are continuing to reinvent the people’s democracy: Belgium declares major political party a criminal organization because it’s not PC enough. Meawhile, the English vindicate their reputation for free speech, fair play and proper conduct by throwing trash and threatening with imprisonment the head of a major party of another European state, because he might say something that upsets people.
The issue at hand in
The issue at hand in Belgium is considerably more complex than Stephen Pollard makes it out to be.
In fact, as far as I can see, he seems to have taken most of his article almost verbatim from the party in question’s own website at http://www.flemishRepublic.org.
Some clarifications: the party isn’t banned, it’s three organisations that surrounded the party between (I think) 1997 and 2001. Those organizations were not banned because they weren’t PC enough, they were banned because they manifestly, openly and repeatedly violated the law.
Stephen Pollard has closed the comment facility and removed the comments from the two entries he posted on the issue, by the way.
Yay for free debate! 🙂
Mr. Vuijlsteke writes, in his
Mr. Vuijlsteke writes, in his log entry of 26 April (“Goeie help”):
“Het hangt het er natuurlijk van af wat ‘conservatief’ is. Zeker sinds 1987 heeft dat woord bij ons een negatieve connotatie, waardoor geen enkele partije zichzelf nog conservatief noemt, maar dat wil niet zeggen dat er geen conservatieve partijen meer zijn. Voor mij persoonlijk, en zonder negatief oordeel overigens, zijn CD&V-NVA en VLD conservatieve partijen.” ( http://blog.zog.org/2004/04/goeie_help.html )
What happened in Belgium in 1987 that created this situation where “no party is willing to call itself conservative”?
When the Vlaams Blok had
When the Vlaams Blok had its first major electoral success, the other political parties fell over themselves condeming them and *all* they stood for.
The Flemish to the North are somewhat more “conservative” (traditionally the Christian Democrats are the largest party) than the Walloons to the South (with a Social Democrat majority), and when you realise about six governments need to be formed at various state and federal levels, you can see there’s quite some room for political games here.
So the moment any party (especially a Flemish party) dares to say there’s some merit to any of the VB’s positions, other parties (espeically the Walloons) tend to jump up and accuse them of either padering to the VB or to their voters.
Which means that for years now it has been impossible to have a serious debate about things like crime, immigration, and the relation between the two.
Oh yes, about Islam: just
Oh yes, about Islam: just as with the Bible, you can find justification for just about anything anything in there—especially if you interpret those documents both over a thousand years old, with today’s sensibilities.
Just like the US it’s inciting hatred/violence that’s forbidden in Belgium, which obviously has freedom of religion and expression just like the US has.
If the law we have is a safeguard against hate crime, against church burning, against violence against abortion activists or doctors, then that’s a price I’m more than willing to pay.
Another thing: I live in Fladers, roughly spoken the northern half of Belgium. There are six million inhabitants in Flanders. We have at least six independent high-quality newspapers, with political opinions ranging from left to right. We have TV stations from perhaps ten different countries. I’d be very hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t speak at least three languages.
All that is a far greater guarantee for free speech and freedom of opinion than any law could ever give you.
[erm, sorry about this, meant
[erm, sorry about this, meant to react to a different site, so feel free to delete. The other site is http://www.rationalexplications.com/blog/archives/000238.html —]
Is it really the existence
Is it really the existence (until now) of one political party that has suppressed discussion of immigration in Belgium? Here in America we don’t have any discussion of immigration either. Also, since people in Belgium speak all those languages and watch TV from 10 countries it’s not clear why fear and hatred of Vlaams Blok would be so decisive. If it was just that one contingent factor that suppressed discussion in Belgium, why wouldn’t the discussion be going on in neighboring countries, which have the same immigration situation as Belgium but no Vlaams Bloc, and so be immediately available to the Belgians?
“The Fulford File,” James Fulford’s
“The Fulford File,” James Fulford’s semi-regular feature at http://www.Vdare.com , also has an extremely interesting discussion of this affair today:
http://vdare.com/fulford/flemings.htm#pollard
What happened in Belgium is very, very serious — assuming the accounts of it which we’ve been getting have been accurate. The other side — the left — appears simply unable to grasp the concept of allowing free expression of ideas (they who are constantly yapping about “tolerance”!). One can only wonder in drop-jawed astonishment what they can possibly think of the word “totalitarian.” What must be their concept of that word’s meaning?
