Gideon Rachman

Poor, poor Gideon Rachman.

The Financial Times's chief foreign affairs columnist and blogger can't understand why people got so upset at him.

He responded to a volume of disagreeable e-mails reacting to his December 9 column on the idea of having one world government in two different blog posts (the photo at the top right is from his blog): "Covered in Internet Slime" (December 10) and "Final Thoughts on the world government row" (December 11). His bottom line is that he considered his original column a "dispassionate discussion of the possibility" of a world government.

I think there's genuine reason to question Mr. Rachman's "dispassion." Of course in the process, I run the risk of being criticized by Mr. Rachman (from his Dec. 10 "Internet Slime" piece) as:

• Someone who "can read, but .... cannot think."
• Someone who subscribes to "end days" theology.
• (heaven forbid) Someone who "believes that global warming not only is a hoax - but that it is actually a conspiracy."
• (oh my gosh) Someone "clinging to guns and religion. And clinging is the word."

Nonetheless, I'll plunge ahead into his original column with clear demonstrations that Mr. Rachman is more than a wee bit sympathetic to the one world government idea: