Posted on 09/25/2007 6:41:08 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
Columbia University created quite a stir this week by having Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad address members of their student body. In some respects, it was more of a stir than University President Lee Bollinger had bargained for. Columbia wanted attention and passion. They got it in spades.
However self-serving and sensationalistic Columbia’s motives may have been, an argument has been put forward that the invitation is valid. Today, the Wall Street Journal described the reasoning that would justify a dialogue with the anti-American ideologue under the belief that "even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable."
Seen in this light, Columbia can be defended for serving two motives. They have presented Ahmadinejad an opportunity to dialogue and have reopened an academic debate that crosses terrain from the philosophical disciplines to the hard sciences. This may be how the Political Science and International Relations Academics ask us how to discuss whether there is really such a thing as totally random chaos.
What Columbia should be thinking about instead is whether or not there is such a thing as evil. If so, what characteristics would result from a manifestation of such? J. R.R. Tolkien’s proxy for the good, Gandalf, the White, would not “bandy words of insolence with The Mouth of Sauron.” Some individuals defy rational discourse through the ruse of disingenuous and degenerative semantics. Does any serious student of human nature actually believe “"In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country?”
One popular form of mathematical and philosophical argumentation involves inductive reasoning. When used to formulate a mathematical proof, induction requires an example, a second example and an assumption without loss of generality that the fact being claimed applies in all cases. This is inductive reasoning on cattle steroids and may not appeal to all students of reason well-schooled in the graduate school indefinite. Distaste for induction may have a similar logical wellspring as the belief that the first guy to use Hitler in an argument loses.
However, a fan of this methodology can say many things about Ahmadinejad in defense of a deductively reasoned thesis that the man lies each every time his lips move. The current Iranian President may have given the slang phrase “on the down-low” a whole new intensity amongst Iranian homosexuals, but his secret police haven’t gotten them all. That’s lie number one. Base case established.
When asked if he favored the destruction of Israel, Ahmadinejad offered the following dialogue.
”"We are friends of all the nations," he said. "We are friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews in Iran living peacefully with security."
The argument now moves to the level of establishing lie n+1. Does the Iranian President really want to militarily destroy Israel? (The question of whether he can should be directed to Israel’s Secretary of Defense.) The evidence is somewhat more murky, but circumstantially damning.
“Ahmadinejad has in the past called for Israel's elimination. But his exact remarks have been disputed. Some translators say he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," but others say that would be better translated as "vanish from the pages of time" - implying Israel would disappear on its own rather than be destroyed.”
An impassioned defender of Iran’s current regime would suggest Ahmadinejad merely recommends an LBO of the West Bank. A more logical interpretation suggests Iran has friends in every nation minus one. The veracity of his statement that Iranians are friends with the Jewish People probably hinges on just exactly what we all think the definition of “is”, is.
Assuming our exercise goes forward and we establish that Ahmadinejad produces nearly as much dishonesty as he does CO2, Columbia then has to reexamine the rationale that every human being is interested in honest, intellectual dialogue. Ahmadinejad may be more rational than Columbia’s President. After Dr. Bollinger’s desperate and panic-stricken harangue, some are making that case.
The question now becomes. “At what point does inviting a known liar, with a disingenuous agenda, contra the tenets of basic decency, to a Socratic dialogue profane the quest for enlightenment and reason?” At what point does academic tolerance become a joke bromide of right wing talk radio? (Perhaps that question should go to perspective ROTC candidates now attending Dr Bollinger’s University.)
To his credit, Dr. Bollinger confronted Ahmadinejad with his brazen denial of the holocaust.
"In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as the fabricated legend," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad said in his opening remarks. "One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers."
"When you come to a place like this, it makes you simply ridiculous. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history," he said.
This wasn't a topic that the Iranian President desired an open, rational dialogue about. Ahmadinejad clearly has mastered the rhetorical non-answer. He parried the fusillade as follows.
"assuming this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?"
He went on to say that he was defending the rights of European academics imprisoned for "questioning certain aspects" of the Holocaust, an apparent reference to a small number who have been prosecuted under national laws for denying or minimizing the genocide.
"There's nothing known as absolute," Ahmadinejad said. He said the Holocaust has been abused as a justification for Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians.
"Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?" he asked.
The questions remain for Dr. Bollinger and the open-minded, tolerant community of Columbia University. Does it really matter whether President Ahmadinejad is a reasonable man? With the level of respect implied by his answers and the fundamental lack of honesty in many of his replies, what good was served by our highly publicized dialogue with evil?
Oh yes! Someone threatens to kill my wife and children the first chance he gets so I am going to ask him over to dinner to talk it over. Typical Liberal non-thinking.
His lips are moving so I know he’s lying.....
Are human beings reasonable by nature? Begs the question: are Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid human?
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Agreed.
Columbia’s motives were in truth quite simple. “The enemy of our enemy is our friend.”
This makes sense if you compare moderation, reason and realism with their intellectual opposites: extremism, irrationality and idealism.
The opponents of moderation are extremists of all varieties—it does not matter if they are communists, or fascists, or religious fanatics, or whatever stripe of ideologue. They feel far more threatened by moderates than by even opposing extremists.
The opponents of reason are those that embrace irrationality, be they mythologists, or those so caught up in emotion that they discard order in favor of magic. Few people, in fact, are truly paragons of reason.
Realism and idealism are somewhat closer, in that there are times when both are useful. But while it is necessary to have a clear vision of what is, and a desire for a better future, it is best not to be so fixated on one that you sacrifice the other.
Unfortunately the trap of moderation is its flawed assumption that extremists can be persuaded in some way to discard their radicalism and become more reasonable. But to an extremist, this would be the ultimate failure, a death of the spirit, a renunciation of their ideal. And in some cases, an acceptance of damnation.
In this way, a moderate, to an extremist, is their worst enemy. Importantly, even more so than their opposite extremist. Hitler and Stalin could always have been fonder friends with each other than with Chamberlain.
But moderates do not all agree, either. To one side of moderation the other side looks intemperate enough to be confused with extremists. Conservatives see Hillary as an extremists, just like Liberals see George Bush as a fascist; though in truth, both are mistaken.
So while Columbia tells itself it is helping to moderate their diminutive guest, in truth it cares far more about chastising the Republican President they despise. And were the President just before World War II a Republican, they would have been just as gleeful inviting Hitler to speak, and for the same irrational purpose.
What a shame. I wish I could disagree with you on that.
lol....Whoever wrote this sentence is both unreasonable and an enemy of reason, not to mention a idiot.
I agree, and furthermore, this is the same mind set that caused the Bush administration to believe they could impose democracy and western ideals on Iraq after the invasion. They don’t comprehend that Islamic cultural ideals are fundamentally different from Western cultural ideals.
The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side [e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Stick your finger where? Someone get a bunny with a pancake quick.
Fundamentalism is characterized by a radical fideism. It puts no trust in reason per se. Would Columbia invite Torquemada to discuss ethnic cleansing?
Insane people are often quite rational. It is their assumptions that are at fault. Ever see “Harvey?”
“Insane people are often quite rational. It is their assumptions that are at fault. Ever see “Harvey?”
No. Rational people don’t ‘assume’ facts they know nothing about and don’t have irrational ‘assumptions’ about things they do understand. You can’t be ‘rational’ and have ‘irrational assumptions’.
Depends of what you call fact. Nowadays we use the term “perception” quite often. That’s because we are so psychologically oriented. In any case, The insane person sees thing that are not there and forms assumptions based on his assumption that these things are real. His problem is, of course, that he also ignores things that really are there and which have the power to bite him.
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