Wilders in New York

I heard Geert Wilders speak today at a luncheon in New York hosted by the Hudson Institute. It was the first I had seen him in person, and he’s very impressive. I’ll have more to write about this later. Also, there was a showing of Fitna, which is much more powerful on a big screen than on YouTube.

Wilders will be on the Glenn Beck program at 5 p.m. today, and on the O’Reilly program in the evening.

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Bill Carpenter writes:

You have adverted to his underlying liberalism. I have noticed that the classical liberals who are the leading lights of the Brussels Journal are quite open to the articulation of non-liberal conservative cultural values and laws that are necessary for classical liberalism to be able to function and play its rile. There are also non-liberal principles such as the legitimate existence of peoples and nations that are built into classical liberalism. Thus when we see a major liberal like Wilders lapse into liberal universalism, we should not despair as his liberalism but instead attempt to articulate for him the difference between a classical liberalism that is just a whistlestop short of universal egalitarianism, and a classical liberalism that allows the particular nation, with its own identity, culture and history, to reach its highest potential in freedom, justice, and prosperity.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 23, 2009 04:01 PM | Send