The anti-science left in all it's naked, berry-munching, illiterate glory.

Sensation is a mob, albeit a stimulating one.

Seriously, set aside your data this coming April and treat yourself to a week in Paris. Sure the dollar isn't worth shit and no bank will take them (andyou will be forced to pay an exorbitant percentage for cashing them at special check cashing stores) but you will find all that unimportant. You can just plop yourself down in a cafe, order yourself an express or perhaps a Cinzano and wait for a lovely young mademoiselle to come along et voila? Who knows what will happen then to our Dataman? And that's the beauty of it. There is no data that can tell us that.

And if the US seriously wanted to address the issue of picking fruit, we'd pack up the unemployed denizens of the inner cities in trucks and ship them out to the fields while under armed guard.

The problem in the US is mostly the rank emotional sentimentalism.

BTW, a half million jobs lost per week would mean 26 million jobs lost this year. Don't think that's happening. Methinks you suffer from innumeracy.

Actually, when it comes to dirtiness the French Ministry of Health several years presented a study finding that, of all European men, French men changed their underwear the least often. I believe it was just over twice a week.

I'll see your anecdote and raise you some data.

Data, data, data, and nothing more.

It is obvious you have a problem connecting with reality when you repeat that if you don't pay your taxes, the IRS will come after you with a gun. I have never heard of that happening. A sheriff may be wearing one but it's not for you unless you draw on him The IRS comes after you with a summons or subpoena and you get a lawyer and try and make some kind of a deal. If that doesn't work out, you might do some time at a low-risk prison facility that may have its own golf course but I have yet to hear of a tax case that has involved violence. If you can not get that straight I am afraid there is no hope.

I'll close with an anecdote. Returning on a freighter from Copenhagen, quite a few years back, after having lived in Rome for six months, .I got a message from the captain who invited me, as the only Yank among the five passengers, to come up on the bridge and join the harbor pilot as we headed pass the Statue of Liberty into the port in New Jersey. “Where have you been,” asked the harbor pilot?” When I responded that I had been living in Italy, he blurted out, “Italy, they're so dirty over there.” Really, I replied, that wasn't my experience. When were you there?. “Oh, I haven't been there, but I know.” Now, you are obviously more educated than that oaf, who happened to be an excellent harbor pilot, but you and he have more in common than you'd like to think.

A) Average IQ
B) Inbreeding coefficient
C) Number of patents
D) Degree of monogamy
etc

And I'm not judging any individual person, many of whom are completely wonderful to hang with on an occasional basis, but the complete sh*thole societies that exist around the world.

This is not to romanticize those “others” but to see them as fellow human beings, a term it seems you find repellent

Yes, the term “human being” reeks of the most rancid and vacuous hyper-moralistic spiritualism. I don't use it. I don't call myself a human being. We are animals, myself included, nothing more, although varying clever and cooperative animals

The European Union, arguably the most important political achievement of our lifetime

Do we even need to read any more? I mean we're talking about a bunch of solipsistic, dying societies that the times of history will have washed away by the end of the century.

In 2100, the map will say UDSE – United Dhimmi States of Europe.

This is not to romanticize those “others” but to see them as fellow human beings, a term it seems you find repellent. I saw Arafat several times in Lebanon and Jordan in 1970 and thought him to be somewhat of a buffoon, but it turns out he was a crafty one as well as corrupt, so corrupt in fact that before the 2nd intifada he was on the Israeli payroll for $8 million a year (according to Natan Shransky who complained about it), but he was the face of Palestine to many around the world, probably, you, included. Every Palestinian friend of mine, here and there, shuddered when he went on TV, making a bigger clown of himself than before. He was still alive and the head of the PLO/PA because the Israelis, with or without his assistance, had killed off Palestinians who you never see on TV, who are as educated and sophisticated as any one you will find at your dinner table.

I have been in their refugee camps and I have walked down the streets of Amman and Beirut as well as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, I have good friends in those cities and in various cities in Europe where I have lived which is not to brag but to say that it has given me a broader perspective on the inhabitants of the planet that we share than it is possible to find while living an upper middle class life in Seattle. That you are smugly satisfied with your life style and demonstrate no curiosity about what lies on the other side is truly sad, and I genuinely mean that.

Yes, I am completely alienated from that segment of the species, and I make no apologies for it.

As for invitations to civilized tables, um, I'm upper-middle class, living in high-tech coastal city. So, if the circles in which I run, I cannot think of anyone in my social circle without at least an undergrad degree, do not constitute “civilized” then pretty much nothing does. BTW, I say the sort of stuff in polite company and get very little opposition. The problem is that, as you so amply demonstrate, the only possible arguments against what I'm saying is a subjectively asserted universalist morality. Yes, I do get huffy, unsubstantiated denouncements, on occasion, but I am much more likely to get grudging approval, which is happening in social circumstances with almost all Democrats. The plurality response is “I'll think about it”.

The civilized peoples, yes, even many who self-identify as liberals, of the world are slowly coming to grips without to deal with the barbarians.