As for Wilders, I do hope our European cousins realize that manufacturing free speech martyrs is not a very effective way to marginalize extremists. Wilders’ substantive views are so radical they’re almost self-refuting – strip away the persecution complex and vague allusions to “defending free speech” and the guy’s platform is proto-fascistic (Alex Massie’s apt distillation: “In other words, the only way to save the western liberal tradition is to kill it”).  Would Wilders survive without free publicity from being banned in Britain and his absurd prosecution in The Netherlands? I doubt it, if only because he would no longer be able to posture as some heroic protector of free speech. Instead, he’d be stuck explaining how banning religious texts is consistent with European liberty.

The president apparently does not realize that in Iraq too there was a coalition, that the Iraq War was approved by both houses of Congress on 23 grounds (only two dealing with WMD), and that more and more evidence is emerging concerning the terrorist ties between Saddam and radical Islam.

Immigration is offered as an explanation [for Israeli success]:

“A key lesson from Israel is that innovation is not just something that goes on inside companies; it comes from a wider culture that fosters both innovation and entrepreneurship. Israel is a country of immigrants — there are over 70 nationalities represented in this tiny country. Two out of every three Israelis are newcomers, or the children or grandchildren of newcomers. . . . Immigrants are natural risk takers since they were willing to uproot themselves and start over.”

Ah yes, how convenient that Israeli economic success can teach us a politically correct lesson about the importance of allowing more immigrants into the United States.

The thing about Israeli immigration is that it’s mostly composed of high-IQ Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Bloc countries, who share a cultural and racial heritage with Israel’s existing Jewish population. In contrast, United States immigration is mostly low-IQ Hispanics, and most of the high-IQ immigration comes from Asia and they don’t share a cultural background with America’s predominant white European population, nor are they of the same race.

Politically correct? Or factually accurate? It’s worth noting that immigrants are generally more innovative and intelligent than those who stay behind, regardless of their ethnic or geographic origins (emphasis mine):

Geneticists have shown that there is literally such a thing as American DNA, not surprising when nearly all of us are descended from immigrants. We therefore carry an immigrant-specific genotype, a genetic marker expressing itself—in some environments, at least—as energetic risk-taking and competitive self-promotion. Even when famine, warfare, or another calamity strikes, most people stay in their homeland. The self-selecting group that migrates, seldom more than 2 percent, is disproportionally inclined to take chances. They also have above-average intelligence and are quicker decision makers. Something about their dopamine-receptor systems, the neural pathway associated with a taste for novelty and risk, sets them apart from those who stay put.

Of course, the actual science makes no distinction between Ashkenazi Jews and ‘low-IQ Hispanics’, but why let that stop mindless speculation?

The author, wholly committed to making a fool out of himself, follows up with this gem:

The blog post also suggests that military service benefits Israel.

–

This is a big red herring. I worked for the U.S. Army as a civilian, and it was the most poorly managed organization I ever worked for. I was able to see firsthand that battlefield experience does not result in skills which are especially useful in white collar office jobs.

Ah, of course. Anecdotal evidence trumps the testimony of various industry insiders. Never mind the fact that the Israeli military is dramatically different from the United States’. Never mind the fact that people who have actually studied Israel’s high tech economy came to similar conclusions:

Jeffrey Goldberg: One of your arguments is that it’s not necessarily Jewish culture that created this, but Israel Defense Force culture, that many of the great entrepreneurs and innovators come out of the Air Force, out of the technical branches of the IDF. And that this is replicable. Is that fair to say?

–

Dan Senor: Shimon Peres told us that Jews have a tendency throughout our history to be dissatisfied. That’s a big theme, so this is obviously a big part of IDF culture. I’m of two minds on how applicable this is to the American military. On the one hand, I feel that the Israeli military is just a more entrepreneurial military than any military I know of or that we’ve studied. I mean, it’s just so much more built around improvisation. The fact that when you’re being promoted in the Israeli military, your subordinates have input, or can have input, in those decisions. So it’s a very entrepreneurial, start-up military. There are very few bosses.  The only way you can cultivate that culture and ethos is if you have very few bosses, because the moment you have a lot of bosses, you have a lot of people who need to justify their existence, and they justify their existence by giving commands. I saw this on military bases I’ve worked on and when I’ve been in government –  the U.S. military is top-heavy, and you have a lot of people standing around giving orders to sort of justify their existence.

