Much of the talk today is about the strong words directed at friend Mahmoud by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger: "Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator."
Good. But here's the thing: what really did we, or Columbia, get out of Ahmadinejad's freedom to speak? Well, Mahmoud busily questioned the Holocaust ("if" it happened), suggested that research into it has been somehow stifled (an even worse lie than his first statement), proffered the notion that there are no gays in Iran, and at best the previous is either yet another lie, or is the result of heavy-handed repression/gay-cleansing, Iranian-style. Wonderful! So glad we got to hear all that.
Oh, you say, but it gave Ahmadinejad a chance to destroy himself with such silly speech. It opened our eyes. Yes--and if that was truly the reason why the pooh-bahs at Columbia chose to allow this Islamofascist thug a platform from which to speak, great. But you and I both know that wasn't why they did it. They did it because they think any rabble-rousing terrorist has a "right" to speak, even though Columbia is a private entity and in fact need not allow anyone to speak (it's not a government bound to enforce the 1st Amendment). Even though we are not bound to allow someone seeking to sponsor and fund those killing American soldiers the right to speak. Columbia allowed this guy to speak because its leaders, and many others in this country, have bound themselves to a fundamentally mistaken, illogical, and ideological brand of "free speech." And it's very sad.
