Every now and then, someone creates a political party or runs for head of state as a joke – and then wins or comes close to winning, shocking the nation.  Mogens Glistrup was a professor at the University of Copenhagen in the 1960s when he founded the Progress Party. Most people thought the party was a joke. For example, Glistrup’s national defense platform was to abolish the Danish armed forces and replace them with an answering machine that said: “We surrender” in Russian. Remember, this was at the height of the Cold War, and Russian troops in East Germany were less than 50 miles from Denmark. In 1973, Glistrup’s Progress Party won a landslide victory in national elections, making his party the second largest in the Danish parliament. The Danish establishment was horrified, as were Denmark’s NATO allies. In case you are thinking: “This nut sounds like he came from Berkeley”, well, he did. Glistrup attended U.C. Berkeley in the 1950s.