Backbone

Conservatives may claim that, unlike liberals, they have backbone. In reality, liberals have backbone also, the difference is we choose to use the brain that rests atop it.

On Monday, Sept. 24 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got to speak at Columbia University. Shortly after stepping onto the stage, he would surely regret it. While close minded, lock-step conservatives and strutting chicken hawks, from the once admired John McCain to the unintelligent cesspool that is Rush Limbaugh, screamed bloody murder about Ahmadinejad being allowed to speak at Columbia, Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia, had different plans. See video below of his opening remarks before Ahmadinejad spoke:



What the McCains, Limbaughs and FoxNews-philes of the world don't understand in their limited black and white intellectual spheres, is that by letting someone talk freely, doesn't mean you agree with them. Indeed, sometimes the more you let someone like Ahmadinejad speak, the more of an idiotic, lying despot they appear. You'd have thought the Republicans would have figured that out after six years of Bush.

Lee Bollinger called Ahmadinejad out - to his face, by the way - not by blathering into a TV studio camera or a radio microphone. In case anyone forgot, Bollinger's pointed, stern, yet humble closing remark is what real intellectual leadership looks like. This video is from YouTube, we should hope it gets many millions of hits in Mr. Ahmadinejad's home country.