Justin Veiga | executive editor
jveiga@smcvt.edu

On Monday, Sept. 24, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed a massive swarm of people at New York’s Columbia University.  His presence within the United States was due to the United Nations conference held Tuesday, in which he was scheduled to appear. 

The decision by officials at Columbia to invite a leader, one who is so feared and hated by the Western world, to speak on American soil to a crowd of citizens sparked passionate ridicule, ignited debates and resulted in an outpouring of protest.

We at the Echo applaud the decision by Columbia officials to allow Ahmadinejad to address the school’s students and faculty.  Had Ahmadinejad been initially invited, only to be refused a chance to speak upon arrival, what sort of message would the U.S. be sending to the rest of the world regarding the emphasis we place on our own national doctrine?

It is this national doctrine that sets the United States apart from so many other countries across the globe.  Forget our wealth.  Forget our military superiority.  The true strength of American democracy is showcased by our right to free speech, a right guaranteed since 1791 by the First Amendment of our Constitution.

An opinion column appearing in Tuesday’s Burlington Free Press written by Gene Policinski, the vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., illustrates a decline in Americans’ belief that the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment are “essential” in their lives.

“The right to ‘speak freely about whatever you want’ [dropped] to 66 percent from 72 percent 10 years ago and 75 percent five years ago,” Policinski wrote in the piece entitled, “Let’s teach the First Amendment.”  He went on to include that the numbers were even lower for people who felt that “the right to be informed by the press” and the right to peaceably assemble were essential in their lives, reaching points of 62 percent and 60 percent, respectively.

This is a frightening trend.  The rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, most notably in this case, freedom of speech, were developed by our Founding Fathers to ensure that this country would remain and forever function as a democracy, where the authority of government is in direct correlation to the control of the people who empower it.  The strength of the American democracy lies in the opportunity that all individuals have to freely express themselves.  It is through this freedom that democracy is perpetuated. 

In giving Ahmadinejad an outlet in America to vocalize his opinions, thousands of Americans, who previously knew very little about the man or his ideals, now have a much greater breadth of knowledge.  His insistence that the genocide of the Jewish population by the Nazis is not fact, but theory, and his claim of certainty that no homosexuals live within the expansive borders of Iran may enrage multitudes of Americans.  It may even cause a laugh or two at the expense of this man’s intelligence.  Yet what it should do is make us all smile out of appreciation for our national rights.