When will they ever learn?

An email below from a reader of Dutch origin:

"I just came across a historical parallel to the creepy eagerness of today's power elites to placate Muslim bullies - by persecuting Pastor Boissoin or MacLean's in Canada, or Brigitte Bardot in France, or Gregorius Nekschot in the Netherlands, for their speech. I mean their "heresies".

In 1936 a Dutch Writer by the name of Maurits Dekker, of Jewish descent, published a pamphlet entitled Adolf Hitler: Een Poging tot Verklaring. (An Attempt at Elucidation). Although Hitler was not demonstrably insane, Dekker wrote, he exhibited enough mental oddities to pose a danger to the world. For his opinion Dekker found himself prosecuted under Articles 118 and 119 of the Dutch Law Code, which prohibit insulting a friendly Head of State. The perennially penniless Dekker was convicted and fined 100 guilders, which someone else paid for him. Remarkably, his sentence was pronounced on May 5, 1938, which seven years later became National Liberation Day, celebrated annually ever since the offended friendly head of state caused a spot of unpleasantness known as World War II.

Interestingly, while Dutch lawmakers have not been quite as accommodating to known unfriendly heads of state, articles 118 and 119 are still in force; in a country where murder rarely merits more than a few years in the slammer, a violation of articles 118 and 119 can bring two years in jail, plus a fine. So even these days any Dutchman who calls the White House to call George Bush a rat, or who burns an American flag in front of the US embassy, is liable to arrest and prosecution, an odd contrast since such acts are not punishable in the United States. It makes you wonder if the Dutch are hoping for an American subsidy, since that's how their entire government works.

Back in the 1930s, too, the Dutch government (along with Germany and a few Latin-American banana republics) prohibited showing the 1938 Warner Bros movie "Confessions of a Nazi Spy", the first anti-Nazi film made in America, which was based on real events. And even in the USA, as late as 1941, there was enough concern about relations with "friendly" Germany to see the Warner brothers summoned before a Congressional committee investigating "moving picture propaganda" which fostered "war mongering".

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose".