Geert Wilders on everything

Dutch Report quotes in full the speech made by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, his first since coming out of hiding. He had been forced to flee in the face of threats from Islamists. It's too long to quote in full but it is a rousing anti-establishment tirade which will warm the cockles of libertarian hearts, covering the gamut of policy areas from terror to bureaucracy, the EU and liberty. He seems to me to be setting himself out as the leader of a classical liberal party, something which is long overdue in Europe.

A few choice quotes:

An expanding government is hanging as a drunken man on the neck of our hard working citizens.

I like to quote Thatcher: “it’s not governments that create jobs, businesses do”

Was the abolishment of the Guilder [Dutch Currency] in the Dutch interest? The price rises caused by the euro? Denhaag gives our monetary and fiscal policies away to anonymous bureaucrats in Frankfurt. Is that really smart?

Because of the new European constitution, Turkey will have more influence on Dutch legislation than The Netherlands it self. It can’t become crazier than this.

Europe is out of control. Europe is not owned by its citizens but owned by the bureaucrats in Brussel.

Our issue is freedom. I put freedom central. The freedom that your mother can go out in the evenings, the freedom that your grant children are not forced to wear a head scarf, the freedom that you can spend your income on your family, the freedom to say what you want, the freedom you have because your government
protects your family against terrorists, the freedom to have a job and a pleasant live, the freedom as a country to decide for our selves independently.

Freedom is the central idea.