Driving around town late last week, I heard a spirited BBC discussion (carried by my local NPR station) about Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parlaiment who produced a film suggesting the Koran incites violence. Get Religion posted on the story last week. Wilder was entering England at the invitation of the House of Lords (!!) to show his film there, but shortly after landing in London he was unceremoniously ejected from the country as a threat to public safety. So much for free speech on the other side of the pond.

The issue, of course, affects all free societies (aka “the West”). The Wall Street Journal featured a broader discussion: “Geert Wilders is a Test for Western Civilization: If Rushdie should be defended, why not the Dutch pol?” The headline pretty much says it all, but here are a couple of short paragraphs that pose the issues rather starkly:

If routine mockery of Christianity and abuse of its symbols, both in the U.S. and Europe, is protected speech, why shouldn’t the same standard apply to the mockery of Islam? And if the difference in these cases is that mockery of Islam has the tendency to lead to riots, death threats and murder, should committed Christians now seek a kind of parity with Islamists by resorting to violent tactics to express their sense of religious injury?

The notion that liberals can have it both ways — champions of free speech on the one hand; defenders of multiculturalism’s assorted sensitivities on the other — was always intellectually flimsy. If liberals now want to speak for the “right” of this or that group not to be offended, the least they can do is stop calling themselves “liberals.”

The article also takes conservatives to task for inconsistent positions. Mr. Wilders is facing actual charges in Holland (for committing hate speech), so this story will be around for awhile.