Ahmadinejad in New York
So, Ahmadinejad has arrived in the United States. With him has come controversy about whether or not he should be permitted to speak at an American university or visit Ground Zero. Let me weigh in.
It is amazing that so many people argue that in the United States people should have the freedom of speech and should therefore extend that freedom to those like the Iranian president. This is akin to extending the rights of citizenship to illegal immigrants. This seems like such a basic distinction but it seems that it goes clean over so many heads. Here it is, in a word: The freedoms enjoyed by the American people, protected by the United States Constitution, apply only to those under its jurisdiction. There, it isn’t so difficult. Ahmadinejad has no ‘right to speech’ in the halls of American Academia just as illegal aliens don’t have a right to medical care or just as prisoners of war, in Gitmo or elsewhere, don’t have a right to a defense attorney and access to our judicial system. When and if the world’s countries should wish to enter as states into the United States of America, these scenarios would change. The world’s citizens wish to have the benefits the United States has without any of the obligations or responsibilities that go along with those benefits.
The worst of it, actually, is that there are so many American citizens that are willing to extend our freedoms and liberties to those who not only do not fall under our Constitutional banner, but that they are willing to do so to individuals who would love nothing less then to bring down our country to the pit. Or lower. Ahmadinejad would destroy America, if he could. The Gitmo detainees would destroy America, if they could. A great mass of illegal immigrants would turn America into their own country and culture, if they could. These gleefully take advantage of every inch of rope we give them, and they are waiting for the opportunity to hang us with the threads.
And besides, why does Ahmadinejad have a need for a forum in the US? Isn’t the UN a large enough platform for him? If not the US, what about his own country where he rules the air waves and very astutely ensures that his message, and his message alone, gets to the US? Some have said, and I agree, that it is a deep irony that we are extending a freedom to a man who denies the same freedom to his own. In my view, this is a deep insult to the Iranian people. In allowing him access to our freedoms, we tell the Iranian people that we care little for their own plight, and much prefer to be known as nice, kind hearted, open-minded citizens of the world, who will give a hearing to any mad man that comes to our shore. Nice and open-minded… that may win us favor in the hearts of the oppressed in the world, but it makes us big juicy targets to those who would wish to annihilate us, however kind we think we are.
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