Facts are facts. Lies are lies. Mistakes are mistakes.

But what is a "wrong" opinion?

Ask officials in France, who regularly punish people for thinking and saying the "wrong" things.

Former film star Brigitte Bardot is the latest victim of the Thought Police. She's been criminally convicted of saying the wrong things about Muslims in France.

In a December 2006 letter to the country's then-Interior Minister and now President Nicolas Sarkozy, Bardot, an animal rights activist, complained about the Muslim sheep-slaughtering feast of Aid el-Kebir, saying she is "tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts."

Whatever you think of that, Bardot should have a right to think it -- and to say it.

But apparently not in France.

A court there has found her guilty of inciting hatred and discrimination on racial or religious or racial grounds.

She was fined $23,325, and ordered to pay an anti-racism group another $1,555.

So, if you can convince a French court that someone's speech is wrong or maybe just hateful, you can make a buck and maybe silence an enemy. That's a good day's work!

But not if you care about basic human freedom.

John Donne wrote that "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."

So should the death of anyone's freedom diminish us all.