Talk about a free ride.

Our society is full of financial and intellectual free loaders. Libertarians get to visit National Parks and send their kids to public schools. Creationists get to benefit from evolution-based medical advancements. Atheists, apparently, get to live free and happy in a country moderated by Christian values.

But America's biggest free loaders are the hordes who want to kick every undocumented worker out of the states. Can you imagine what Pat Buchanan would have to pay for a pint of strawberries if he got his way? Could Fox News still afford their fleet of custodians if Bill O'Reilly sent all those Mexicans back where they came from? Would a Minute Man be able to pay for a construction crew to pour his foundation if the prevalence of migrant labor didn't pull prices down?

Sometimes I secretly wish that these people did wake up one morning to find all the undocumented workers mysteriously vanished. All those god-fearing, Mexican-hating, Republican-voting poor folk across the country would have a rude awakening when they tried to buy food, find a babysitter, hire a construction worker, get their car repaired, or any number of other necessities.

Tonight on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Robert Rechtor of the Heritage Foundation repeatedly harped on cost illegal immigrants exact on taxpaying Americans. Specifically, he claimed that each undocumented resident takes in $20,000 more in services than she pays. For starters, how comparable is this number for other poor Americans who are also citizens? Don't tell me that someone pulling in $23,000 a year (half the household median income in the U.S.) pays more in taxes than he and his kids receive in public services. Secondly, if that $20,000 figure includes the cost of educating non-citizens' citizen children, this statistic neglects the economic return the country enjoys from investing the cost of that education into a future American worker.

But, more importantly, how much less do American citizens have to pay for their essentials in order to accommodate those undocumented workers?

Immigration, migrant labor, and path-to-citizenship policy are messy and complicated, and oddly enough I don't support unfettered illegal immigration. I can't summarize my thoughts on these issues in a single blog post. But I will posit that our current arrangement only marginally benefits illegal immigrants compared to how much consumers, employers, and the state gain.

Rebecca picks on WND column, proceeds to steal candy from baby

World Net Daily is a vast well from which I can drink continually and never feel the pang of thirst. Smart people like my Bajillion readers know that everything published at WND bears the argumentative integrity of a drunk seven-year-old speaking Latin. But what about all the doofuses who aren't smart and take WND seriously?

WND does a good job of reflecting the erroneous or specious (yet semi-coherent) arguments that plague otherwise innocuous thinkers, then take those arguments to their logical conclusions, thus revealing how painfully weak the original argument was to begin with. They use the same rhetorical techniques employed by stupid people who aren't crazy (e.g., Bill O'Reilley, Sean Hannity), then utilize those exact techniques to be crazy (like Pat Buchanan or this asshat).

Here's an example: Profiling: Because we're not God. The content of the article is crazy claptrap; most essays touting racial profiling are. The title alone should be a dead givaway. But the arguments that Walter E. Williams uses are so familiar and successful among less insane pundits and writers that they warrant analysis.

1. WND's editors have cashed in on the principle of Oppressed Subgroup Immunity, namely that if you're black or Muslim or a woman then you're automatically granted license to spout bullshittery on behalf of all blacks or Muslims or women without fear of reprimandation. "But I'm black! How could I be racist?!" Well played, World Net Daily.

2. Williams begins by stating the obvious. By leading with an inarguable assertion, he poises himself as a reasonable, truthful character.

God, or some other omniscient being, would never racially profile. Why? Since He is all-knowing, He'd know who is and is not a terrorist or a criminal. We humans are not all-knowing.

Well, I guess you got me there, Walt. Even if you don't believe in god, you have to accept the internal logic of this statement. Shit. I guess this means humans are obligated to perform all the functions the G-man isn't around to do for us. Has anyone invented a Hurricane Course Changer yet?

3. The author uses a bogus analogy that is structurally identical to the topic at hand, yet is in practice totally different from the issue being debated.

