Wilders and his Freedom Party are "willing to fight for libertarian social values"

From Eric Dondero:

David Warren a traditionalist Catholic columnist for the Ottawa Citizen penned an incredibly open and frank editorial about Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders. Titled, "A breach in the Islamist-leftist alliance," Warren admits those on the Left don't know what to make of Wilders.

The views of his Freedom Party are Pro-Free Enterprise on economics, Pro-civil liberties and tolerance on social matters, yet stridently Pro-Defense on National Security. These positions don't fit traditional political labels.

From the Ottawa Citizen, July 17:

Geert Wilders is a little too liberal for my taste. His Freedom Party, which made huge strides in the recent Dutch general election -- leaving Wilders only about two heartbeats short of their prime minister's office -- is the very opposite of socially conservative.

The more straitlaced sort of North American visitor, who almost involuntarily compares parts of Amsterdam with Sodom and/or Gomorrah, will get no sympathy from the Freedom Party.

This creates an interesting challenge for our progressive types. They would like to think of Wilders as a "fascist," or better, some kind of fundamentalist Christian crazy. They have observed that his movement is catching populist fire, and may be spreading across Europe at Tea-Party speed.

Half-naked Euro Babes in Amsterdam in stark contrast to drab, gloomy Muslim immigrants

Warren continues:

Indeed, such a visitor may find that his only allies, in calling down the wrath of the heavens upon the antinomianism of the contemporary urban Dutch, are preaching in the local Islamist mosque.

Given the contrast between the modest demeanour of many young immigrant Muslim women, with their heads covered and their strollers full of babies -- and that of so many "native" young western women, childless but provocatively half-naked under the summer sun -- I have sometimes myself wondered which side I am on.

Warren then goes on to point out that in many social respects, traditional religionism in Europe, is closer to that of the strident social conservatism of Islam instead of the libertinism of modern Euros.

The Roman Catholic religion to which I subscribe also requires modesty in female dress... It also requires chastity, and constant acknowledgement of God.

The point here is that freedom has undergone redefinition, since the so-called "Enlightenment" in the West, and has been confused with licence in our post-modern era.

The Freedom Party of Geert Wilders takes this post-modern notion of freedom more or less for granted. It is hardly a Christian political force. It is "rationalist" in the Enlightenment tradition, and it is rational insofar as it detects a conflict between libertarian social values, and the strictures of even conventional Islam (let alone radical Islamists and terrorists). It is willing to fight for the preservation of these post-modern values, even if this requires banning mass Muslim immigration.