'Our Culture Is Better' [Geert Wilders]

WSJ ^ | November, 29, 2008 | JAMES TARANTO

[yoe]

By his own description, Geert Wilders is not a typical Dutch politician. "We are a country of consensus," he tells me on a recent Saturday morning at his midtown Manhattan hotel. "I hate consensus. I like confrontation. I am not a consensus politician. . . . This is something that is really very un-Dutch."

Yet the 45-year-old Mr. Wilders says he is the most famous politician in the Netherlands: "Everybody knows me. . . . There is no other politician -- not even the prime minister -- who is as well-known. . . . People hate me, or they love me. There's nothing in between. There is no gray area."

To his admirers, Mr. Wilders is a champion of Western values on a continent that has lost confidence in them. To his detractors, he is an anti-Islamic provocateur. Both sides have a point.

In March, Mr. Wilders released a short film called "Fitna," a harsh treatment of Islam that begins by interspersing inflammatory Quran passages with newspaper and TV clips depicting threats and acts of violent jihad. The second half of the film, titled "The Netherlands Under the Spell of Islam," warns that Holland's growing Muslim population -- which more than doubled between 1990 and 2004, to 944,000, some 5.8% of the populace -- poses a threat to the country's traditional liberal values. Under the heading, "The Netherlands in the future?!" it shows brutal images from Muslim countries: men being hanged for homosexuality, a beheaded woman, another woman apparently undergoing genital mutilation.

Making such a film, Mr. Wilders knew, was a dangerous act. In November 2004, Theo van Gogh was assassinated on an Amsterdam street in retaliation for directing a film called "Submission" about Islam's treatment of women. The killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, left a letter on van Gogh's……………

[yoe]

Freedom of speech is priceless whether it be religion or opinion...those who want to silence Talk Radio for in...................

[goldstategop]

I don't think James Taranto gets it. We have every right to demand minorities give up beliefs that run counter to the values of our Judeo-Christian culture. That is the price of their living among us. If they don't like it, they are free to move to live in countries where they can believe in a totalitarian ideology. They have no right to impose it upon us and ask us to give up our liberal beliefs and the freedom we enjoy in order to make them feel comfortable here.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[hinckley buzzard]

Exactly.

Wilders is a dissident hero of western civilization, much the same role as Solshenitzyn played in the USSR. Yet he is nothing but an oddity to these media wannabes.

[Islander7]

We have every right to demand minorities give up beliefs that run counter to the values of our Judeo-Christian culture.

...and we have every right to demand that Islamic countries allow Christians to live peacefully in their countries. Otherwise, Muslims should not have the same privileges in western societies.

[STONEWALLS]

...his culture is better because it is anglo-european/judeo-christian....sadly, that culture only represents about 13% of the global population these days...the most endangered species on the earth is the white man.

[yoe]

Wilders has a huge following not to mention his colleague, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.....(here is the film)

Americans have their "Wilder & Ali" in Talk Radio...freedom of speech telling the other side or sides of left opinion and deeds.

[FreeRadical]

As he sees it, the West suffers from an excess of toleration for those who do not share its tradition of tolerance. "We believe that -- 'we' means the political elite -- that all cultures are equal," he says. "I believe this is the biggest disease today facing Europe. . . . We should wake up and tell ourselves: You're not a xenophobe, you're not a racist, you're not a crazy guy if you say, 'My culture is better than yours.' A culture based on Christianity, Judaism, humanism is better. Look at how we treat women, look at how we treat apostates, look at how we go with the separation of church and state. I can give you 500 examples why our culture is better."

Amen, Amen, a thousand times Amen. Dear Lord, I pray you give us more leaders with courage to say this, and, more importantly, that you give us people bright enough to live up to actually being better.

[goldstategop]

Exactly. My point is tolerance is not a one way street. If Muslims are not prepared to grant equal rights to religious minorities living among them, we have no obligation to allow them to use our democratic freedoms to subvert the very basis of our society. Taranto overlooks the point that our secular rules of civilized behavior are really rooted in Judeo-Christian concepts of right and wrong. Muslims are welcome to live here as long as they accept those concepts. When they reject them, they should be removed from the West.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[lilylangtree]

“Excess of toleration” is killing us.

[goldstategop]

All cultures, James Taranto, are NOT created equal. That is the liberal shibboleth, the great myth of multiculturalism, that is so destructive of the evident superiority of Western culture and the conviction our values and way of life are the best. Geert Wilders is one of the few politicians courageous enough to defend them at a time when the Western elite has lost faith in them.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[goldstategop]

Toleration is wonderful. But suicidal toleration is utter folly.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[goldstategop]

Its evident to those who know that without the West, the entire world today, would like what we have witnessed in the past few days in Mumbai, be a killing field. It is only the West has that managed to keep Islamic barbarism contained.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Longtom]

Tolerance is the virtue of believing in nothing.

[goldstategop]

That's the liberal view of tolerance in a nutshell. If all cultures are equal, then there are no values worth believing in.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Cacique]

btt

[wastedyears]

FITNA was the reason I bought my Kabar.

[Clemenza]

Saul Bellow, who was far from being a conservative, was attacked for saying something similar about 15 years ago.

[Westbrook]

From the article:

> a harsh treatment of Islam

I stopped reading right there.

There is no treatment harsh ENOUGH for Islam!

May it be scrubbed from the planet.

[rmlew]

Mr. Wilders is right to call for a vigilant defense of liberal principles. A society has a right, indeed a duty, to require that religious minorities comply with secular rules of civilized behavior. But to demand that they renounce their religious identity and holy books is itself an affront to liberal principles.
AS a liberal, Mr. Taranto is unable to ask the simple of whether the West can tolerate a religion that is not only illiberal, but which seeks our conquest. He is unable to see the problem with the Muslim euivalent of Mensheviks who seek peaceful and even demoratic Islamicization as opposed to the Muslim Bolsheviks, who seek conquest or terrorizing into submission. Finally, as a liberal, Taranto cannot undermstand that a Muslim Europe can no longer be European any more than Muslim Anatolia is the Byzantine Empire.

[Fishrrman]

“Taranto overlooks the point that our secular rules of civilized behavior are really rooted in Judeo-Christian concepts of right and wrong. Muslims are welcome to live here as long as they accept those concepts. When they reject them, they should be removed from the West”

So long as they _remain_ Islamic, Muslims will NEVER “accept” those “concepts”.

What, then, becomes the only solution for we of the West?

- John