Bicycles, underwear, one-world government

    When I read about bicyclists going out for a night ride in nothing but their underthings, it did not occur initially to me that the United Nations was behind it.

    That was before Dan Maes, the Republican nominee for governor of Colorado, convinced me it was so.

     Forces of darkness and one-worldness are behind these night riders in their BVDs. Maes, a product of the Tea Party movement, surely would say as much.

     He has Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper pegged, for instance, as a one-world plotter over Denver's quest to encourage bicycling.

     The "well-disguised" idea is to "convert Denver into a United Nations community." This is part and parcel of Denver's participation in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. Says Maes, it all spells a threat to our freedoms.

        How so? Well, look at where I live, Fort Collins, which like Denver is one of 600 U.S. communities that have joined in the international sustainability effort, considering it a great thing locally and globally.

       Fort Collins is where in July a local bike club staged its Buck Moon Underwear Ride.

       OK, so how does this event bear on the state or our liberties? This: Except for control by outside forces, or the full moon, why would barely garbed bike riders cast off into the Colorado night? Consider us all warned. Without vigilance, all shall be stripped (almost) bare of their liberties.

        All the while, I've been admiring how Fort Collins people love their bicycles, how the city has bike paths galore. It turns out that ours is a city pedaling oppression, and Dan Maes is not alone on this.

         A local woman affiliated with the so-called 9/12 movement challenged Fort Collins for joining the U.N.-linked green effort. She even passed petitions to recall a Fort Collins City Council member for violating the oath of office by ceding free will to U.N. environmentalists and global warming theorists. For reasons inexplicable, the effort came up a few signatures short.

        Back to Denver, which under Hickenlooper, Maes' Democratic rival for governor in November, has arrayed 400 red bikes around town for rent.

       Yes, red. Moscow red. Beijing red. Better-off-dead red.

       Here you were thinking: great idea — less pollution; less gas guzzled; healthier people. Well, it's just what the forces of one-world earthiness and near nakedness want you to think.

       And here I was thinking: In Fort Collins, it's great to see average people get on bicycles just to get somewhere. (No offense to enthusiasts in Day-Glo Spandex and wind-tunnel helmets, but I like the notion in the new motto: "Bicycling: Not just for torture.")

       But, then, I wasn't thinking. That's Dan Maes' department, along with Tea Party adherents, from whose legions he arose out of total and wholly deserved obscurity.

        You may think it's nutty that Maes calls Denver's bicycles a harbinger of oppression. Whatever the case, it is the kind of talk that's becoming the GOP party line.

        The Tea Party in 2010 is what the Christian Coalition was for Republicans in the 1980s and '90s: the life force. Remember that Pat Robertson, who says prayer can reroute hurricanes, won one GOP presidential primary and outpolled George H.W. Bush in the 1988 Iowa caucuses. 

         Now we have people stirring the GOP's cocktail like congresswoman and Tea Party heroine Michelle Bachman. She wonders aloud why swine flu outbreaks seem confined to Democratic presidencies. And, there's Sarah Palin, whose endorsement — of candidates, or of zero-points Scrabble words — has become the party's most dear currency.

       Mark their words. If the Obamas and Hickenloopers have their way, we'll all be chafing on our bicycle seats, in our skivvies, in the dark, under a full moon.

       Don't laugh. It happened right where I live.

       Longtime Texas newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. E-mail:jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.