Half Sigma’s post is supposed to be a fearless exercise in truth-telling, an unvarnished look at the genetic superiority of certain racial groups. Instead, it’s a laughably thin excuse to trot-out easily debunked racialist theories. It’s not as if you need any particular expertise in genetics or Israeli society to disprove this stuff, either. Behind the author’s self-satisfied ranting about “political correctness” is a post that doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of a few well-placed Google searches.

I didn’t suggest that Bill Ayers is the author of one of Barack Obama’s biographies — I reported that someone else had made the suggestion and had made an interesting case . . .

JFK also made “an interesting case,” but I rather doubt that anyone is devoting precious column space to Oliver Stone’s pet conspiracy theories. This is also rich:

I did not defend the ‘birther movement’s’ claim that Obama was not born in Hawaii — I’ve stated that I believe he was born in Hawaii. What I’ve argued is that Obama was born a dual citizen (of Kenya and the U.S.), almost certainly became an Indonesian citizen, and has not been forthcoming about his past.

You see, McCarthy’s a respectable conspiracy theorist. He’s presumably referring to this paragraph from his infamous, un-sourced descent into conspiracism last January (thoroughly debunked here):

Shortly after divorcing Barack Obama Sr., Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, married an Indonesian Muslim, Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo, whom she met — just as she had met Barack Sr. — when both were students at the University of Hawaii. At some point, Soetoro almost certainly adopted the youngster, who became known as “Barry Soetoro . . .”

Obama attended Indonesian elementary schools, which, in Suharto’s police state, were generally reserved for citizens (and students were required to carry identity cards that matched student registration information). The records of the Catholic school Obama/Soetoro attended for three years identify him as a citizen of Indonesia. Thus Obama probably obtained Indonesian citizenship through his adoption by Soetoro in Hawaii.

This “analysis” is based on a report from the epicenter of the ‘Birther’ conspiracy, World Net Daily, which relies on unnamed “Indonesian legal experts” (they have those on staff?) to determine if Obama qualified for Indonesian citizenship. You’ll forgive me if I don’t find this credible.

It gets better. McCarthy also cites Obama’s college trip to Pakistan as evidence of his Indonesian citizenship:

By contrast, the question whether Obama ever was an Indonesian citizen is still unresolved, as are such related matters as whether the foreign citizenship (if he had it) ever lapsed, and whether he ever held or used an Indonesian passport — for example, during a mysterious trip to Pakistan he took in 1981, after Zia’s coup, when advisories warned Americans against traveling there.

My mastery of a highly-specialized academic database has unearthed this obscure report, demonstrating that the travel ban story is complete nonsense State Department is complicit an a vast conspiracy to hide the truth about Obama’s citizenship:

“We have no record of any travel ban between America and Pakistan during that period or since,” said Noel Clay, a spokesman for the State Department.

There was no “travel advisory,” either. In fact, the U.S. consul general in Lahore was actively encouraging Americans to visit Pakistan in 1981.

Then there’s this gem from McCarthy (which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been retracted or even amended):

There’s speculation out there from the former CIA officer Larry Johnson — who is no right-winger and is convinced the president was born in Hawaii — that the full state records would probably show Obama was adopted by the Indonesian Muslim Lolo Soetoro and became formally known as “Barry Soetoro.”

It’s true – Larry Johnson is no right-winger. He is also the crazed purveyor of the “whitey tapes,” which purported to show Michelle Obama going off on some crazed, racially-charged rant. Needless to say, these were never produced.

So yes, Andy McCarthy is not a birther. He’s just asking questions.

I cringe when papers like The Los Angeles Times lay off experienced beat reporters, but I won’t shed too many tears if the blogosphere renders its op-ed pages irrelevant.