This is some pretty scary stuff, and something I feel seriously ignorant about.

The outcry against Ahmadinejad coming to Columbia yesterday is disappointing. He's a bad guy (and a dangerous one), but when has shutting down avenues of communication and dialog ever resulted in anything other than escalated tension and misunderstanding? Yeah, he says some pretty awful stuff and holds some even worse beliefs - but this was not a soapbox, it was a forum. Telling someone to "shut up" may work for Bill O'Reilly, but it's hardly a reasonable national policy.