A quote from Christopher Caldwell in The Weekly Standard, 21 December 2009

Over the past couple of decades, Flemish and Belgian conservative parties erected what they called a cordon sanitaire around the Vlaams Belang to keep it out of government, citing its position on immigrants as xenophobic. Whether this was good politics or not, today it looks increasingly unfair, as all Belgian parties, left and right, Flemish and Walloon, come to the realization that reforms of immigration policy will be necessary to protect the Belgian school and social-service sector. Gerolf Annemans, the VB's leading intellectual, says that the cordon sanitaire is "purely political." Most of his opponents would agree with him, although they do not say so on the record.