A new Socrates? I might believe a new Hipparchus, but not a new Socrates.
From AKI (thanks to all who sent this in):
Tehran, 20 Sept. (AKI) – A research centre run by the office of the president of Iran has released a 15-page document in which they define President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the “Socrates of the Third Millennium”.
The document has been released just days before Ahmadinejad is due to visit New York. The Iranian president will arrive in the city on Sunday to address the United Nations General Assembly.
In the document, various speeches and letters written by the Iranian president are analysed and it concludes that “Ahmadinejad reasons and discusses exactly as Socrates did in ancient Greece, by disarming other speakers and through his sharp reasoning.”
“It’s mainly the irony used by the president in his dialogue with foreigners,” said the document refering to letters Ahmadinejad had written to Pope Benedict XVI, US president George Bush and German president Angela Merkel.
Yes, those letters were heavy with irony, although I don’t think they were in the way the Socratic Thug-In-Chief probably intended.