{"id":36857,"date":"2017-01-15T01:00:49","date_gmt":"2017-01-15T06:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36857"},"modified":"2019-05-20T09:29:46","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T13:29:46","slug":"qotd-like-the-bourbons-the-guardian-learns-nothing-and-forgets-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/01\/15\/qotd-like-the-bourbons-the-guardian-learns-nothing-and-forgets-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Like the Bourbons, the <em>Guardian<\/em> learns nothing and forgets nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The Bourbons, said Talleyrand, learned nothing and forgot nothing. Sometimes it seems as if our modern liberals are just like the Bourbons. Here, for example, is a headline from the U.K.\u2019s hard-line liberal newspaper, the <em>Guardian<\/em>: <\/p>\n<p><strong>FAR-RIGHT PARTY STILL LEADING IN DUTCH POLLS, DESPITE LEADER\u2019S CRIMINAL GUILT.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What was the crime of which the far-right leader \u2014 Geert Wilders \u2014 was guilty? It was incitement to discrimination; in other words, not even discrimination itself. He had discriminated against no one, but made a speech in which he called for \u201cfewer Moroccans.\u201d Significantly, the <em>Guardian<\/em> gave no further details of what Wilders meant by this \u2014 whether, for example, he proposed that fewer Moroccan immigrants should be allowed into the Netherlands, that the illegal Moroccan immigrants should be deported, or that Dutch citizens of Moroccan descent should be deprived of their citizenship and forcibly repatriated. For the <em>Guardian<\/em>, it hardly seemed to matter.<\/p>\n<p>More significant still was the <em>Guardian<\/em>\u2019s inability, even after the victory of Donald Trump in the United States\u2014which must, in part, have been attributable to a revolt against political correctness \u2014 to see that the conviction of Wilders on a charge so patently designed to silence the fears of a considerable part of the population couldn\u2019t possibly reduce his popularity. By illustrating the moral arrogance of the political class against which Wilders\u2019s movement is a reaction, the charge might actually make him more popular.<\/p>\n<p>Theodore Dalrymple, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/html\/incitement-hypocrisy-14916.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Incitement to Hypocrisy: The Netherlands unevenly applies a law forbidding provocation&#8221;, <em>City Journal<\/em><\/a>, 2016-12-28.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bourbons, said Talleyrand, learned nothing and forgot nothing. Sometimes it seems as if our modern liberals are just like the Bourbons. Here, for example, is a headline from the U.K.\u2019s hard-line liberal newspaper, the Guardian: FAR-RIGHT PARTY STILL LEADING IN DUTCH POLLS, DESPITE LEADER\u2019S CRIMINAL GUILT. What was the crime of which the far-right [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,9,10,53,41],"tags":[459,1087,554,990,222,1289],"class_list":["post-36857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-law","category-liberty","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-censorship","tag-geertwilders","tag-immigration","tag-morocco","tag-netherlands","tag-theodoredalrymple"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9At","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36859,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36857\/revisions\/36859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}