Contrary to some of the bad press it has received recently, Belgium is, in its melancholy and rain-sodden way, a strangely alluring country (listen to Jacques Brel’s Le Plat Pays if you doubt me), but the ways of the appalling Belgian establishment make it all too appropriate that the country should be the epicenter of the EU, a body that is increasingly intolerant of dissent.

Here’s a story from the London Guardian on Belgium’s attempts to deal with the challenge posed by the Vlaams Blok, a Flemish nationalist party on the far right. The Blok is very far from being a likeable organization, to put it mildly, but the way to deal with such parties is through debate, argument and the ballot box. That’s how democracy works.

Not all Belgians agree, apparently. Some of them tried another tack – they took the Blok to court.

And now it’s backfired. Idiots.