The left just dumbly pushes, and pushes, and pushes…
Why the Vlaams Blok party
Why the Vlaams Blok party in Belgium is it condemned to be disbanded and will (for the next five years) all of their actual members be forbidden to be re-elected again? Is it secession or racism?
In a normal country, I suppose most left-wingers would like to abolish their local far right European party, but in Belgium there is the additional unison support of 38% French-speakers for that project, because these people get each year between 5,2 billion to maximum 11 billion (according to the source) Euro of financial transfers under circumstances that are shrouded in mystery and deceit
Mr. Van Beek’s letter is
Mr. Van Beek’s letter is a stark reminder of exactly how unacceptable is that which has just happened in Belgium, a great country (yes, make no mistake: though small, Belgium is great, with a great history, greater even than most Belgians themselves appreciate — and it happens to be a very important country in today’s Europe): the leftists, as they themselves freely, brazenly admit, went from judge to judge with their complaint until they found one willing to outlaw a legitimate political party, one with significant parliamentary representation. This is very grave — far graver than the Pim Fortuyn assassination, grave as that was.
If I know Flanders and the Flemings — and I think I do — this complete and utter outrage will not be taken lying down and those on the left who thought they were so clever to have pulled it off will end up the losers. But that doesn’t change the fact that there is lots of very tough slogging ahead for Flemish patriots.
As for “racism,” it’s not “racist” to wish to preserve one’s race, language, and ethnoculture from deliberately-planned extinction at the hands of ethnic, political, or religious enemies or uncaring, uneducated, uncultivated, rootless, and often criminal (in both the moral AND legal senses) capitalists. If it’s “racist” to wish that, then the word “racist” is meaningless — exactly as is most of the left’s other claptrap.
The Belgian royal family are French speakers among themselves, I believe, so the possibility of their principled intervention in this disastrous affair is probably too much to hope for. In a story that deserves to be far better known (it’s little known even in Belgium), Baldwin, the late king, once refused to sign a bill legalizing abortion, indicating he was prepared to abdicate the throne if necessary but he could not in good conscience approve of abortion. This was one of the greatest gestures of any European monarch of the past few centuries, yet such were Baldwin’s integrity and dignity that it was completely without fanfare of any kind. His little brother Albert, who sits on the throne now, is not quite up to Baldwin’s standard, I don’t believe.
Might I ask Mr. Vuijlsteke
Might I ask Mr. Vuijlsteke and Mr. Van Beek — and any other Flemings, or any Walloons or Eastern Canton Belgian Germans, who may read this — if the possibility of prosecution in Belgium for “hate speech” or “incitement to racial hatred” keeps them from expressing themselves fully in any way, here at this web-site? (If it does, they must of course know about using pen names for posting comments at forums such as this one.) (Mr. Vuijlsteke wrote, for example, that “…for years now it has been impossible to have a serious debate [in Belgium] about things like crime, immigration, and the relation between the two.”)
Looking on Google.com for articles
Looking on Google.com for articles about King Baldwin’s refusal to sign a bill legalizing abortion in Catholic Belgium — a bill which the Belgian parliament had already passed, which the King was strictly obligated also to sign, as a formality — I could find only the three completely inadequate references below. Baldwin’s absolutely firm refusal to sign the bill — a refusal based on his unshakable belief that abortion was murder of the unborn — had the potential to create an extremely serious parliamentary, governmental, and royal crisis. Not signing meant the shocking; meant the unthinkable; meant the unprecedented: he would have to abdicate his throne. Understanding full well the stark implication of his stance, he indicated unhesitatingly his intention to do exactly that — he solemnly indicated he would give up the throne and not sign the bill. When they saw their King absolutely would not budge, half-frantic ministers, royal advisers, legal experts, and government officials finally concocted a way based on some very obscure loophole or other in some statute or tradition or whatever, by means of which the King could both avoid signing the bill and not have to abdicate the throne. This principled stand on protection of the unborn which was taken calmly, quietly, and without fanfare by King Baldwin was in my opinion the greatest, noblest gesture of any European monarch certainly in the 20th century and I’d say in the past few centuries. That almost no one knows it happened is something that should be rectified: all the world remembers how King Edward volunteered to give up his throne in order to marry twice-divorced fortune-hunting commoner Wallis Simpson, but the gesture of the king who volunteered to give up his throne in order to defend the lives of the unborn is consigned to oblivion. Below are the only references to this great gesture of a great, noble Catholic king that I could find on google:
_______________________________________________________________________
16. We may call to mind the poignant gesture of King Beaudoin, who chose to lay down his crown rather than sign the law of his country’s parliament concerning abortion[…].
[Scroll all the way down — it’s the last footnote at the bottom of a very long page.]
http://www.secondspring.co.uk/archive/ouellet2.htm
EN BELGIQUE: VOTE DE LA LOI BELGE VISANT
baldwin is paedophile?
hello,ms french press and the guardian accuses to king baudoin to be a paedophilous and blame him by scandal from children`s rapes and killings,what is your opinion about it?.
As far as I know there’s no evidence Baldwin was a homosexual
André writes,
“Baldwin is a paedophile? Hello, Mysterious Stranger. The French press and The Guardian accuse King Baudouin of being a paedophile and blame him for the scandal of children’s rapes and killings. What is your opinion about it?”
I’m not the Turnabout correspondent André is addressing, but let me say the following purely from memory, without having googled the subject at all (I’ll google it after I post this, once I can find some anti-nausea medicine to swallow first). I remember during the 70s (I lived in Belgium then and King Baldwin sat on the throne, and a good, noble king he was, with a good, noble queen by his side) a radical left-wing homosexual and homosexual-activist third-rate French novelist named Roger Peyrefitte (I hope I’m spelling it right—or on second thought, I don’t give a damn) came out with a book in which he claimed King Baldwin, the Pope, and a number of high officials in the Vatican whom he named, as I recall, were homosexuals or had had homosexual liaisons in their youth when they were seminary students or something. He claimed he had accounts from old priests who had first-hand knowledge of homosexual affairs on the part of the Pope when he was a young priest somewhere. Peyrefitte was an open homosexual of the bitchy variety and somewhat on in years at that point—he was not a young man—who was clearly malcontented, partly because of his lack of success as a writer (he wasn’t an unknown, but he’d had only mediocre success, and in fact was an extremely mediocre writer), partly because he was eclipsed in celebrity by a brother, I think it was, who was prominent in French politics (whose first name escapes me—Alain, maybe?). When this hack writer’s book came out it created a mild to moderate stir—not a huge stir—and those who paid it any attention were mainly toward the left of the political spectrum. Needless to say, no royal spokesman deigned to comment during the couple or three weeks Peyrefitte went around hawking his book in interviews and so on, slandering people with what turned out to be—as far as his claims about the king were concerned—just the usual baseless in-group homosexual gossip and wishful thinking (I have no idea about his claims concerning the Pope). There was no solid evidence whatsoever about Baldwin. Every Belgian I spoke to at the time dismissed it as totally without solid foundation. None I spoke to took it seriously. What was cruel was that the rumor, which wasn’t original with Peyrefitte, had apparently begun originally merely because Baldwin and Fabiola never had children—which was ridiculous because it was common knowledge they both wanted children but Fabiola couldn’t have them. That extremely minor episode 25 or 30-odd years ago was the first and last I ever heard of this claim. (Now I’ll go google it and see how accurate my memory is.)
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“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.
Looks like Peyrefitte was onto something after all (in a way…)
I googled “Baudouin homosexual” and struck paydirt on the first page that came up. This is what I found:
“By now it was suspected that Baldwin was homosexual, as he had no children.”
So, Payrefitte was right … except for one minor detail: he got the millennium wrong (check out the link …). (Sorry, Roger—hey, you win some, you lose some … don’t take it bad …)
There was nothing else relevant on that first page that came up, so I didn’t click on additional pages of that search result.
Next I tried googling this, “Roger Peyrefitte Roi Baudouin homosexuel,” with French spelling. Exactly four citations came up, all completely unrelated.
