Imagine a modern society, if you will, very different from our own. It's not a good place to be, but the people there don't know that. They're blissfully ignorant; they don't know any better. This society is not a good place, because it opposes all the values for which we Americans stand. It's like anti-America. This fictional place needs a name, just for the sake of convenience. Let's call it Neverland.

To get an idea of just how anti-American Neverland really is, let's get to know some of its bad traits. To make sure the picture is fair, we'll also explore some of its better traits, few though they may be. Shall we start with the worst?

As horrific as it may seem to our sensibilities (they don't know any better, remember?), they practice child sacrifice. In fact, this disgusting practice is so popular, a child is "sacrificed" (we'd say "murdered") about every 30 seconds on average. To be fair, Neverland is a crowded place with many millions of people, so the per-capita rate of child sacrifice probably isn't as bad as the overall rate makes it seem. Of course, our American sensibilities and morality suggest that even a single child murdered among millions that live is still an unacceptable atrocity. Nothing of the kind would ever be allowed here without national outrage and swift justice.

The grown-ups in Neverland don't just kill children, though. They also kill each other. We're no strangers to murder, so perhaps we can chalk up their murder-every-half-hour to just one of the prices they pay for a large, complex society. In this way, Neverland and America aren't so dissimilar, sadly. Unlike America, though, Neverlanders are afraid to leave their homes and cars unlocked, especially at night. They won't even answer their doors after dark, because home invasions are commonplace. They don't walk around their cities except during the day and in group. Murders are so prevalent in most of its major cities, that the death toll is greater than war zone in Iraq.

Americans still have the option of defending themselves effectively, be they in their homes, their cars, their places of business, or even just out and around town. In Neverland, the means of self-defense is tightly controlled. (In fact, they've dedicated tens of thousands of laws to it.) Self-defense itself is all but illegal in Neverland. Those facing a would-be murderer must weigh the possibility of a lifetime in prison (or even the death penalty) if they choose to defend themselves or their loved ones. They certainly don't go out of their way to defend strangers, because the risk just isn't worth it.

Other crime is rampant. Everybody is, in fact, a criminal in Neverland. Millions of laws have been written to deter such crimes, but have the effect of making everybody a criminal. We in America know that making laws doesn't alter people's sense of right and wrong. Neverlanders are criminals from early on, and no matter how many laws are passed, they continue to break hundreds of laws every day. On the one hand, this makes it seem like a really bad place (and it would be for any American), but there's a positive side to this. Since everybody is already a criminal, law enforcement is able to remove most anyone at most any time, either by imprisoning them or killing them. Nobody much minds, because they all look at their neighbors and know they're criminals deserving such punishment.

Speaking of law enforcement, it's everywhere. There are about a million "peace" officers. (What they call "peace" is merely control through intimidation, not like our well-meaning police here in America.) Actually, this million is just the group the public sees. In truth, there are several million people all responsible for controlling the people. Some of these are in support positions. Some are visible, like our police. Others are trained assassins that nobody ever sees and are brought out in cases when the crime is particularly offensive to Neverland. Neverlanders gladly accept this police state, even when it turns the cities into war zones, because they hate crime and willing to do whatever it takes to control it. The irony that they themselves are criminals, too, seems lost on them. I'm not sure why. Perhaps they're taught that they're basically good folks even though they're not.

Because of the crime, though, Neverland has developed a complex web of spies to keep an eye on everybody. Every movement that is ever made is watched, logged, and analyzed. Every commute to work. Every store purchase. Every web page visited. (I said they were modern, even if anti-American in culture.) In fact, to avoid the horrible crimes, they've chosen a most unfortunate means of justice: thought control. No, they don't have sci-fi technology to literally control people's thoughts. However, they do analyze these volumes of data looking for trends that betray criminal thought processes. If one of Neverland's citizens is believed to be operating under an anti-Neverland point of view, that citizen is kidnapped, incarcerated, tortured and brainwashed. If he is believed to have been "rehabilitated", he may be released into society again. Any wrong move, a wrong phrase uttered, or a suspicious email or purchase can lead to a revocation of his parole. In such cases, he is usually assassinated. (Such assassinations don't count against the murder statistics, even though they are far more common than we Americans could ever live with.)

