Said Frans Zonneveld, the prosecutor in the hate-speech trial of Geert Wilders (in the Netherlands).
As Mr. Zonneveld put it, the case is about a conflict between freedom of speech and the freedom from discrimination. “These are two essential rights in the Dutch rule of law,” he said, “and it’s clear that these two rights are conflicting in this case.”...Speaking about discrimination should be countered by speech against discrimination, and let people decide which is the better viewpoint. The prosecution is relying on the argument that speech about discrimination is discrimination. But anyone who smashes those 2 ideas together is quite simply rejecting the idea of free speech.
“It is a travesty that I have to stand trial because I spoke about fewer Moroccans,” [said Wilders, who refuses to attend the trial]. “Not because they despise all Moroccans or want all Moroccans out of the country, but because they are sick and tired of the nuisance and terror caused by so many Moroccans.... If speaking about this is punishable, then the Netherlands is no longer a free country but a dictatorship.”
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It's been my experience that all Dutch people are redundant.
I think it has something to do with all the chemicals left in the rivers after the Krauts strip out all the food value for beer and wine.
Can you say that the average IQ of US blacks is 86?
The question ought to be why would you say it.
Well, it might be because outcome-based discrimination laws can't work.
So there's a public interest reason to say it, as long as those are the laws.
And even so, it's not hate but just rude.
You can add in fact that good character does not depend on IQ at all. Good character is what you want, not IQ.
> " is quite simply rejecting the idea of free speech"
Um, yeah. Have you not read Marcuse? That's the Left's whole point.
I get really exasperated with old style liberals (I'd put Althouse in that category) who think Leftists are just energetic liberals like them. "We all believe in free speech, of course."
No, you don't all believe in free speech. Free speech is a tool the Left uses to gain power, and then once in power, free speech is brutally suppressed. And the West is right on that edge right now.
Are the laws restricting immigration per 'population group' hate speech? Or only the rationale for them, which must never be mentioned?
USA will be a Muslim country eventually and we're already experiencing reverse assimilation. We're being replaced by Muslims. As Ann Coulter said, more Muslims have been let into our country after 9/11 than all that came before. Stupid and suicidal!
You can't have free speech and political correctness.
I hereby promise to never mention the population-average traits of any 'population group' if we end immigration and disparate-action type stuff. Then we can trust each other to just be Americans. I'll wait.
*disparate impact
*affirmative action
Also, would be better still to allow merit-based immigration without anchor baby or family unification backdoors.
The Dutch are my favorite Europeans. They're strong, consistent, freedom loving and courageous. They are probably the most likely to thumb their noses at the politically correct. They are also the ones who most resent Muslims trying to change their society. My money is on Geert.
"The prosecution is relying on the argument that speech about discrimination is discrimination. But anyone who smashes those 2 ideas together is quite simply rejecting the idea of free speech." Which is the official Dutch position now, applied against a member of parliament no less.
I prefer being redundant in my home town Amsterdam to being highly relevant in Peoria or Centerville.
You know, Geert, there are only two types of people I can't stand in this world: People who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch!
Islam is primarily a political movement the goal of which is world domination and imposition of Sharia Law. Muslims understand this. Ignorant, effete European leaders and American liberals do not.
Dhimmis!
Islamism is making gains.
Islam is an idea. Wherever it goes it causes violence and suffering. Every place it goes to it causes misery. The religion is founded on violence, misogyny, and child rape. It promotes female genital mutilation. It combines marriage and slave markets.
The globalists are trying to replace the recalcitrant European population that refuses to procreate with a much less educated and far more prolific population.
This is yet again the patricians trying to squash the proles.
Geert is a hero like Hirsi Ali.
Islam is a political system pretending to be a religion.
"Islam is a political system pretending to be a religion."
It's a political system and a religion. No pretending by Muslims is involved. It's wishful thinking westerners who do the pretending.
I prefer being redundant in my home town Amsterdam to being highly relevant in Peoria or Centerville.
Peoria is quite pleasant.
I don't get Europeans' desire to suppress their rights to protect a group that, when they have sufficient power, will just suppress those rights further.
And when will the "slavery reparations" brigade speak to Muslims over their faiths selling of slaves to this very day? As I told my kids, Europeans didn't KIDNAP slaves. They bought them....from the same people you can buy them from now.
"Islam is a political system pretending to be a religion."
No, it's an ideology, an economic system, a legal code, and a code of societal conduct, all combined under a religious dogma that demands total obedience from its believers and non-believers alike. It's an all encompassing control mechanism that is incompatible with Western values and society, and it's suicidal for Western nations to tolerate its existence in their midst. BTW, if you want a more dramatic example of fundamentalist Islam's uncompromising repression of all things not Islamic, erect a Christmas tree in your home in Riyadh and invite the local Mutaween over to share some egg nog.
If speaking about this is punishable, then the Netherlands is no longer a free country but a dictatorship.”
Most European countries have been a lot spottier than they care to admit in their support of what Uhmericans call "Free Speech".
A thousand blessings upon whatever Founder Father it was who sat in his bathtub daydreaming, and first came up with the thought "Ya know what that Constitution needs? An explicit declaration of the citizen's rights, that's what!".
