Jim Hightower

I'm told that many Americans long to return to the idyllic days of yesteryear, to the small-town wholesomeness of the 1950s, when everyone valued freedom, truth, church, community, baseball, and Walt Disney.

Never mind that such a fantastic time and place didn't actually exist, the important thing is that there is someone today – a unique visionary – who plans to build just such a utopia for all who yearn to have a life of harmony and happiness: Glenn Beck.

Yes, the walking-talking ego of the far, far, far-out right! Beck has built his lucrative career on fostering fear, disparaging whole segments of our society, promotion plutocratic elitism, and spreading divisive lies and conspiracy theories – but lately he's been humming Kumbaya and offering himself as the recreator and guru of the elusive "yesteryear." In early January, he revealed that his dream is to build a place that is some hybrid of a small town, a theme park, an entrepreneurial incubator, a re-education center to instill right-wing "truth" in young people, and – in his words – "a retreat from the world." He wants to call it: Independence, USA.

It will have everything – a residential area where rich and poor will live as neighbors; a marketplace with "real businesses and stores;" a media center for himself and others (including a school "where aspiring journalists would learn to be great reporters" ); a ranch where residents will grow food and where visitors "can learn how to farm;" a theme park, possibly based on Ayn Rand's "creators"-versus-"moochers" dichotomy; and a church that, oddly, would be "modeled after the Alamo."

What a place, huh? All he needs, Beck says, is a couple of billion dollars to build it. Of course, the downside to living in Glenn's DreamWorld is that… he'd be there, too. That'd definitely spoil the perfection.