give them all concrete wellies and then see if they can swim

Who Paul - the Dutch?

This sort of case is a challenge to liberals. We want democracy to mean that anyone can stand for election on any platform. We love Noam Chomsky's maxim: "If we don't believe in freedom of speech for those we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

And then along come these paedophiles. Even liberals feel the urge to silence them, but it's hard to find reliable criteria for shutting people up. Should it be because they offend us, because we are certain they are wrong, because we abhor them? Perhaps; but if we applied those tests in this case, whom else might we apply them to? The mediaeval church found heretics offensive, was certain they were wrong, and abhorred them, and so it shut them up. These criteria were iffy then and they still are.

Fortunately, in this case we shall be let off the hook: the PNVD won't last long. As noted in the article, few paedophiles will be daft enough to stand for election, to make themselves known and become magnets for hate. And the others will quickly twig that there is no chance whatever of convincing the Dutch to reduce the age of consent and thus legalise their activities.

The judge has done the right thing. Democracy lives, and children will continue to be protected.

I agree completely with george. the whole point of free speach is that we cannot start defining who can have it.

There are laws against paedofilia as it is, and if these people break them, then they will be punished. We cannot start punishing people for what they think, even tho many of us disagree, very strongly, with them.