Oh Noes, Not the Queen!

The Dutch are once again getting ready to scrap the law against blasphemy that hasn't been used in about four decades. This time it's an effort, I think, to leave Dutch Muslims without a legal leg to stand on once Geert Wilders' anti-Islam film is released.

A majority in the Dutch parliament, led by the ruling Labour Party, wants to scrap a law which fines or even imprisons people who commit blasphemy. But although the law isn't used anymore, even debating whether or not to scrap it is sensitive. The Christian parties in Dutch politics have always argued to keep it on the books.

The pending revocation of the outdated and constitutionally problematic law is commendable. No one — Muslims, Christians, Scientologists, Flat Earthers — ought to be able to claim special rights that are hostile to free speech.

I will note, though, that while the Dutch will soon be allowed to lampoon religionists and openly denounce god, saying an unkind word about the royal family might still get the insufficiently deferential reprobate arrested and facing five years in the pokey. Like it's fucking Thailand.

Apparently, the Dutch believe that the queen is a more supreme being than the all-powerful and omniscient Cosmic Conjurer who [cough] created the Heavens and the Earth.

That tells you all you need to know about their fealty to an absurd medieval figurehead who does nothing but mooch off her subjects.

I long for the day when the Netherlands will finally live up to its self-image of reason and progressiveness — that is, the day that the country throws out the blue-blooded twits, and becomes a proper republic.

Comments

[Jaap Weel]

Correction: an absurd, _faux_ medieval figurehead, installed by foreign powers and supported by backward-looking romantics in the 19th century in an act of old-time-government revivalism. Beatrix is more like a neo-Gothic cathedral or a Renaissance Faire than she is the last remnant of medieval tradition. Admittedly, her ancestors were big aristocratic cheeses in the Republic, but none of them was ever King until after the Treaty of Vienna.