Then I went to amazon.com to make sure I was spelling Peyrefitte right. I was. (They’ve got several titles by him listed—maybe the screed in question is among them; I don’t remember what it was called.)
So, I went back to English spelling but with more, thus: “Roger Peyrefitte King Baudouin homosexual.” It brought up a single reference: “The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics.”
At that point I stopped. I don’t think there’s anything to it, but if anyone finds evidence they can post it. If he was homosexual (which I don’t believe for an instant) he certainly wasn’t homosexualist, and that’s the problem in today’s world: the homosexualist agenda of attempting to mainstream homosexuality, not the weaknesses and blemishes which individual people may be afflicted with and which they endeavor to keep private, dealing with them as best they can.
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“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.
Google exposed
When I read your post by first time,brother Fred I don`t understand you disliked google,but brother Paul writed another post clarifying it to me,and wants contributing it for you,although it is made by same liberal creator from namebase.org(although this site is very informative,I must to say),this contains many important data http://www.google-watch.org/
It wasn’t Google I was feeling bitter about, but that topic
André, I didn’t mean I disliked Google—although, looking again at my post, I understand how it could have given that impression: I said I’d google a certain subject after first taking a dose of anti-nausea medicine. That was a bitter little attempt on my part at making a black joke about the apparent resurfacing of the distasteful subject of King Baldwin’s supposed homosexuality—distasteful because unfounded as far as I know. On seeing your inquiry in the thread, I said to myself, “Oh, THAT AGAIN? Boy, I haven’t heard THAT since that third-rate hack Roger Peyrefitte came out with his so-called book in the 70s!”
I hope it’s not necessary to add that I don’t mean to be critical of you, André, for bringing it up. People who hear a fabrication and ask about it in good faith aren’t culprits. The ones who do the fabricating are.
Since we’re on the topic, can you cite the references you mentioned in your original post on this? You mentioned The Guardian and the French press. As you may have seen in my follow-up post, I didn’t come up with anything in my own (very brief) search.
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“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.
Wikipedia has an English-language summary
Wikipedia has an English-language summary of the life of Baldwin/Baudouin/Boudewijn, including this incident:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudouin_of_Belgium
Pious, principled, noble king; pious, principled, noble gesture
Here‘s a short article on the constitutional crisis touched off by King Baldwin’s principled refusal to sign the abortion bill. It shows in slightly greater detail the kind of man he was. I didn’t see this when I googled the subject two years ago—I think there are more articles on the internet now (maybe the discussion at Turnabout helped stimulate that?). I googled King Baudouin abortion.
Living in Belgium during his reign gave one a sense that at the center of things lay a kind of goodness and a respect for principle, both quietly self-effacing. (There’s a simple reason for that: those were what lay at the center of things.) His brother reigns now, not remotely of his stature. Whether we’ll see Baldwin’s like again on a European throne I don’t know and I refer not just to the abortion affair but the entire reign. The whole reign was like that: quietly underlain by goodness and principle—by a kind of piety, that you could feel. (I lived there over a decade, leaving about eight years before the abortion crisis.) Belgians today revere his memory the way they would the memory of a saintly man. There’s a simple reason for that too …
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Long live free Flanders!
(Sorry, the above comment
(Sorry, the above comment was meant to go in a different spot in the thread, but no matter.)
[If I may, here’s my
[If I may, here’s my paraphrase of Mr. Van Beek’s interesting letter, above, with some of the English smoothened out a bit and a bracketed footnote by me at the end:]
__________________________________________________
Why has the Belgian “Vlaams Blok” party been condemned to be disbanded and its present members of parliament forbidden to be re-elected to office for the next five years? Is it because it supports either racism or the secession of Flanders from Belgium?
I’d suppose that in the typical European country most left-wingers would like to abolish the country’s “party of the European far right.” Belgium is no exception. Furthermore, in Belgium the project of abolishing what is considered Belgium’s “party of the European far right” has the unanimous support of the French speakers, who make up 38% of Belgium’s population — and the reason it has their unanimous support is the French speakers receive between 5.2 billion and 11 billion euros a year in transfer payments (according to sources) under circumstances that are shrouded in mystery and deceit
This is the “loophole” by
This is the “loophole” by which abortifacient politicians got around the crown:
“He was a very religious man. In 1990, when a law liberalising Belgium’s abortion laws was approved by parliament, he refused to give his signature so that the bill could become law — an unprecedented act in Belgium, as the royal signature has always been considered a mere formality. The government had to declare him unable to reign on April 4, 1990. The Belgian constitution provides that, if the king is incapable to reign, the government as a whole will fulfil the role of head of state. All members of the government signed the bill, and the government declared that Baudouin was capable of reigning again the next day, on April 5, 1990.”
