May 3, 2011--Orly Taitz

Orly Taitz is a leading conspiracy theorist. She is a dentist who was born in the USSR and appears regularly on cable news networks because some find her perversely entertaining. Of course many who catch her on Fox News also believe what she has to say.

I assume she is now an American citizen. I tell you about her, in case you do not know her "work," to expose the extent and "quality" of "thinking" that lurks behind hers and others of her ilk's smiling faces.

She is best known as the doyenne of birthers and for her more wide-ranging lunatic claims about Barack Obama. Here is a sampling:

--A number of homosexuals from Obama's former church have died mysteriously.

--Obama has dozens of Social Security numbers, and his passport is inaccurate.

--Taitz claims that a person who was cooperating with the FBI in connection with Obama's passport died mysteriously, "shot in the head."

--A Kenyan birth certificate with the name "Barack Obama" is authentic.

--Obama's first act as President was to donate money to Hamas, which she claims will be used to build Qassam rockets.

--Obama, or someone connected to him, has made threats to Taitz's life and vandalized her car.

--Obama is having the Federal Emergency Management Agency build internment camps for "Anti-Obama dissidents".

Taitz has also supported other theories not directly related to Obama, including:

--Goldman Sachs runs the United States Treasury. (This one is sort of true.)

--Baxter International has developed a bird flu vaccine that kills people.

--Representative Alcee Hastings and Democrats in the House of Representatives are planning to build at least six labor camps to lock up opponents during "emergencies."

--Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez owns the software that runs American voting machines.

What is it about people such as Dr.Taitz that, for many, makes her so believable? Why are Americans so prone to be taken in by conspiracy theories? Historians and scholars have pondered this for decades. Some feel it is not just human nature to look for simple explanations for complex, troubling realities such as the 9/11 attack and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It may also be rooted in our unique history.

Robert Alan Goldberg, perhaps more than anyone else, has explored this in his seminal, Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America. He writes:

Conspiracy theory draws power from merging with and reenforcing traditional American values and beliefs: a sense of mission, Protestant supremacy, concerns about encroachments on liberty, anti-elitism, maintenance of the racial order, and the sanctity of private property.

From this it is easy to see why a liberal president who is "foreign," received an elite education, has embraced the "truth" of all major religions, allegedly wants to tamper with constitutional rights (especially the sacred Second Amendment), and because of his blackness is disruptive of the racial order is an ideal subject for conspiratorial paranoia.

Let us hope that now some of this shall pass.