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Geert Wilders made a film, and for that he’s facing jail time.
No issue in this day and age so vexes Europeans as the issue of immigration, specifically Islamic immigration. Europe’s fertility rates among its native population are catastrophically low, and this means there is a shortage of young people in Europe, and an overabundance of elderly people. In short, Europe has more and more old people drawing benefits off its welfare systems, and fewer and fewer young workers to tax to sustain it. Europe has more and more people leaving the workplace, and fewer and fewer of its native born coming in to take their places. To supplement these numbers Europe has turned to the innumerable throngs of poor living in Muslim countries looking for better economic opportunity and better living conditions. In short, Europe stopped making people, so now they import them. And now their struggling with some very weighty issues.
Geert Wilders made a film, and it told a perspective on these issues.
Europe has some pretty deep stakes in its immigration issue. On the one hand, if they don’t shore up numbers, no matter what, then demographics will cause the collapse of Europe’s social states. They’ll drive themselves into bankruptcy trying to keep up, renege on their commitments to their elderly, and watch as everything collapses into financial chaos. The very way of life Europeans and Europe’s governments have grown accustomed to needs these young people. It’s an issue of life or death economically. On the other hand, simple math explains another reality. If your people are old, and you supply young people from another country, and another culture, your culture is slated for extinction. Your people are soon to be the minority, a helpless vulnerable dependency on a new people, with different values, traditions, and customs. You will see yourself watch the twilight and demise of your culture, and leave it to the mercy of a new people who will have their own way. It is a traumatic and tumultuous experience for a society to endure. It’s an issue of life or death culturally.
Geert Wilders made a film, and he said some things people didn’t like.
Europe has had some very different strategies in dealing with their immigrant populations. Unlike the US, which stresses assimilation, Europe stresses cultural preservation. This has led many in Europe to be very hostile to criticism of other cultures, no matter the concepts in question, no matter how antithetical to western values they may be, all in the name of “tolerance.” At the same time, many who have come to Europe have brought some very pernicious attitudes and behaviors along with them. In the west, we have allowed any religion to be depicted, criticized, mocked, and even praised by any person of any faith living within our borders. In the Muslim world this has not been the case. Unfortunately, a very ugly manifestation of the choice of some not to divest themselves of the values of the Muslim world came to the Netherlands when on November 2, 2004, a Muslim immigrant murdered director Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh had directed a film critical of the treatment of women in Islam. Geert Wilders gave voice to some sentiments not totally unheard of in the Netherlands. He said that Islamic immigration should be halted. For saying this he too became the target of death threats, and was forced to live with 24 hour police protection. This is something that just doesn’t happen in America. We criticize religion. We make asinine suggestions about immigration. We do this, and we don’t have to live in fear behind bodyguards. Geert Wilders did what any American could do tomorrow, and for that he had to live in fear for his life. So, Geert Wilders did something.
Geert Wilders made a film, and he had some unkind things to say about Islam.
Geert Wilders film Fitna is fairly simple in presentation. It juxtaposes phrases from the Koran which seem to call for violence against actual images of violence in the world that has been carried out by Islamic extremists. In the end Wilders’ most inflammatory sentiments are largely that he shows gasp pictures of mosques that have been built in the Netherlands and advocates a cessation of more Islamic immigration to the Netherlands. Never does he advocate violence, criminal behavior, or victimization of Muslims living in the Netherlands. His film isn’t very tolerant, broad-minded, or politically correct. Were this the United States he’d just be lumped in as a nutjob with Tom Tancredo and we’d move on with our day.
Geert Wilders made a film, and now he faces prosecution for his insensitive opinions.
In January the Amsterdam appeals court ordered Geert Wilders tried for “making anti-Islamic statements.” Of course, the veil of these charges are that what he said was tantamount to “hate speech.” Had Wilders advocated criminal behavior? No. The transgression in his short, cheaply produced, boring film was that “According to the Court of Appeal most statements are insulting as well since these statements substantially harm the religious esteem of the Islamic worshippers. According to the Court of Appeal Wilders has indeed insulted the Islamic worshippers themselves by affecting the symbols of the Islamic belief as well.” So that’s it? The reason Wilders could potentially face 2 years in jail is that he insulted Muslims. Here in America Bill Maher insulted religions of every stripe. Today he is free. His right to express his contempt for religion is sacrosanct. In the Netherlands it takes a back bench to tolerance.
Geert Wilders made a film, and I watched it.
I’m glad I live in a country where I have the freedom to think for myself. I’m glad I live in a country where the freedom to form one’s own opinion about another, to express it, and to let others hear you out is not a crime against a great golden calf of tolerance. In the Netherlands they have sided with nothing short of thought control. Convicting Wilders is not simply a statement that he should not be allowed to say what he said, it is a statement that his perspective should not be heard. Convicting Wilders does not serve to enhance debate, it serves to remove the possibility of hearing that perspective. Convicting Wilders does not elevate freedom, it creates a crude form of thought corporatism where our right to our opinions applies only to those sanctioned by the government. It inverts the basic dynamic of democracy by which we the people, through a broad forum of ideas, some bad, some good, decide what sort of society we want to have and elect a government that enacts it. Instead it creates a sad model all too familiar to history where government is the arbiter of society, and the people are a helpless cog pushed along by the machinations from above.
I watched Geert Wilders film, and I disagreed with it.
It is the strength of a society that it trusts its people to say what they please, hear what they want, and decide for themselves. I watched Fitna. I didn’t agree with Fitna. I would love to sit down with Geert Wilders and talk with him about the great success we’ve seen with America’s Muslim immigrants. I would love to show him old school friends, co-workers, perfectly normal everyday Americans that I knew growing up in the Detroit area. I would love talk with Geert Wilders about another way that exists between compartmentalized European immigration that serves to keep separate and distinct people of another culture, and the closed-door fear of the other that he has embraced in his film. I would love to have that discussion, but I can’t, because in the Netherlands it is a crime for Geert Wilders to have his opinion. And, in so doing, the Netherlands has shut down the debate rather than let the people make that choice for themselves. The freedom to say some things that might make some people angry was deemed too dangerous, the fear that the people might not see reason, too palpable for the government to allow. In free democratic societies it should be the people who don’t trust the government with power, not the government that doesn’t trust the people with freedom and ideas.
I watched Geert Wilders film, and so should you.
We should never take for granted in America that we have a nearly limitless right to express our opinions and debate issues of fundamental importance to our society. We should, when Bill Maher spouts his diatribe about religion, have a little spot of pride in all our hearts that Mr. Maher is as free to insult Islam as he is to insult any other religion. Europeans wax high and mighty about how superior their systems are to ours, but one immutable fact remains; Bill Maher will never see a day in court for insulting religion, Geert Wilders may spend two years in jail over it. The battle for our freedoms is an ongoing one even in the west, where at the drop of a hat your right to think what you will and speak your mind can be stripped from you in the name of any cause du jour. So as an American you should watch this film. Watch it, take it all in, and form your own opinion on it, because that is your God-given right as an American where we still value our rights. Geert Wilders made a film, a cheaply made, shoddily executed film, but it may be the most costly film ever made, because it cost the Dutch their right to think for themselves.
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