Inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to appear at speak at a top American university was never going to go down well. Inviting him to speak at Columbia University, in New York City, was the height of stupidity.

That’s the same New York City that counts amongst its inhabitants almost two million Jews that Ahmadinejad wants to wipe off the map, and was the target for the 9/11 terror attacks that Ahmadinejad has asserted was perpetrated by the US government.

But, just to make sure he goes home even more unpopular than he arrived, he pushed the boat out that extra bit further. Other than decadent Americans and conspiratorial Jews, I wonder who else the Iranian President hates. Oh, yeah…

In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who told you that we have it.

The evil tyrannical dictator doth protest too much. Or, if you’re more Simpsons than Shakespeare: “Nice man. I wonder if he’s gay.”

It came as a response to a question regarding the execution of Iranians - in total, 200 this year alone - amongst whom were homosexuals, who may or may not (or, put another way, were) executed for being gay.

Now, I don’t know who the heck taught young Mahmoud to debate in school, but he (or she, but it’s Iran, so he, otherwise she’d be stoned to death) should have told him never to accept the premise of an opposing argument. So, Mahmoud, strapped to argue that homosexuals aren’t stoned to death for the way they’re born, decided to attack the premise: by arguing that homosexuality doesn’t exist in Iran.

Yeah, I’m sure the decadent Western gay epidemic hasn’t spread to Iran. After so fully failing to understand history and geography, Ahmadinejad has decided that he would be even cooler if he flunked science, too. Oh, wait, that already happened. Boy, little Mahmoud must have been the coolest kid in the playground.

Having a world leaders conference at Columbia was a good idea. The best and most important universities in the world - a group to which UCL belongs - deserve to host the best and most important speakers. Sadly, Ahmadinejad was clearly not the best speaker, nor would he be particularly important were it not for the fact he’s making nuclear bombs behind the bike shed.

Rewarding him for his crimes, and those of his predecessors and compatriots, by giving his ideas the oxygen of publicity, is not acceptable. Except, of course, when his ideas are so f***ing stupid, that we can laugh at them, and hope the oxygen just allows that kid to burn up before he grows up to do something really stupid. Oh…

For this one day of the year, no introduction is needed. Few dates stick in the memory as solidly as that September 11th, which will go down as one of the darkest days in modern human history. 2,974 innocent people, along with their 19 barbaric murderers, died in the attacks on New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, changing fundamentally the way that we live our lives.

11 September 1609 was a far quieter day, but no less significant in the history of New York City. On that day, the English sea explorer Henry Hudson sailed his ship, the Halve Maen, into what is now New York harbour, discovering it for the Dutch East India Company. Five years later, the colony of New Netherland was founded, followed by the foundation of New Amsterdam - now New York City - in 1625.

Like the Dutch homeland, then fighting for its independence from the theocratic Habsburgs, the city was a beacon of liberty in an otherwise deeply oppressive world. The settlers were bound by the colony’s charter to respect freedom of religion and conscience, to a tolerable degree of taxation and government intrusion into the people’s lives.

The importance of this tradition was proven in 1664, when King Charles II invaded New Netherland, home to thousands of dissidents that had fled from religious persecution at the hands of the Stuarts and the Cromwells alike, seeking to annex it into New England. The Dutch company directors refused to defend the colony, arguing to the (conservative) Director-General Pieter Stuyvesant:

We are in hopes that as the English (in New Netherland) have removed mostly from old England for the causes aforesaid, they will not give us henceforth so much trouble, but prefer to live free under us at peace with their consciences than to risk getting rid of our authority and then falling again under a government from which they had formerly fled.

The English commander recognised the Dutch administrators’ resolution, and promised the Dutch commander that the people could “keep and enjoy the liberty of their consciences in religion”, which Stuyvesant accepted without argument. And thus did what would become the world’s second-greatest city pass into the hands of England, and afterwards Great Britain, in whose hands it remained until its independence as part of the United States a century later.

The inhabitants refused to bow to authoritarian demands by the new administration, but equally had refused to grant their previous Dutch masters the right to ride rough-shod over the rights, which they had won from the Spanish only after eighty years of war. In true reflection of their status as servants of the people, and defenders of their rights, the government acquiesced. The actions of the Dutch government in the 17th century were nothing short of heroic, showing restraint and poise in crisis to best serve their citizens’ interests, even if it meant losing national pride.

The same principles can just as readily be applied today. Our governments, in their haste to ‘defend’ us from future terrorist atrocities, commit atrocious crimes against their own people’s civil liberties. They arrest us without cause, and detain us without trial. They try us behind open doors, and do so without a jury of our peers. They force us to bear identity cards, and track us with a national database. If the government truly wished to do justice to the memories of the 2,974 innocent innocents that died in 2001, they would should the same respect, and the same decorous and liberal principle that were displayed by the Dutch governors of New Amsterdam.

By any measure, Michael Bloomberg is a political rarity. The Mayor of New York is a prominent Republican that holds (relatively) classical liberal views on both economic and social issues: supporting laissez-faire economics over dirigisme, abortion rights over body fascism, and gay marriage rights over homophobia. Sadly for libertarians, this is a position that doesn’t fit well into the intellectually-stunted dichotomy of American politics, in which economic individualists are usually social statists, and vice versa.

Bloomberg’s uncomfortable compartmentalising into the US system is reflected in his political affiliation; started life as a Democrat, before switching parties in 2001 for purely political reasons (to avoid a tricky primary race in city in which Democrat candidates are ten-a-penny). On Wednesday, he completed the set, left the Republican Party, and declared himself an independent.

The mayor’s decision was made with only one date in mind: 4 November 2008, the day of the next Presidential election. The Bloomberg camp has denied this, but that’s par for the course, similar to a football club’s board giving its manager a vote of confidence (Barack Obama, anyone?). In American politics, one has to go a long way before “no” means “no”, and Bloomberg is not about to make such a statement.

The reason the two main parties matter so much (despite the notoriously weak whip system) is because American politics is dominated by money, and parties bring in the dollars like no-one else. However, as a self-made multi-billionaire, Bloomberg is also one of few politicians to have successfully financed his own campaign in its entirety. In 2001, he spent $73m on the mayoral election - which works out at $50 per vote cast and at over five times what his Democratic opponent could muster. He repeated the feat in 2005. In short, Bloomberg can afford to run as an independent, so why shouldn’t he?

As the not-so-invisible primaries continue to roll, the Republicans and Democrats will start to swiftboat each other, giving Bloomberg the perfect chance to establish his national credentials and build up his base. It comes as Rudy Giuliani has suffered a series of setbacks, possibly allowing Bloomberg to finally step out of the political shadow of his mayoral predecessor.

Ideologically, independence from the straitjackets of the economically-illiberal Democrats and socially-illiberal Republicans makes sense. Financially, it’s not exactly an advantage, but it’s not a major disadvantage to a man worth $5.5bn. Politically, it’s perfect. Despite the denials of his intention to run, Bloomberg’s declaration of independence is too convenient. In fact, the only thing amiss is the date; Bloomberg could have done far worse than to wait two weeks. When better than to issue his Declaration of Independence, and his intention to become the first independent President since George Washington than on July 4th?