via blair, Top court brands Belgian far-right party racist:

Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Blok was branded racist in a supreme court ruling that will force one of Europe’s most successful anti-immigrant parties to relaunch itself.

The supreme court upheld a verdict by a lower court in April that found the party to be guilty of “permanent incitement to segregation and racism”.

i can see why you would want to punish people for racist beliefs, and outlaw them in order to extinguish the practice, but i can’t say that i think that’s necessarily the solution. my fluffy liberal side wants to say that people are fundamentally good and that if you teach them why racism is bad, that’s better than telling them they’re bad people and squelching them. and my “i’m from peoria” side says that matt hales will always find comfort in being told that they’re bad and thus giving them a reason to rebel…and an attractive feature for people to gather around. and then my libertarian side screeches “free speech, free speech,” and as much as i loathe the beliefs that unite groups such as the KKK, i have no right to interfere with their rights to hold them.

i guess my response is, you have a right to be an asshole and i have the right to think you’re an asshole, because i don’t have to share your opinions if i don’t want to. so, yeah, kinda scary.

and, speaking of matt hale, matthale.org: “Free Matt Hale!” … man, i grew up in that fucker’s neck of the woods and i loathe him like no one but a liberal local could. and i have to say that i was just as pleased as punch when he went up — not to mention how amused i was at his unsuccessful attempt to sue the illinois bar for refusing to admit him. he makes me sad, because he makes all of central illinois look like backwater assholes. and frankly, they don’t need that kind of publicity. they’re not backwater assholes, they’re rural communities, and there’s a difference. yes, there’s hate for the different, and yes, sometimes i worry that if i put a rainbow sticker on my car and went home for a visit i might get a window smashed — but by and large that worry is locational, which is to say that if i’m at my grandma’s house i don’t worry but if i was in pekin (“pekkkin”) i would. although i digress: i think mr. hale’s hate, specifically, is mostly reserved for non-whites, versus fags.

oh, matt hale: how you irritated me all growing up, and how you continued to fucking irritate me after i moved to chicago to get away from people like you. but now that you’re in jail, you’re sort of a nostalgic, “look at the silly racist instigator” point of my life.

and, see, that gets back to the original point of this post: if you let the racists do their thing, they’ll eventually fuck up on their own and you don’t have to be an enforcer-nanny to make that happen. because, yeah, i fundamentally believe that people are fundamentally decent (that’s not unknowingly repetitious; i intended to use “fundamentally” twice) and that if you let them reason it out on their own they’ll come around to believe the same way you do.

(and if they don’t, it’s possible that you were wrong. — of course, there are things that i, personally, refuse to believe that i am wrong in thinking — such as that homosexuality is not a bad thing, and that black people are just as okay as whites — but i’m making a blanket statement, here.)