The ever-fatuous Jonah Goldberg
In a typically illucid column by Pantload in today’s LA Times all about how Ay-rabs aren’t fit to govern themselves:
For many supporters of the Bush Doctrine, Iraqis have to want democracy, because if they don’t, what’s the point of having a freedom agenda? But what if these are just beloved Western fictions? We see a well-lighted path to the good life: democracy, tolerance, rule of law, markets. But what if the Arab world just isn’t interested in our path? As a believer in the freedom agenda, that’s what scares me most.
Or what if you just can’t plant democracies by invading a country, bombing the shit out of it, erasing all its institutions, and then appointing a bunch of inexperienced, unknowledgable and incompetent interns from the Heritage Foundation to run the country you occupy while well-connected contractors profiteer the hell out of the situation and keep 60% or more of the population unemployed?
Now now, he has a point: what if Arabs, who gave us algebra, astronomy, our alphabet and numbers, optics, maps, simply were unenlightened beasts?
[...] But then again, Jonah’s primary vocation for the past few years has been the exhibition of stupidity to grotesque excess. [...]