You cannot choose to be part of a population group or not; it’s a group that’s decided by birth
In his effort to limit free speech, Mr. Zonneveld has just said something that strikes many Americans as hateful: Mr. Obama is a Muslim.
"I don't get Europeans' desire to suppress their rights to protect a group that, when they have sufficient power, will just suppress those rights further."
This is kind of like surmising the Europeans resent the American predilection toward international grifting by our Secretaries of State. It's dangerous to confuse the desires of the people with the actions of their polititions, over which they have even less control that do we.
This is kind of like surmising the Europeans resent the American predilection toward international grifting by our Secretaries of State. It's dangerous to confuse the desires of the people with the actions of their polititions, over which they have even less control that do we.
True. And it's scary that both Euro and American college kids are idiotic enough to think that the government's ideas are really, really good ones.
"It's an all encompassing control mechanism that is incompatible with Western values and society..."
This explains the admiration western "progressives" have for Islam, and their desire to suppress criticism of it. The desire for control is so strong that "progressives" will take the side of a belief system that very few of them would otherwise embrace. That "all encompassing control" is the part that makes them so giddy. In the end, Islam is another utopian belief system that must be enforced by violence, just like communism.
I wonder, really, how many liberals actually care at all about the values they profess to claim.
How many good liberals would say, "No thanks, I don't want power because power corrupts and leads to waste and intolerance?" None. Every single one of them would sell out immediately, with nary a thought for hypocrisy, as long as they had power to abuse.
People like Eisenhower and our Founding Fathers were and are very unusual. And none on the left, where they explicitly reject morality and accountability. Every liberal middle manager would sell out for a chance to be a Commissar in the Soviet Union: a promotion to power and prestige at the cost of millions of suffering people.
History amply bears this out.
--Vance
Hate speech laws necessarily require the rejection of free speech. The fact that the law exists at all is sufficient evidence that the Dutch, or at least the Dutch government, do not value it.
So, you can judge people by the "color of their skin", but not by the "content of their character" including principles?
That's the Pro-Choice (i.e. selective and opportunistic, unprincipled and unpredictable) argument used to rationalize [class] diversity (e.g. institutional racism, sexism), and others doctrines of selective exclusion (e.g. selective-child).
It's Europe. They talk about free speech but they don't really value it. We see that over and over and over.
Europe even at its best is Louis XIV and Napoleon and Bismarck.
The US is Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.
"Geert is a hero like Hirsi Ali."
Yes, and where is Ayaan Hirsi Ali today?
My prediction is that "they" will take enough shots at Wilders that one of them will find its mark.
Vance,
"I wonder, really, how many liberals actually care at all about the values they profess to claim. "
Hardly any. See: Fen's Law.
"Yes, and where is Ayaan Hirsi Ali today? "
Married to Niall Ferguson, and living the high life at Oxford, Cambridge (USA) and Palo Alto.
"...it’s a group that’s decided by birth, so it’s a whole different matter."
By birth! Wow, just wow. And this is the representative of the state upholding the law talking. What other belief systems will we decide are genetic? Oh, there was that Jewish thing espoused at one time by Holland's eastern neghbors, but we don't talk about them any more.
I just hope that he's the victim of a bad translation.
That's my point: as a (barely, and maybe not for long) well-protected US citizen, and nowhere near The Netherlands.
The Euros don't really have free speech any more than they have an individual right to carry a firearm. Funny how those two either go together, or they do not go at all.
Boldly declared speech is political authority in action. The Founders that wrote that Terrible Constitution thingee invented a separation of powers. The Euros guys don't think that way. They worship their divine Right Monarchy or its quasi substitute.
People who have dedicated themselves to educating the West about Islam in a critical way are referred to "anti-Muslim extremists."
In contrast, when Muslims resort to violence they are referred to as not acting as Muslims, but as "extremists."
IOW, just being critical of Islam is considered a violent act equivalent to mass murder and terrorism.
Strange, isn't it?
I can't stand the Dutch. They're cheaper than the Scots and their language is hideous.
Actually, they're ok. Just exercising my freedom of speech while I still have it.
You cannot choose to be part of a population group or not; it’s a group that’s decided by birth...
No so for Richard Hernandez/Eva Tiamat Medusa.
Ann has inadvertently described most college administrators today. They think free speech is something that only applies when it isn't needed.
Is speech about sexual interactions with women still sexual assault if you are a Republican?
It is especially difficult to not be in a "population group" if the penalty for exit (and attempted exit) is death at the hands of persons in such a "population group" or in the more liberal places, imprisonment. Yep. A person is born into that, alright. It's just about immutable.
The prosecutor should be disbarred and banned from ever working in government again.
Kirk Parker said...
Yes, and where is Ayaan Hirsi Ali today?
On SPLC's "Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists".
I agree with your conclusion, but I must admit that this is the first argument I've seen on prohibiting free speech on an issue that makes some sense. It's relatively easily enforceable without a huge overbreadth problem, and synchs nicely with our general discrimination jurisprudence. Again, I'm not advocating for it--but I can see its appeal.
I agree with your conclusion, but I must admit that this is the first argument I've seen on prohibiting free speech on an issue that makes some sense. It's relatively easily enforceable without a huge overbreadth problem, and synchs nicely with our general discrimination jurisprudence. Again, I'm not advocating for it--but I can see its appeal.
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