Freedom and responsibility. By coupling responsibility with freedom in their motto for the new cabinet accord, Christian Democrats seem to want to set certain boundaries to the latter writes linguist Wouter van Wingerden in a column on website nu.nl.

It is the courts which will now have to decide where those boundaries of freedom and responsibility lie – because silent coalition partnter Geert Wilders’ claims his freedom of speech is being curbed.
If you were to strip the Koran of all the verses advocating hate you would be left with a book ‘the size of a Donald Duck comic’. An exaggeration but quite funny and the judges won’t want to punish Wilders for saying it.
They will forgive him for this as well: ‘Things have gone beyond the pale here but our solutions wouldn’t chase a mouse back into its cage’. Wilders has a knack of cushioning the impact of his blows by using comparisons and expressions that are slightly comical.
1950s
As Jan Kuitenbrouwer already pointed out in his book De woorden van Geert Wilders en hoe ze werken (Geert Wilders words and how they work), Wilders often reverts to the language of the fifties, the language that the young people of that era were used to hearing. This group has become the one that this cabinet, with Wilder’s help, is trying to protect.
Kuitenbrouwer noted such innocent 1950s favourites as ‘neither use not ornament’ or they should ‘hop it forthwith’ and ‘things have come to a pretty pass if..’ But the rest of Wilders’ words quoted in the summons aren’t very comical at all.
Threat
Wilders after all is maintaining that the Netherlands is under threat from Islam. Cosy 1950s expressions don’t quite convey the dangers facing the nation. In order to turn the PVV into the decisive political player it has become, bigger and angrier words were needed.
Geert decided to forget nuance and go for ‘there is no such thing as a moderate Islam’ and ‘A fascist Islam, the sick ideology of Allah and Mohammed, as written down in the Koran, the Mein Kampf of Islam’ and ‘Islam is a violent religion’.

Tsunami
The followers of Allah do not fare much better: ‘The increasing number of Muslims in every European country is alarming’ and ‘the tsunami of Islamisation.’
‘No more Muslims in the Netherlands, many Muslims should leave the country, denaturalise Islamic criminals.’ ‘I have had it with the adoration of Allah and Mohammed in this country, no more mosques.’
The court is going to have to decide whether Wilders’ words are admissible within his right to freedom of speech or whether he is trespassing on other basic rights, such as freedom of religion. Are some words and phrases incitements to hatred or discriminatory in themselves?
Is a politician allowed to say more or should he say less than the ordinary citizen?
Balance
The Christian Democrats don’t seem to have the answer and not all VVD politicians seem to feel that freedom of speech is the most important of basic rights. Now it’s up to an independent judge to strike a balance – a heavy responsibility.
This is an unofficial translation