Number One Way I Hate to Start a Post:

By saying: "Ahmadinejad has a point."

Courtesy of its crazy president, the theocracy of Iran held a Holocaust denial conference. One of the things Ahmadinejad has said is that nations that criminalize denial of the Holocaust criminalize free speech.

Holocaust deniers speak to the same tired themes all the time, and all require but a moment's intelligent thought to wash out their truthiness. If you have an iota of doubt that the Nazi regime in Germany systematically and deliberately wiped out six million or so Jews, go educate yourself here. Or read the Time-Life series on the Nazis. Or watch the series "The Winds of War" or indeed any document written by anyone who is not an active Holocaust denier. These loonies are generally noisy but harmless when kept clear of schools.

However, this places me in a difficult position. I feel that Ahmadinejad is a prime candidate for the laughing academy. And I don't feel his positions stem from some sort of religious mania--just the regular sort that in any country but Iran would make a man unelectable. But I feel he's right.

Criminalizing this sort of idiocy only gives its funny and inarticulate proponents a stone against which to grind their axes; resulting in this wonderful Iranian affair where brown people who loathe Christians and Jews rub shoulders amicably with white Christian racists and Nazis who hate Arabs.

Isn't it nice that all these people who think each other totally inferior can be brought together in harmony and brotherhood by their common mania? It's a celebration of racist diversity!

They're as important and convincing as a convention of furries, or trainspotters, and should get about the same amount of attention.

It is also worth noting that Holocaust deniers are monomaniacal. They argue passionately and pointlessly against the possibility that the Nazis deliberately killed millions of Jewish people. But one rarely hears them carping that the Nazis were unjustly accused of murdering three million or so Poles.