I’ve just been lucky enough to hear Mark Steyn speaking on what may lie ahead for the West. Well, lucky is not exactly the word. The talk was often hilarious, but it was ultimately as depressing as it was brilliant.

And then I go back to the office to read this in the Daily Telegraph:

Geert Wilders, the far-Right Dutch MP will face trial on charges of incited hatred and discriminations against Muslims, after a judge rejected a request to dismiss the case…Mr Wilders has argued that he is exercising his freedom of speech when he criticises Islam and had won the right last month to seek a dismissal of the case. But reading out the ruling on Wednesday, presiding judge Marcel van Oosten said the case would go ahead. He rejected most of the defence’s objections such as its questioning of the court’s authority to hear the case in the first place and of the way that the prosecutors had pursued the trial.

Just another reminder that freedom of speech does not seem to count for quite so much these days in the Netherlands.