—from the Wikipedia entry that should have been linked in the above post:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudouin_of_Belgium
Tell me again why we’re supposed to export democracy…
I was wrong about there
I was wrong about there being a dearth of articles about the affair on Google — turns out I was spelling both the Dutch and French versions of his name wrong in trying to google the story. (Many thanks to Reg C
At the beginning of the
At the beginning of the thread Mr. Vuijlsteke wrote,
“Some clarifications: the party isn’t banned, it’s three organisations that surrounded the party between (I think) 1997 and 2001. Those organizations were not banned because they weren’t PC enough, they were banned because they manifestly, openly and repeatedly violated the law.”
In a forum at http://www.rationalexplications.com/blog/archives/000238.html Mr. Vuijlsteke adds (in two separate posts of April 27: 01:43 AM and 03:19 AM; scroll down just a bit),
“The three organisations are the Nationalistische Omroepstichting, the Nationalistische Vormingsinstituut and the Vlaamse Concentratie. They violated article 3 of the 30 July 1981 law against racism and xenophonbic acts. The law they violated in short (relevant article 3 translated more or less in full):
“art. 1. You can’t incite discrimination, hate or violence of a person or group of person because of their ‘race’ (the law says ‘so-called race’), skin colour, national or ethnic origin.
“art. 2-2bis. You can’t discriminate because of ‘race,’ skin colour or origin when providing a service or in a professional context (job negotiations, training, hiring, firing, …).
“art. 3. Members of groups or associations that manifestly and repeatedly practice or preach discrimination or segregation, or people who aid and abet such groups or organisations, will be punished by imprisonment of no less than a month and no more than a year and/or will be fined no less than 50 franks and no more than 100 franks.
“art 4-5. More or less the same as art. 3, for civil servants for associations.”
Such laws, especially if interpreted the least bit broadly or loosely, inevitably spell the iron-fisted suppression of free expression relating to the things known as “races,” “ethnicities,” “nations,” “cultures,” and even “societies.” This much, at least, should be clear. Getting back to Mr. Vuijlsteke’s comment that “Those organizations were not banned because they weren’t PC enough, they were banned because they manifestly, openly and repeatedly violated the law”: given the wording of the law in question (a law whose biased spirit is revealed most glaringly, perhaps, in its placing of the word race in quotation marks?), how do we know in any given case that violation of it on the one hand, and merely “not being PC enough” on the other, aren’t one and the same?
Unfortunately, the statute doesn’t include
Unfortunately, the statute doesn’t include religion. If it did, then Islam itself would be in violation of it.
Mr. Unadorned asks me whether
Mr. Unadorned asks me whether or not there is self-censorship when I write my comments here and whether or not I write under my true name and if so why I don
Mr. Van Beek’s comment speaks
Mr. Van Beek’s comment speaks for itself regarding free discussion of certain issues in Belgium:
“First you should know that, unlike the situation in Britain, in Belgium (because of the thought police of the ‘Agency for Equal Rights’) comments are first read by the [newspaper’s] editorial staff and only those that are [politically] approved are ‘published.’ Fortunately for me I have a good reputation so that 90% of my letters are published. There is confidence because [they’ve come to] expect me to write arguments with a sound foundation. I also take care not to accept any public function, so that I am not perceived by the thought police as
To note : a visit
To note : a visit of the Belgian
We haven’t heard about the
We haven’t heard about the Sheriff of Temse over here in The States. What happened to him?
Now he (head of the
Now he (head of the local police is named in Belgium
More bad news from Belgium.
More bad news from Belgium. Read today in the daily
For anyone who’s been following
For anyone who’s been following this “Vlaams Blok” outrage in Belgium but hasn’t seen the following two web pages, they’re worth a perusal:
http://www.flemishrepublic.org/ ,
http://www.flemishrepublic.org/act.htm .
