What are People Afraid Of?
I just don't know why conservatives are so afraid to let folks like Khatami speak in the US. Sure, he is a lying dictatorial human-rights-suppressing scumbag, but so what? Its good to let people like this speak as much as they want. They always give themselves away. There were counter-protests and lots of debate about Iran in the news and on the nets, and that is as it should be.
I suppose conservatives real fear is that the press will, as they sometimes do, throw away their usual skepticism and cynicism and report his remarks as if they were those of a statesman rather than a thug on a PR mission. But that's a different problem, and not a good enough excuse to suspend free speech, even for a man who granted it to no one else in his own country. (I have never bought into the "media bias" critique, either conservative or liberal, in the press, because this seems to imply some active conspiracy exists to manage the news to some end. Rather, I think it is more fair to say that reporters tend to apply too little skepticism to stories with which they are sympathetic. For example, many reporters think homelessness is a big problem, so they were willing to uncritically accept inflated and baseless numbers for the size of the homeless population, numbers they would have fact-checked the hell out of if they had come from, say, an oil company to whom they are unsympathetic or skeptical of.)
On the same topic, I don't know why conservatives are so worried about this story of an increase in students from Saudi Arabia. It used to be that we had confidence that people from oppressive countries would have their eyes opened by living in the US. We have always believed that intellectually, freedom was more compelling than dictatorial control, and would win over hearts and minds of immigrants. Our foreign policy with China, for example, is counting on engagement to change China. Have we given up on this?
