Demagogue

Another installment in my ongoing campaign to explain that although I like living over here and have plenty of critical things to say about my mother country on the other side of the Atlantic, I don't mean to imply that I think the Netherlands is better than the U.S.

As Frederick pointed out, free speech over here isn't quite what it is back home.

A group of conservative European Union lawmakers from eastern Europe called Thursday for a ban on communist symbols, including the red star and the hammer and sickle, to match a proposed EU ban on the Nazi swastika....

EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini has proposed a Europe-wide ban on display of the swastikas and other Nazi symbols as part of a campaign to combat anti-Semitism and intolerance....

Frattini's spokesman, Friso Roscam Abbing, said the EU head office was not at this time pushing for a similar ban on communist symbols.

"He is completely aware of the pain this (communist rule) has caused," Roscam Abbing said. But including the hammer and sickle alongside the swastika "might not be appropriate" under the anti-racism rules being negotiated, he said, noting the Nazi swastika was seen as a symbol specifically associated with anti-Semitism.