French politician Marine Le Pen is a great fan of Vladimir Putin, a social progressive, and leader of a political party that from time to time flirts with the anti-Semitic right—she’s not a woman with whom we can ordinarily sympathize. Still, she has a talent for stirring European elites in ways that expose their intellectual shallowness and hypocrisies, and from time to time it’s hard not to take her side.

Two weeks ago Le Pen was ordered by a French court to undergo psychiatric evaluation. Her offense? In December 2015, in response to the Bataclan terrorist attack in Paris that killed 130 people, she used her Twitter account to post graphic photos of atrocities committed by ISIS. Le Pen was then “charged with circulating violent messages that can be viewed by minors,” according to news agency France 24.

In France, anyone charged with a similar “crime” must undergo psychiatric evaluation. In one sense it’s encouraging to know that the French insist on imposing even their dumbest laws on everyone (in Italy she could easily have gotten a waiver), but that any Western democracy would impose such a law on anyone is chilling.

For her part, Le Pen says she won’t comply with the order, and it seems there’s little French courts can do to enforce it. “I’d like to see how the judge would try and force me to do it,” she told reporters. She’s right to refuse. Here in America, we seem to do just fine without forcing irresponsible politicians and impulsive social-media zealots to take psych evals. Not that the French want any advice from us. More likely, the French idea will travel westward, and in a few months we’ll be reporting that universities are forcing students with unconventional opinions to see a shrink. Let’s keep this one quiet.