Mortality rates for cardiovascular diseases were approximately 30 percent higher among black adults than among white adults. The Pima Indians of Arizona have the world's highest known diabetes rates. Prostate cancer is nearly twice as common among black men as white men. Would anyone bring racial profiling charges against a doctor who routinely ordered more frequent blood tests and prostate screening among his black patients and more glucose tolerance tests for his Pima Indian patients?

Of course, while racially-specific medical screening saves the lives of blacks and American Indians, racial profiling at airports negatively discriminates against Middle Eastern-looking people. See? Internally logical analogy coupled with insanely stupid extension of that analogy.

4. Williams invokes legitimate facts to support an illegitimate stance.

It is clear, whether we like it or not, or want to say it or not, that there is a strong correlation between terrorist acts and being a Muslim, and being black and high rates of crime.

Since September 11, 2001, fewer than ten terrorists have attacked American soil, and they happened to all be Muslim. Okay, so 100% of terrorists to attack the US in the last six years have been Muslim. But that also means that fewer than 0.00000001% of all Muslims have attacked the US in the last six years. Somehow that's a less impressive number.

Also, I'm pretty sure that most terrorist acts on US territory in the 1990s were by white American Christian dudes. For some reason we didn't racially profile white guys after the Oklahoma City bombing. Clearly, there's another variable (hint: racism) at play.

5. Finally, Walter pulls the "blame the victims, not the victimizers" rabbit out of his magic top hat of crazy.

A law-abiding Muslim who's given extra airport screening or a black who's stopped by the police is perfectly justified in being angry, but with whom should he be angry? I think a Muslim should be angry with those who've made terrorism and Muslim synonymous and blacks angry with those who've made blacks and crime synonymous.

Yes, and don't blame rapists ... blame the rape victims for dressing like sluts! Or, better yet, blame every self-empowered woman who's expressed interest in sex at any point in her life. So any woman who doesn't want to be sexually assaulted should air her grievances with all the feminist women who like dick. (Note how I used an analogy that actually makes sense. Sheesh.)

Racism should not be the burdon the oppressed. There's no such thing as a legitimate stereotype. And racism is always wrong, no matter what color the racist's skin is.

Wait, THAT'S the REAL reason he hasn't proposed yet

Ladies, it's not that your marriage-phobic boyfriend is boycotting the institution until same-sex couples can also enjoy the rights of matrimony. Nope, it's that all the tofu he sucks down is making him question opposite-sex couples to begin with. Soy makes you gay, apparently.

Don't believe me? Just ask this guy.

Soy is nutritious and contains lots of good things. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you're also getting substantial quantities of estrogens.

Estrogens are female hormones. If you're a woman, you're flooding your system with a substance it can't handle in surplus. If you're a man, you're suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your "female side," physically and mentally.

In fetal development, the default is being female. All humans (even in old age) tend toward femininity. The main thing that keeps men from diverging into the female pattern is testosterone, and testosterone is suppressed by an excess of estrogen.

See, he's using almost real science (soy contains phytoestrogens that mimic estrogen; estrogen is the primary female sex hormone) and applying it to theoretically and empirically unfounded statements (soy makes you feminine). Clever. This is a dismissable (dare I say bat shit crazy) application of the real-science-plus-fake-conclusions tactic that's especially popular among people who foster anti-scientific thinking.

But there are many who employ the methods of scientists and researchers, then twist these methods beyond recognition into a mangled clump of speculation, superstition, and prejudice, but still have their ideas taken seriously! Take the Intelligent Design team or anti-feminists, for example.

All this talk about soy-based estrogens got met thinking, though. Given that about two-thirds of soybeans grown in America are fed to livestock, and given that a cow's diet is as much soybean as anything else, maybe beef is to blame for the gay epidemic. I feel so sorry for those millions of beef steers who have to spend their entire two years on the planet questioning their own bovine sexuality.

By the way, could there be a more hilarious headline than "A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals"? That wins.