Here’s Oliver Kamm on the Wilders prosecution. In a west (on both sides of the Atlantic) where a supposed right not to be “offended” increasingly trumps free speech, Mr. Kamm’s final paragraph in particular bears reading:

Insisting on the right to offend religious believers may seem an unfeeling and uncaring doctrine. (The non sequitur that many Muslims in western societies are poor is often brought into the discussion at this point.) But the case for liberty has never been that it protects sensibilities. It is rather that by allowing people’s beliefs to be scrutinised, criticised and — yes — insulted, bad ideas are more likely to be superseded by better ones. Allowing ideas to die in place of their adherents is a mark of a civilised society. It is not hyperbole to say that in the defence of the unlikely figure of Geert Wilders lies also the defence of western civilisation.

Quite right, but let’s not forget that Mr. Wilders has at times shown himself to be, to borrow Kamm’s adjective, an “unlikely” defender of Enlightenment values. Back in 2007 he called for the Koran to be banned in Holland, an idiotic suggestion made even more so by the needlessly insulting comparison Wilders drew between Hitler’s (apparently banned) Mein Kampf and Islam’s holiest book. I’d add, of course, that if indeed it’s true that Mein Kampf is prohibited in the Netherlands, it shouldn’t be. As one Dane wrote in the course of the cartoon crisis, “Ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed. Der er intet men.” (“Free speech is free speech is free speech. There is no but.”).

That’s something that’s being forgotten in Holland, it seems.