The children who aren't sacrificed are stolen from their parents very early on. Currently, this happens around 3 or 4 years old, but Neverland is pushing to move this back to 2-3 years old or younger. You see, Neverland doesn't believe in parental rights like we do in America. In Neverland, parents don't have any say-so over their own children. This kind of American-style liberty was found to be anathema to social order. They found too many children being raised with values that differed wildly from society at large. Knowing this would cause problems eventually, policies were immediately put into place to nip it in the bud. Children are whisked away from their parents very early--so early, that they often do not even know enough to miss their folks after the first couple months. These children are placed into the care of the Neverland government, the largest "employer" in the country by far. They are raised by strangers, being passed from one nanny to another every few months. These poor kids are taught all kinds of lies designed to keep them under control and even guide their thought processes for the rest of their lives. Their view of history is all wrong, else they might learn from it. Their lessons on science, religion, and politics are all skewed to keep them pacified. Most will grow up reasonably happy in Neverland, never realizing what was done to them was horribly wrong. Sure, they'll have side-effects. What kids wouldn't suffer from that kind of treatment? They'll be unable to maintain decent relationships with other people, since their most important early-childhood relationships (with their parents) was severed, and the surrogate parents were changed out every so often. They'll always wonder--way down deep where it can't get them into trouble--if there's more to life. Of course, the benefit is that they'll expect the same to be done to their children when they have them, making it easier for Neverland to steal future generations of children.

The perspective Neverlanders have of their own society and the world around them is spoon-fed to them by a government-controlled media. Movies, news, books--all reinforce the idea that Neverland is the best place in the world, that life elsewhere is terrible, and that happiness can indeed be purchased.

We in America are consumers, perhaps more so than we really should be. Neverlanders buy stuff, too, but they have very little choice in what's available to them. The ubiquitous Neverland government chooses in advance which types of goods to allow for importation and manufacture. This prevents the people from accessible all that is available to, say, us in America. To keep the people pacified, though (remember, ignorance is bliss), Neverland provides its people with the illusion of choice. For example, here in America, we have hundreds of different cell phones from which to choose. In Neverland, the government decides which cell phones may be sold, which cell technology may be used, etc. They do have several different forms of cell phones, but they all do the same things in the same way just as the government has designed them. There's not really anything particularly innovative, of course, because there's no motive for Neverland government to be innovative. Cell phones, unlike here in America but like most things in Neverland, are just another way of covertly controlling the people. In America, we can choose what kind of house to buy or build, where to live, etc. In Neverland, this choice is again only an illusion. The all-powerful government determines what kinds of houses can be built (by builders or individuals). Sure, they make 'em in blue, white, brick, wood, etc., to give an illusion of choice to the people; and the people fall for it. They have a ball picking out the kind of siding they want, the color of their carpet, etc., blissfully ignorant that these choices are not substantive and that their house is basically just like everybody else's.

Businesses are privately or publicly owned here in America. Not so in Neverland. All businesses are essentially controlled by the government. We have the freedom here to make the products we want, run our businesses the way we want, hire whom we want, etc. In Neverland, the government controls all of that for everybody. They determine who can be hired or not. They determine salaries. They determine office policies. They determine what can be made, even approving or disapproving of new inventions. (As a result of the latter, innovation is stagnating in Neverland.) Neverland is well known for glibly shutting down businesses, especially small ones trying to do something new, without any remorse or second thought. Larger business are preferred, because more people can be controlled and manipulated with less effort then with myriad small ones. Small ones are discouraged by placing staggering obstacles before any prospective entrepreneur. This kind of control has numerous benefits for their society: asserting government control and molding their industries to the designs of government. Such designs, of course, are meant to further control the people for the purposes of perpetuating the Neverland government hierarchy.

We've gotten to know Neverland quite a bit already, and we've seen that its massive government plays a key role in most any area of life. What kind of government does Neverland have that it can wield this sort of power? For starters, it's massive, with over 85 million people in all kinds of positions. Even with all our bureaucracies in America, we could never imagine a government so huge! The cost to maintain all those people is enormous, and this burden is placed entirely on the rest of the society. I'd say taxes are high, but that's just too much of an understatement. The vast majority of money earned by the workers is taken from them and funneled into paying for the bloated government. History says wars have been fought over taxes, so why aren't these Neverlanders upset about losing so much of their hard-earned money? They don't know it. Sure, they know they pay taxes, but most of the taxes of which they are aware are chump change, 1% here, 5% there. They don't see that there are literally thousand of ways in which the government takes their money. Most of these taxes are so well hidden, they cannot be accurately calculated even by the government itself.

