spoken of here is a sure reliance on the infinite abilities of a Creator God with a proven record of providence — providence of all things needed for ultimate happiness and prosperity.

But what did Obama's audacious religion of so-called hope promise us, and on what basis did it pledge to deliver on our hopes? Well, that prophet and priest of the new (no, make that, the old recycled) religion of political hope never explicitly spelled it out. Instead of a biblical kind of objective hope, our utterly Utopian progressives offer us the circular reasoning of faith in hope itself.

 
If you carefully dissect Obama’s more substantive speeches and position papers, though, you will discover that he did offer something that was seemingly objective, if not very hopeful, because underlying his soaring rhetoric was an old suggestion, repeatedly proven false in the real historical world, that our amorphous hopes can be realized by faith in an all-provident civil government and/or global community. Obama's entire (though brief) political life and civic record revealed that this is where his hope and promises lay; yet he dared not speak it plainly, since there was some suspicion still rife in the land that government would continue to fail us. So rather than saying outright, "Hope in government," he called us to put our faith in change — change that only he and his movement could bring about. As his campaign motto had it: "Change you can believe in."

 

The Utopian Progressives that followed a decade and more later have not been so circumspect, but openly and vociferously elevated government to godlike heights, adding to it proactive pronouncements and actions that are blatantly authoritarian and even totalitarian.
 

"The 'hope' being sold by Mr. Obama and his true believers is misplaced," said columnist Cal Thomas at the time. "Mr. Obama cannot deliver; he cannot save; he cannot improve individual circumstances by redistributing wealth and talking to America's dictatorial enemies. He is selling snake oil."

 

The snake oil sales continued until explosively interrupted by the Trump phenomenon calling it for what it is. Working under the cover of the hapless Joe Biden, the Obama transformation gang saw the Trumpian future and panicked—slinging every fiery dart in the devil's arsenal to stop it from succeeding. It did not, and Trump returned to launch his own nuclear variety of transformation back to the nation's foundations.

The name Utopia was coined by Thomas More from a combination of Greek words which together mean "no-place land." The utopian aspirations of Obama’s political descendants were thus perhaps better found in another John Lennon song, so comically descriptive of the man who was at Obama’s side, the soon to be elevated puppet, empty-headed Joe Biden:

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody.

Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man, please listen,
You don't know what you're missing,
Nowhere man, the world is at your command.

He's as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere man can you see me at all?
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere man, don't worry,
Take your time, don't hurry,
Leave it all till somebody else
Lend you a hand.

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody.

Progressive are authentic nowhere men — citizens of an ancient but fictitious Utopia. They exemplify the spirit of the age and have become its voice. "(T)here is a moment in the life of every generation, if it is to make its mark on history, when its spirit has to come through, when it must choose the future over the past, when it must make its own change from the bottom up," Obama once told an adoring audience in Virginia.

The spirit of the age channeled by Obama was a sentimental version of utopian socialism. Yet his successors, more religious devotees than anything, are not so concerned with the content of his worldview as with the vibrancy of his essence.

It is the existence of today’s challenges and terrors that makes the prospect of an imagination-driven Utopian nation so frightening.

Here is why a nation under the dictatorship of the radical authoritarian progressives will be in such mortal danger: It is because we currently face determined enemies which have a well-honed grand scheme / master plan and are highly motivated to carry it out. Dreamers imagining us "living for today" in a "brotherhood of man" are no match for enemies such as these, who have no interest whatsoever in brotherhood with those who imagine no heaven, no hell, and no religion. Lennon-inspired dreamers are "blind as they can be" nowhere men, seeing only what they want to see.
 

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Audaciously Hopeful Postscript: Imagine there's no John Lennon; it's easy if you try. He's in hell below us. What a sorry guy!"