Corrections
Ah, a rabid C++ practitioner speaks up!
1. The ability to "write and execute new code on the fly" is not unique to Lisp, and in fact since several Lisp compilers (and most compilers for other languages) have been written in C, it should be obvious that there's nothing wholly new here besides making abstraction easier. I've never once seen Lisp create dangerous code on-the-fly in actual use, but I have seen countless programs in C++ with silent buffer overflows, silent integer overflow, and so on -- aren't these even worse "clever" optimizations that have caused actual damage?
2. False. It was originally designed to be a way of talking about recursive algorithms on a blackboard, not for computers at all. There was one dialect in the 1980's (Lisp Machine Lisp) that was written specifically for tagged architectures, but it was never very popular even in Lisp circles, and in only a couple years its performance had been bypassed by general-purpose machines. Today's Lisp compilers are some of the fastest compilers to be found. (Even if it was true that Lisp was designed for a tagged architecture, that doesn't say anything about modern compilers. After all, C was designed for writing a computer game for an 18-bit, wire-wrapped minicomputer, but we don't hold that against it today.)
3. I don't know why you keep bringing up old canards like "AI", "security", "commodity platforms", and such. (It sounds like you got all your information from a 1983 marketing brochure!) I would, however, ask you to demonstrate why you think C++ is sufficient. For example, get a copy of SICP or PAIP and show how the algorithms there can be implemented in C++. I've tried this, and you'll find it takes many, many pages of C++ code (or external libraries), to do some things that Lisp can do quite simply.
4. Again with the AI! At least this time it's a bit different because you threw in an ad hominem attack. I guess I don't have the experience you did. I've never used Lisp for AI, and I've never heard anyone say that Lisp programmers "were a unique species of super-intellects". I'm sorry you were treated poorly, and I hope that someday you can learn to separate the message from the messenger. I hated my high school English teacher but I didn't respond by abandoning English and telling others they should, too.
