Void Where Prohibited

Europeans find themselves in a odd position these days. It is an odd and inconsistent position of their own making.

After weeks of insisting that freedom of speech is so "sacred" in their homelands that their arguments for publishing the gratuitiously insulting Mohammad cartoons stemmed largely from this beloved freedom.

European newspapers published the cartoons on Friday, arguing freedom of speech was sacred.

Sacred!

Or not. David Irving must be wondering where in Europe this sacred freedom of speech actually is practiced across the board.

Irving was just convicted on charges of denying the Holocaust, which stemmed from two speeches he gave in 1989 whereing he denied that the Nazi's had exterminated 6 million Jews. He also had claimed, in speech apparently not quite as free as that of newspaper publishers ridiculing Islam, that gas chambers were a fiction.

Now, don't get me wrong. Holocaust denial is one of the more twisted and bizarre revisionist efforts of 20th century history, something that is almost always promulgated by Aryan Nation racists. But that is hardly the point. Irving was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison for saying something, something that is forbidden by law in Austria to say.

But rest assured, freedom of speech* in Europe is sacred.


*Void where prohibited by law.