Khatami’s Harvard Visit Is a Disgrace

From the Ayn Rand Institute (if I earn any profit, I promise I'll give them a chunk):

Irvine, CA--This Sunday, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, Iran’s former president, Mohammed Khatami, will speak before Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and give a talk titled “Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence.” This is outrageous.

Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. Khatami’s government jailed Iranian students who spoke out against the theocratic regime, and his intelligence service murdered leaders of an Iranian opposition party. For him to lecture Americans on ethics and non-violence is as obscene as a child molester instructing his victims on the importance of respecting individual rights.

Harvard defended Khatami’s visit, claiming we must have an “open dialogue” with Iran and allow for a “free exchange of ideas.” But there can be no “free exchange of ideas” between a killer and those he seeks to kill--or between a brutal dictatorship and the free nation it seeks to annihilate.

Let’s stop appeasing Iran and make it clear that those who threaten the United States will not receive an “open dialogue,” but swift destruction.

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Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

I find I'm more of an Objectivist than a libertarian when I find the two in conflict.

Speaking of which, check this out:

When government undertakes to regulate a market-based system, it (1) compels exchanges (for example, through eminent domain and tax transfers) and (2) forcibly interferes with voluntary exchanges. When government taxes us to provide subsidies to business, our preferences are overthrown in favor of someone else’s. When it imposes import quotas, tariffs, and patents, the choices and prices of clothing, sugar, and many other things are distorted because inexpensive foreign goods are kept out of the market. When government imposes taxes and regulations, it favors large incumbent firms over small and yet-to-be-started firms. When it expands the money supply, inflation robs working people of purchasing power.

My disagreement with these guys and the Libertarian Party is this: I want the borders closed to anti-capitalists, and I want the border open to capitalists.

UNBRIDLE CAPITALISM is my motto.