"I don't hate Muslims. I hate Islam."
A TV addict with bleached hair who adores Maggie Thatcher and prefers kebabs to hamburgers, Geert Wilders has got nothing against Muslims. He just hates Islam. Or so he says. 'Islam is not a religion, it's an ideology,' says Wilders, a lanky Roman Catholic right-winger, 'the ideology of a retarded culture.'
The Dutch politician, who sees himself as heir to a recent string of assassinated or hounded mavericks who have turned Holland upside down, has been doing a crash course in Koranic study. Likening the Islamic sacred text to Hitler's Mein Kampf, he wants the 'fascist Koran' outlawed in Holland, the constitution rewritten to make that possible, all immigration from Muslim countries halted, Muslim immigrants paid to leave and all Muslim 'criminals' stripped of Dutch citizenship and deported 'back where they came from'. But he has nothing against Muslims. 'I have a problem with Islamic tradition, culture, ideology. Not with Muslim people.'
I'm baffled for an answer. As an old-fashioned American with isolationist impulses, Wilders' solutions seem to make sense. But I recall that Hitler's solutions to a similarly perceived problem resulted in genocide.
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It's so simple - just enforce the laws. If the laws are reasonably OK, then it really doesn't matter if your politicians are Paul Reveres or Hitlers. But we are lucky in this country in that politicians here hold a status somewhat above pond scum but below asphalt pavement. So the really outrageous demagogues get weeded out.
Hillary, McCain, etc. OK. Guys who walk on water like Obama - maybe not OK. But then the real election fireworks have not really begun. We ain't seen nothin' yet.
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