Those who are interested in the future of free speech in Europe might find this article from the July 12, 2008 Wall Street Journal noteworthy. It documents the contrasting responses of Denmark and Holland to cartoonists accused of insulting Islam. Here are a few excerpts:

“Denmark protects its cartoonists. We arrest them,” says Geert Wilders, a populist member of the Dutch Parliament…

The contrasting Danish and Dutch responses “show that there is a serious struggle of ideas going on for the future of Europe,” says Flemming Rose, a Danish newspaper editor who commissioned the drawings of Muhammad in Jyllands-Posten. At stake, he says, is whether democracy protects the right to offend or embraces religious taboos so that “citizens have a right not to be offended.”

As Arts & Letters Daily notes, “The Netherlands once sheltered Jews and other refugees from the Inquisition. Now it runs its own Inquisition…”