"The most interesting political phenomenon in Europe"

Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) scored a major success. The PVV came in first in Almere (with 21.5 percent of the vote) and second in The Hague (with 16.9 percent). These are two of the country's major cities.

Wilders is a breath of fresh air:

Wilders defends Dutch sovereignty by, among other things, opposing the EU's centralizing policies. He defends Dutch identity by opposing the Islamization of the Netherlands. He seeks to accomplish this by, among other things, halting Islamic immigration. He also favors deporting immigrants who commit crimes, or who call for jihad or the imposition of Islamic law.

Wilders is a harsh critic of the Koran. It was his film on the subject, "Fitna," that got him banned in Britain.

The result?

On June 9 of this year, the Netherlands will hold its parliamentary elections. A poll taken yesterday by Dutch state television predicts that Wilders will gain 24 of the 150 parliamentary seats, which would make the PVV the third most represented party in the country. However, according to Belien, the De Hond poll, which many consider to be the Netherlands' most respected, predicted yesterday that the PVV will win 27 seats, the most of any party.

As someone who was born in the Netherlands, I am very, very encouraged by this development. The Netherlands in particular, despite its reputation for being a cradle of liberty (and libertarianism when it comes to sex and drugs) is in reality a politically repressed society in which consensus is the most highly prized quality in politics. The Netherlands has long been a socialist society with wage controls that forced my father, a small business owner, to pay his employees under the table to keep them.

It's the sort of society that Obama and his ilk would love to recreate here. It's also the reason that you will find Dutchmen all over the world, particularly in the US, Canada and Australia as they leave their home country and travel thousands of miles to find a better, freer life.

The Netherlands is a crowded country of burghers without any grandeur, a flat, pedestrian place know for its tulip beds, its toy town and its red light district. I would not want to live there ... again.