Ghost of a flea

They [the radicals] are to be praised in some sense because they are making use of the tools that the democratic society has seen fit to give them. I wish they hadn’t, but there you go. What’s clear is that the people in this case don’t see a separation between their own personal beliefs which they’re perfectly entitled to hold, and what the state is. So we’re having long debates in the courtroom about whether or not Mark Steyn properly understands the relationship between the Koran and Islamic society; maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he got it wrong. Usually these things lead to blog posts and TV and the usual things that happen when somebody write a controversial article.

What they don’t see is the separation — between that and having a state body decide the matter. This kind of thinking exists in a lot of places, that ‘I cannot really abide by disagreeing with something; I have to bring in something to suppress it.’ A lot of people on all sides have trouble making that distinction.