I wonder if Mr. Van Beek sees any light at the end of the tunnel in all this, or is “anti-racism” an invincible force which spells the eventual destruction of Europe’s races, ethnicities, cultures, and nations? If “anti-racism” does not spell the ultimate destruction of all these things, what is it that will come along and save them from “anti-racism’s” constant attacks against them?
My faith in our good
My faith in our good Lord Jesus Christ and my regular reading of the Bible gives me hope that the Evil and His lackeys won
Mr. Van Beek writes,
“Mind you,
Mr. Van Beek writes,
“Mind you, I would rather prefer doing other things!”
So would we all, Mr. Van Beek! But we feel so much outrage at what we see going on around us that we cannot keep silent.
“And because I don
Just fo rthe record, the
Just fo rthe record, the website http://www.flemishrepublic.org which is mentioned earlier is a site made by the Vlaams Blok, so I would not really call it unbiased…
Gijs, where do we go
Gijs, where do we go nowadays for news that’s guaranteed to be without bias? Do mainstream news organizations in Belgium necessarily report the goings-on relating to the Vlaams Blok in an unbiased manner? I would think the Vlaams Blok’s own web-site would be *one of* the first sources to consult for those wishing to put together as complete a picture as possible of what was just done to them by that biased French-speaking judge in Ghent.
Why is the Vlaams Blok
Why is the Vlaams Blok “republican”? (Do they intend to arm every Fleming?) Nearly all the other stable, homogenous/homogeneous nations of northern Europe are monarchic. Is the present King alien to Flemings? Then why not elect another, as did Norwegians?
Is the Vlaams Blok website
Is the Vlaams Blok website biased? I will give you a little point of reference.
See at: (I can send you the full text in Dutch by email — for those who don
“A political murder thus. Why
“A political murder thus. Why not listen to the voice of those who are being murdered? Even if you don
The king of Belgium will
The king of Belgium will never be removed although he is much biased against the Flemish.
Already during the Kosovo crisis, the actual king said on television that the Flemish should take care not to vote for the
Mr. Van Beek notes,
“The king
Mr. Van Beek notes,
“The king of Belgium […] is much biased against the Flemish.”
This bias — and I agree it exists — is a new development in the Belgian Royal Family, having come in with Albert and Paola. The late king, Albert’s elder brother Baldwin, was NOT biased against the Flemish and, though many people knew or suspected he spoke French at home, took great care to always display neutrality and even-handedness as much a possible in regard to the three main Belgian ethnic groups and various sub-groups.
I lived in Li
The Saudi connection and the
The Saudi connection and the link to Al Qaeda.
That Saudi Arabia builds mosques in the rest of the world is well known, but what makes it so special in Belgium is the spot on which Brussels
The Vlaams Blok trial in
The Vlaams Blok trial in Belgium is only the top of the iceberg.
Yesterday, the head of the board of the Belgian Catholic school network was summoned by the Thought Police (the Agency for Equal Rights) to give account of statements she gave on television: she said that gay teachers can better refrain from promoting gay marriage in classroom. And why do you think the Thought Police refrained from lodging immediately a complaint against her? Because the party she belongs to (CD&V NV-A cartel) does well in the polls
Update on Vlaams Blok – ban upheld.
Here, and here.
Vlaams Blok ban – more to read
See links at: http://lvb.net/item/658
In the first blog, Majority Rights, some articles back, also something interesting about the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, which is linked to the present Vlaams Blok ban.
Welcome, Vlaams Belang (“Flemish Interest Party”!
An extremely important log entry has been posted by Flemish blogger Johan van Vlaams at the MajorityRights.com web log, describing the aftermath of the Vlaams Blok’s banning last week. A new party was founded Sunday to replace the now-banned one. (Those conservatives who’ve been following this story know, of course, that the former party was banned strictly for nothing—it was banned purely for political reasons having largely to do with totalitarian leftist curtailment of free speech.) Called the Flemish Interest (Vlaams Belang in Dutch), the new party has adopted a platform that reads like that of the Constitution Party in the U.S. (The other thing it reads like is the American Declaration of Independence. It is a great and beautiful document; a revolutionary one, even!) Look at these excerpts which express what are tradcon points of view very familiar to Turnabout regulars:
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“[T]he state exists to serve the people, […] not the other way round.”
