Lessons of our Forefathers
I hope we all learned a lesson yesterday.
Despite 24 hrs of almost universal condemnation of Columbia University for inviting the President of Iran to speak to a group of 750 students, the event went off as planned.
Outside the venue, were thousands of protesters; some protesting Iran's poor record of human rights, some protesting Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust, some decrying Iran's support of terrorism.
The University's president opened the speech, highly critical of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The university staff and students were able to ask pointed questions of the leader and to listen to his vague, evasive, rambling responses.
They allowed him the opportunity to expose himself for the fraud he is. And this event made a much more convincing argument against his beliefs and actions than would have been made had he been prevented from speaking at all.
America was extremely lucky to have founding fathers that understood this lesson and had the foresight to embed Freedom of Speech into the Bill of Rights. It's no accident that this freedom is contained in the First Amendment.
Perhaps it's time we revisited the beliefs of our forefathers. They were pretty smart.
1 comment:
Let's replace the name "Ahmadinejad" with "King George". Would the forefathers protested a univerisity inviting King George to speak? What if King George declared to the world that he wanted to destroy America or he denied his tyranny? I would think a great number of our forefathers would be protesting just the same.
Remember "freedom of speech" does not mean you have to give him the microphone.
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