Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Freedom Is Evil When Used to Promote Evil

Iran’s Hitler-esque President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressed the faculty and students of Columbia University yesterday, accorded more respect and honor than many worthier alternatives, such as a certain former President of Harvard. President Ahmadinejad’s surreal portrayal of Iran as a sublime paradise of Justice and Peace, where no one is homosexual or sexist or hateful in any way, combined with his sneering derision of the ideals and practices of the country hosting his visit, is reasonably reminiscent of Adolf Hitler, who also assured his neighbors that he was a peaceful man who merely wanted ’lebensraum’, and who simply asserted his country’s natural desire for Justice. Ahmadinejad presides over a government which murders people for having sex out of wedlock, which includes any homosexual act, and ruthlessly suppresses criticism and free speech in Iran, yet he has no shortage of supporters and allies demanding he be allowed a stage and a live microphone anywhere and anytime he desires, all in the name of Free Speech. Few people seem to have considered the validity of that claim.

The odd thing, President Ahmadinejad has never faced the same sort of censorship his own regime employs. His opinion and statements have a large and ready audience, and there is no need – whatsoever – for a prestigious university to grant him prominence so that he can express his views. Therefore, the only logical reason for Columbia University to have agreed to host this monster from Teheran, was either out of a perverse thirst for publicity, or else agreement in general of his statements and motives. Given the high level of education of its alumni and regents, and the long-established procedures for inviting their selected guest speakers, it is implausible beyond possibility for this to have been an honest error, or merely exercise of a noble ideal. Make no mistake, Columbia’s masters wanted the damnable man standing at a lectern under their banner, as some proud accomplishment of Columbia and all it stands for.

But it needs addressing, this peculiar notion that monsters have a moral right to be allowed to say whatever they like. I find it strange, that the mandarins at Columbia did not consider that they had a greater moral responsibility to present the opinions of the oppressed in Iran, say those Iranian students willing to defy the mullahs, or young Iranian women told that unless they obey the strict misogynist laws from a 7th-Century madman, they will be hanged. Perhaps a few of those homosexuals Mr. Ahmadinejad says do not exist in Iran, might be allowed their opportunity to rebut that claim? But no, doing the right thing, the just thing, that is not the ‘Columbia Way’, it appears. But we must wonder why only a tyrant deserves a stage?

But there is more. Voltaire defended the right to even that speech he despised, but even Voltaire did not suggest that speech he despised should be elevated and repeated well ahead of the words of wise and righteous men. It is well enough to know what a monster is about; it is quite beyond the pale to grant advantage and prominence to the thug in that exposition. Some defenders of the monster in question have suggested that allowing Ahmadinejad to speak will reveal him in all his absurdity, and somehow this may dissuade him from advancing his mania into action. But anyone who has read ’Mein Kampf’ should be aware that evil men often grow in their arrogance from such attention; Hitler said what he meant to do, was allowed to talk at length and on countless occasions during the 1930s, and then he simply did what he had said he would do. With nuclear weapons under development, construction of submarines and military aircraft underway, sponsorship of dozens of terrorist groups and an army training incessantly for something, just how ‘astonishingly uneducated’ – to coin a phrase – would someone have to be to recognize that granting Ahmadinejad yet another big stage to feel important, is only going to increase the cost when his confidence finally crosses that point where he feels ready to launch the overt phase of Jihad against the Western world? Allowing Ahmadinejad the façade of eminence and respectability, is no more sane than trusting Charles Manson to raise your kids; he is quite simply that mad, that evil.

Monday, September 24, 2007

BDS – The Obsession and the LefTrolls

Neither President Bush nor Vice-President Cheney are running for any office next fall; indeed no one in the Bush White House has expressed a desire to be the nation’s next President or a Senator or Congressman. Yet the leading Democrats are all running against President Bush, as if he were the GOP’s nominee. Hillary Clinton leads the pack, and acts as if it were the 2004 election again, not 2008.

And the Left’s mob of frenzied trolls shows the same confused devotion to the President. One recent example is the protest against the tasering of a Leftist student who disrupted an appearance by Senator Kerry. A student newspaper, after weighing all the evidence and considering the circumstances, chose to reference the event with a profane insult directed at President Bush.

Should we even mention the continued 24/7 obsession with President Bush at the Daily Kos (literally millions of references and counting) and MoveOn.org (will they get mad if I say ‘ditto’ to the previous mention about millions of references? Probably, they get mad a lot these days)? Somewhere, even Alex Forrest is thinking these people are a bit over the top.

Back in 2003, Dr, Charles Krauthammer, a psychologist and graduate of the Harvard Medical School, came up with the term, 'Bush Derangement Syndrome'. Dr. Krauthammer’s name for the disorder is much more clinical than the one I proposed a little later, the Aluminati, and addresses the demographic as a whole while I referenced the political aspects alone, but you get the idea, I think. What I referenced as a “cottage industry” for the Left, though, has now become mainstream and a full-blown compulsion.

But the clock is running, and surely even the tightest strait-coat Liberal has realized that he will have to get used to a world without Dubya to hate? Well, maybe not. I can just see these chuckleheads trying to impeach President Bush retroactively, or else demanding we dig up Saddam’s rotted corpse and apologize to it for deposing the dictator. Or maybe this is some weird plan to run against a man who is not even running, so that when the Republican wins the White House again the Donk candidate can scream ‘Not fair! I was campaigning against Bush, so you have to run him! Shewt, they’re so detached from Reality, I wouldn’t be surprised if Shrewery and Obambi were counting on winning all the Electoral Votes from “Second Life”. But I do wonder about what will happen, when all these trolls suddenly find themselves without a target for their venom and spittle? Will they then look in the mirror, realize that the opposite sex has a thing for hygiene and people whose education reached a double-digit grade level, and that the key to financial success is hard work and personal diligence? No, that seems to be largely a Conservative epiphany, more’s the pity. The worst of them will probably prove short-lived contestants in the Darwin Awards competition, but while we can hope that some of the rest may finally follow through on old promises and clear out, I am afraid that the majority will simply find new mischief. Anyone named “Bush” is likely to be stalked and verbally molested, and Rudy or Romney may well find media types referring to them as “Mister Bush” for a while. A certain amount of demented gibbering must also be expected, but as all communications from the LefTrolls have been like that, only normal precautions need to be taken; hand sanitizers in case of physical contact and the exclusion of CNN or CBS news from available television channels; let the V-Chip protect the kids. In the event that – as they often do – the LefTrolls take their cue from Hollywood and the video games, uninfected people should be safe as long as they stay away from the West Coast and areas known to be frequented by Al Sharpton and/or John Kerry.

No one knows for sure what the exit of President Bush will do to the LefTrolls, but it is clear that as he is their reason for being, their focus of identity, the chaos which ensues after his departure back to private life will be devastating.