FROM THE #OCCUPYWALLSTREET EMAIL LIST: “Christopher Columbus Was The First Zionist.” John Hinderaker comments: “This exchange strikes me as revealing on several levels, but I will close with just two observations: 1) It is a reminder of the sheer volume of ignorant BS that leftists can generate. 2) The only common denominator that binds together these miscellaneous cranks with their various obsessions is their visceral hatred of the United States.”

UPDATE: Reader Daniel Aronstein emails:

Anti-colonialism ties the two.

Anti-colonialism is central to postmodern Leftism.

The OWS effort is essentially postmodernist. (The Dems think they can exploit them; Obama is one of them.)

The postmodern Left sees the Israelis as Jewish interlopers from Europe who stole the land from peace-loving Arabs just as Columbus stole the USA from peace-loving Indians. (And Arabs and Indians also had sustainable economies that were replaced with evil free-markets!)

The postmodern left’s presuppositions are bad and their facts wrong. Lets set the record straight and unpack a few of them:

1 – So called indigenous peoples all over the world are better off under our system – as a result of colonialism – and in our culture then they ever were or ever could have been under their own. They all have longer healthier more prosperous lives.

2 – Jews are not interlopers and have lived in the Holy Land continuously for thousands of years. Very few Arabs had ever settled there.

3 – The so-called al aksa Mosque cannot possibly be the one in the Koran; it was built years after Mohamed died; it was dubbed the al aksa mosque by a Turk who was forbidden entrance to Mecca and needed another place to make a pilgrimage to.

4 – Arabs are the interlopers in the Holy Land and North Africa.

5 – The Crusades were a counter-offensive and not an offensive; they were waged to expel the invader and not to invade.

Frankly, the way post-colonialism has worked out, I have to admit that colonialism isn’t looking so bad these days. Funny how that works out.