How do the people swallow the idea of 20 million people working for a government they cannot control? Once again, the sneaky Neverland government resorts to trickery, deluding the people into believing they do indeed have control. They have democratic elections just like we do here in America. The difference is, these elections are completely controlled and fabricated by the government. Think of it this way: in America, we have lots of choices for whom we will vote into office. In Neverland, only the illusion of choice is given. The candidates are all of the government's own choosing, so any one of them is acceptable as a winner; or else they purposely pick a bunch of idiots who are guaranteed to lose, again insuring the desired candidate "wins". If a rogue candidate manages to figure out the system and get himself onto the ballot, the Neverland government still keeps an ace up its sleeve: the voting process itself is government-run: the ballots, the people running it, the counting, the media reporting, everything. A little corruption anywhere in that process is enough to keep the undesired, would-be candidates out of office, although usually they're just kept off the ballot in the first place.

The economy in Neverland is completely controlled by the government, not like the free market economy in America. In America, we have the Federal Reserve Bank which is actually a private entity, not a government office. They are the managers of the money, including printing it, interest rates, etc. In Neverland, this is all done by the government. If the government needs more money (which it usually does), it can just print more of its own, as much as it wants. There's no accountability like we have here in America. The problem with this system is that the intrinsic value of things doesn't change much. Gasoline will always be worth a certain amount based upon its usefulness to the lifestyle. Milk, too. All things have a value implicitly assigned to them by those who want those things. If they are really wanted badly, their value is higher. If people don't care much, or if it's easy to come by, it's not worth as much. When Neverland just invents money out of nothing, but the value of the things it's purchasing doesn't change, that means there more money to around for the same stuff. If the stuff is the same, but the money is more abundant, then the value of the money itself declines. A certain amount of money today is worth more than that same amount will be next year, because there will be more money available, but the same resources it purchases. This makes those resources appear to get more expensive every year. It also means everybody gets poorer each year. The trick to keep the people from knowing this is the illusion that stuff is worth more, including their labor. People make more money and they don't tend to notice that their purchasing power is shrinking every year; their standard of living is less than that of their parents, generation over generation. In stark contrast, American lifestyles keep getting better each generation, not worse. Neverland has not found the wisdom of American fiduciary management, and so Neverlanders suffer.

I've painted a very depressing picture of Neverland. It seems like a really bad place to live. In the spirit of painting a fuller picture of Neverland--after all, it's not all bad--there are some who live there who love it. They love it not because they're ignorant of how bad things really are but because they have figured out how things really work and they know how to cheat the system, as it were. For example, this class of Neverlanders pays very little in taxes. They have found a loophole in Neverland's oppressive system such that they pay very little. Better yet, this same loophole allows them to get paid by Neverland government as a result of not paying the taxes. In other words, as a reward for not paying taxes, they get an income they didn't earn. The money, coming from the government, is taken from those who do pay lots of taxes. As more people learn about the loophole, the taxes on the rest go up to pay for all the freeloaders. If this kind of shenanigan happened in America, there would probably be another revolution. We simply wouldn't put up with people refusing to pull their own weight in society, especially if we were the ones who ended up paying them for being so lazy! Nevertheless, we can see why Neverland is so popular among at least a few million of its citizens. As for the rest, they just don't know any better, as they fall for the lies and illusions given to them.

Child sacrifice; murder rate worse than war; all-powerful government; rampant crime; police state; full-time spying on everybody (no privacy); brainwashing and indoctrination almost from birth; near-total control over everybody's lives; tightly controlled [and declining] economy, industrial production, and consumer market; freeloaders supported by the oppressed... By American standards, Neverland is an awful place to be. It may be as bad as or worse than the fictional societies presented in 1984 and Brave New World. Like them, Neverland is fiction. We should count our blessings our culture is not like Neverland. As long as we stay vigilant, you can be sure we'll never be that bad. After all, this is America!