A beautiful word portrait of Theo Van Gogh

From Ian Buruma, one of my favorite writers:

Theo van Gogh--fat, blond, absurdly generous toward his friends and madly vindictive toward his enemies, a worshipper of Roman Polanski, a talented filmmaker who never had enough patience to produce a masterpiece, a heavy smoker and consumer of cocaine and fine wines, a columnist of some style and shocking vulgarity, a doting father, a disgusting slob adored by many women, a provocateur, and a man of principle--had embarked on a very different kind of war: a war against what he regarded as hypocrisy and cant.

The whole piece is worth reading to understand how Western European nations are allowing fundamentalist fanatics to take advantage of the spirit of tolerance and laws of free assembly and speech to organize against the societies they occupy.

Something similar is happening in the United States.