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“[…W]e recognise man as a free agent, with all his human qualities and flaws, and we reject ideologies that presuppose the ‘makeability’ of mankind and that advocate social engineering. Tradition, virtues and morality, as these have grown through time, must be respected and are constitutive elements of the society of the future.”
[Everyone got that last bit, by the way? These Flemings aren’t even questioning what “the society of the future” will look like. They flatly declare it will be characterized by “tradition, virtues and morality, as these have grown through time” (and they reject “social engineering”)! They haven’t even any doubts—aren’t even placing the question on the table for argument! Talk about a refreshing point of view!].
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“[…W]e adopt a restrained and critical attitude towards the European Union with its bureaucracy and tendency to meddle where the sovereignty of the people should prevail. The Vlaams Belang also believes that the territory of the European Union should not extend beyond the boundaries of Europe.”
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“[…T]he Vlaams Belang rejects the tenets of the multicultural ideology.”
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“The Vlaams Belang is dedicated to protecting the individual from abuse of power by the state. The party defends the freedom of speech as the first and most important principle in the democratic organisation of society. Other principles include […] the right of free assembly and association, freedom of education, freedom of conscience[,] the right to life[, T]he right of ownership and free enterprise […].”
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“The criminal’s personal responsibility must be recognized and appreciated as a cause of [crime]. […T]he Vlaams Belang [favors a] tough line on crime […].”
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“Society should be organized according to the principle of subsidiarity. What can be done efficiently at a lower level of society must not be relegated to a distant, anonymous and unaccountable authority.”
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“The party […] rejects politically inspired educational reforms.”
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“A humane society is not made up of isolated individuals. Free persons are rooted in the framework of their people and their culture. Solidarity is the interaction between the individual and the smaller and larger communities of which he is a part. A strong foundation for solidarity is provided by the community of citizens united by their cultural identity or shared history and civilization.”
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“The traditional family is at the heart of a humane society. Its merit is acknowledged and safeguarded in the marriage between a man and a woman. Policymakers should recognize the central role of families with children in society. Their task is to protect the family instead of attempting to usurp its functions.”
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“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.
Brussels is going after the Vlaams Belang leaders now
We learn today from Flemish blogger Johan van Vlaams that a leader of the new Vlaams Belang Party in Flanders has been placed under criminal investigation for advocating a moratorium on further Moslem immigration into certain neigborhoods of the city of Antwerp, neighborhoods suffering a crisis due to the uncontrolled levels of immigration they’ve already received and are trying hard to cope with and absorb. The party which the man under investigation helps lead advocates a more rational immigration approach, one which would among other things decrease the amount of Moslem immigration coming into Belgium.
Let’s take that one more time. A leader of a political party has been placed under criminal investigation for advocating a plank from his own party platform in regard to what is felt to be excessive immigration coming into the country.
The Finnish Prime Minister’s father, a university professor, was similarly placed under criminal investigation some months ago in Finland for having given a talk in which he discussed specifics from the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, a perfectly legitimate scholarly book (but one having the misfortune to be disliked by Finland’s Thought Police).
Clearly, no matter whether or not these investigations end in actual criminal charges followed by convictions for hate crimes violations, the serious threat implicit in these investigations themselves amounts to governmental intimidation of political expression which government is supposed precisely to protect from intimidation, or else where’s our democracy, and what does democracy mean?
Here’s Mr. van Vlaams (in a reader’s comment under his recent MajorityRights.com log entry):
“Meanwhile, The Thought Police (Agency for Equal Rights—Centrum voor Gelijkheid van Kansen) has opened an investigation against Flemish Interest [Vlaams Belang Party] leader Filip Dewinter, because he has pleaded to stop immigration in the city of Antwerp and more specifically in certain city districts. In my opinion this is the end of [all] public debate (and of democracy). Reference (in Dutch): here. Posted by Braveheart on 11/29 at 06:54 PM”
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“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.
simple information
As a Christian Conservative can somebody help me with the offcie address of the Flemish party