Thank you for your contribution, Mr. Bernero. You couldn't be more spot on. Enough is enough.

They do the same thing at UCLA. I was a student there a few years back - with 35,000 students or more, they make a killing.

When I attended UCLA as an undergrad a few years back, volunteers of CALPIRG would roam the campus, commandeer classroom time away from professors for about 5 minutes (who were all too ready to hand over the mike), and ask students to fill out a form so that a donation to Calpirg in the amount of $30 - give or take - could be added to each student's tuition bill -- and thus, deducted automatically when the student's parents, trust fund or financial aid officers paid each quarter's tuition bill. They said the money was a donation to help the homeless, to fight poverty and advocate in the interest of consumers. It sounded really good, and all the 18-years old in class - who had NO CLUE they were a rich PAC aligned solely with left-wing, Democratic special interests often filled out the form. It was a disgrace and a ruse. I'm so glad the esteemed, public institution of UCLA was complicit in letting CALPIRG be the officially sponsored and funded "non-profit-of-choice" of the university.

Hi Terry. I have to point out a flaw in one of your points. As an American who has lived the last 3 years in Denmark - a welfare-state nation with free university, free health care, etc. - I have a first-hand experience of receiving free emergency care in such a system. Becoming more Danish, I don't have a car here, so I ride my bike everywhere. I had a bad bike crash almost 2 years ago, ended up in the emergency room, with excrutiating shoulder pain. The doctors looked at me -- spoke very little Danish or English -- and told me it was just a scrape, sent me home wth 2 ibuprofen. No x-rays, were necessary, he said. No follow up appointments, nothing. Two weeks, a month later, I visited my appointed doctor with a bright purple, swollen upper arm, who told me to exercise it and keep it moving. It wasn't until nearly 2.5 months later when I flew back to the U.S. where I saw a proper facility did I learn my shoulder was broken in 2 places, and that bone chips from my shoulder had calcified and caused horribly painful tendonitis. I was properly treated for the break in the U.S., but the delay in my care and the wrong "diagnosis" has caused pain and damage that lasts to this day. I could read on the Danish "doctors" faces and the person handling my paperwork that their decision to send me home was based on cost/benefit analysis, nothing more. Its a game of numbers here, purely. I was a competitive triathlete who can now barely swim because of this accident. I would have gladly paid a large deductible - or worked a second job to foot the entire bill of a visit to an American hospital -- if I had had the chance to see a talented, trained and responsive physician in the United States at a time when I needed reliable care. In Denmark, medical tests like pap smears that most American healthcare plans and the AMA recommend for women to have EVERY year, are only covered by the Danish healthcare system every 3 to 5 years. You can imagine how many times higher the incidences of death by cervical cancer is in Denmark compared to in the U.S. The brilliant European health care system you tout is a complete fable and an utter failure to citizens

I'm an American who has lived in Europe the last 3+ years (Denmark, to be exact). In the beginning the little kingdom felt like my personal utopia. Rich culture, art, good food, nice fashion & beer. Over time, it’s become my own dystopic journey. How anyone could think socialism is all wine and roses boggles my mind. To be honest, the socialist Scandinavian welfare-state is bloody awful. Danes are great people, but very much all the same. In my entire time here, I’ve met ONE person who questions whether the socialist-welfare model is the best way (he was a rare, pro-American banker). There’s no plurality of thought to be found. Socialism in a tiny country of 5 million all-white people works fine for a set period of time, but it’s buckling under the weight of its changing demographic and the Islamo-fascism creeping into its borders. There are many more Muslims in DK (per capita) than in the U.S., and this tiny country isn’t equipped to handle the change. Denmark is the most secular, anti-religious place you could find, so you could imagine how well Sharia-law-following Muslims integrate. With socialism, you have to be able to predict the behaviors of the population, like who will always work, who will always free-load, etc, to set the budget and allocate lavish benefits for all. This is done using models based on culture, race, ethnicity, religion...and it is dependent on people sharing those things and being relatively homogeneous. As Denmark enters the global world, and tries to (pretends to?) accept newcomers and immigrants, this disrupts the socialist model. I’m proud of Denmark for being an ally to the U.S. in the war in Iraq, but they also now feel a responsibility to accept Iraqi refugees to Denmark, and in such a small country, a small up-tick in any group is something all can feel.

Andrew Klavan nails it in his On the Culture piece called “Shut Up” where he describes the way socialism has sucked the life and vibrancy out of European countries (he cites examples in the Netherlands where politicians are now pushing back).

I pray that America does not become more like Europe. It will be the beginning of our end.

For all his disdain for America, you'd think Lars von Trier had actually been there before. Not so! Lars von Trier is sadly too agoraphobic to leave the borders of his cozy country. With all his "shock & awe" filmmaking, Trier is a formulaic, derivative, lunatic hack who would 'get off' hearing me say that, because that's how predictably irreverent he is.

Lars, go do something gutsy for a change. Quit making so much "I'm anti-establishment" crapola that is so weak, lazy and pro-establishment with its anti-American, anti-Bush, anti-anything-with-conservative/non-secular undertones, because "I'm so artsty fartsy and rogue like that."

If he can have a talking fox in Antichrist, I can have a vomiting chipmunk resting on my fingers, who's actually controlling the keyboard right now.