Free Propaganda

I thought I'd add my half-cent's-worth on Columbia University's invitation of Mudmood Ahmuddungjihad to a speaking engagement on campus. I keep hearing talk of free speech. I think I'll engage in a little free speech, myself, in labeling this cop-out as a steaming pile of horse hockey. Free speech has absolutely nothing to do with it; moral relativism, on the other hand, is an integral facet of the decision. Foreign despots have no right whatsoever to speak at a podium on an American university campus. Having free speech means having the right to speak unimpeded, not having the forum of your choice provided on a silver platter. Not even American citizens have this right. Heck, even illegal aliens don't retain this privilege; and we all know that they are a special class of faultless individuals superior to the common citizenry. Just ask el segundo Bush. The issue of free speech is hilarious for another reason, as well: the speaker's religious beliefs demand the squelching of free speech at every conceivable opportunity, and the government of his home country practices this as an art form. I wonder if Columbia U.'s administrators would be screeching about unhampered expression if the guest speaker were Ann Coulter, or the dean of Bob Jones University?

Other than a trumpet for propagandizing the world on Iran's behalf, what possible value could be derived from a speech by Ahmuddungjihad? He hates Israel, hates America, and denies the Holocaust ever took place. What a peach he is. As I suggested over at Vox's, that someone would actually invite this swine to appear says far more about the moral perversity of the school's administrators than anything else. Would they request that Uncle Joe Stalin take a few moments out of his busy schedule of purging imaginary enemies and bleeding the proletariat and spare them a word or two, were he still kicking around, today? I'm sure they'd bask in his lecturing tone about the excesses of capitalism, and the philosophical purity of communism.

Arguments of freedom of association hold no water with me on this particular matter. We're talking about a self-described enemy of the United States. If that's not a disqualifying factor, I don't know what is.