A fairly long piece by Pieter Dorsman on the political uncertainty that is Holland today;
[A]s rapturous and challenging the changes have been for the Dutch themselves, foreign media have equally stumbled to label the developments in that stable, liberal and prosperous haven of tranquility ever since three political icons disappeared from the scene in a highly unusual way. Pim Fortuyn, the gay professor turned conservative politician was fatally shot by an animal rights activist, outspoken moviemaker Theo van Gogh was killed by a gun and knife wielding jihadist and Somali immigrant and conservative-liberal parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali was more or less forced to pack up and set sail for a better and presumably safer life at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Check it out. It should be especially informative for those who have been following the discussion on the Ayaan Hirsi Ali post below.
Much to the embarrassment of the Dutch political establishment, Pim Fortuyn was voted the greatest Netherlander of all time in a TV poll, beating even William of Orange, father of the nation. Fortuyn’s signature issue was, of course, immigration restriction. His assassination by a leftwing extremist was the first in Holland in centuries. The Dutch lost a great leader in Fortuyn, and the immigration restriction movement clearly lost momentum without him. But immigration remains THE issue in Holland and the rest of Europe. Maybe Geert Wilders can build a similar movement, while avoiding murder at the hands of leftists or Muslims.
“Labour’s Bos had bravely hinted at old age pension reforms as well as a re-examination of the mortgage rate deductibility, two issues that the Dutch would need to address in due course. Of course they are precisely the ones that would alienate the house-owning and pension-expecting middle classes. However commendable the stance to reform these overly generous entitlements; it was lethal stuff at the ballot box.”
So there you have it, like the French, entitlements are chosen over safety. Socialism creates sheeple and sheeple like domesticated animals have no tolerance food disruptions. Their survival abilities atrophy. Being kept is the only appealing option.
The Dutch treated Hirsi Ali as expedient and with contempt. Molifying their pepetually enraged Muslim freeloaders, for votes no doubt, trumped principle. The European elites are rotten, the masses no better.
Eurabia is two generations away.
There is, I think, a problem with any sort of in two or three generations argument, and that is that such arguments suppose that current trends will persist for two or three generations. As we have seen for the last two or three centuries, such behaviour doesn’t appear to be the case any more. It is not at all clear that future generations of descendents of migrants will continue to behave as (at least some part of) current migrants are.
Modern civilization has largely succeeded in converting everyone who is exposed to it for a generation or two into advocates thereof. It is not clear that modern civilization will not be able to corrode and corrupt the tennets of the current ideological threats, as it has the previous ones.
Penny,
I spent a month in Amsterdam this spring.
Having lived in Holland in the 70s, speaking Dutch and being married to a Dutch woman, I have some perspective. Gone are the salad days for welfare. Everyone (I know) works pretty hard to make ends meets or works pretty hard to live the good life, but the days of perpetual loafing are (alas 😉 gone.
And the Surinamese (south American blacks) Indonesian (Asians) are very integrated into Dutch society. (They were not some 30, 40 and 50 years ago.) Muslims, not so much, but again – more than before.
The country is doing well – the strong social contract somewhat weakened by recent right wing governments – not far off where we are here in Canada (at least when the Mike Harris/Harper types are kicked out or held to minority status).
Holland: Not rotten, doing well, just needs more Canadian style multi-culturalism and less Eurocentrism.
Cheers
“Holland: Not rotten, doing well, just needs more Canadian style multi-culturalism”.
Great standup. A real knee slapper hyuk hyuk.
Holland needs less Eurocentrism? How about Holland needs less immigrants.
Holland needs to higher dikes due to AGW!!
All those political murders were to stop them from opening the sea cocks to the the North Sea.
The real danger isn’t Islamo-fascistic behavior but Global Warming terror due to rising sea levels.
Quick bury your heads in the sands of the Zuider Zee strand.
Why deal with reality when an illusion is so much more satisfying.
Cheers
Holland is not doing so well. And it won’t take one or two generations for Eurabia to take over. A decade, maybe, if that. I don’t see anything stopping it. I base this on personal knowledge, Bruce Bawer’s “While Europe slept”, Steyn’s “America Alone” and Bat Ye’or’s “Eurabia”, books which should be know to Kate’s readers.
In the Netherlands it’s the minister of immigration and integration, not just immigration. Ron is totally off his rocker, or perhaps been hanging at the Bulldog / Milky Way too much reliving the halcyon days listening to Focus or some other dutch band from the 70’s. The leftist governments that ran and accepted everything not dutch, are exactly why people are reacting as they should to the issues Muslims in the Netherlands are raising and the further denigration to the open dutch society. The Dutch now say. Here is what we are about, liberal lifestyles, decent economy, euthanasia, gay marriage, legalized prostitution, pot, hash whatever, if this suits you good. If not, don’t come.
Where in the world would you get the idea Mr Harris or Mr Harper are the problem in Canada? Take a long look to how many decades of left turning, hand wringing and “multi-culturalism” in effect promoting everything, but, becoming a Canadian take a look at the “Canadians” in Beirut the sense of entitlement is extreme and the wacky left seems only to rush to the endless list of grievances placating nothing,emboldening the malcontents further. Bloemen Houden van mensen indeed.
Vit,
I don’t think that the Muslim masses >u>can be corrupted to Western ways without a civil war right in Europe against their own more conservative and crazy members. The Euros will be reduced to bystanders in what becomes of their ancestral lands.
The Euros are atrophied in more than one way and not nearly tough enough to stand up to the young Muslim population. Europe in becoming a very scary place. We can expect an influx of Euro whiteys fleeing to the hated North American colonies for safety.
We can only hope something is learned by us from what is happening to those in Europe. Steyn’s America Alone is a history book written ahead of it’s time.
Big change is inevitable in the near future because the islamists have never had access to the technology and weaponry that they now have accessed from us. Before this, they had no way of working against us in a global coordinated way. For a people who have not developed any technology and industry of their own, they have certainly learned to use ours quite well.
They use Internet, banking systems, welfare systems, lax immigration and refuge systems to work their way around the western world and work their magic. Not since North American Indians helped the first European settlers survive the climate in Canada has a host/victim nation been so accommodating to it’s persecutors and enemies.
To survive this threat we would need to put aside political correctness and perhaps forgo some of our Trudeau God given charter rights. That would mean getting tough. Can we get tough? Are we tough? Tough enough to survive the Jihad?
What do you think?
A fairly long piece by Pieter Dorsman
2 pages printed. I’ll grant you this though: I got a headache reading it.
Ron said:
“Penny,
I spent a month in Amsterdam this spring”
Ron; I will spend a month in one of the Maritime Provinces this Fall. I will find much the same thing you found in Amsterdam. Things look much better there than in the Redneck West. They can’t understand what we are talking about on the subject of immigration. They’ve never seen an immigrant except the new SA doctor. We’re just a bunch of Redneck racists. Why would anyone even think of voting other than Liberal? Them NDP’ers don’t look half bad but don’t know them yet. They say they support the church so they must be OK. Busiest place in the middle of a work day: Tim Hortons. All are laughing and joking. Them Albertans don’t need all that oil anyway. I hear their sendin it all to the US. They can afford to send some of it to us. Don’t be so damed greedy. Whats the problem with you Westerners?
The CBC is the most watched news channel and there are NO conservative newspapers or reporters. They can live on very little and most don’t need a car. And “their” saying SH may cut off the pogey and he supports abortion and SSM.
It’s all in the perspective of the region your in.
With apologies to all maritimers, but we need to get together on this. Just because the flounder ain’t in your lap doesn’t mean it don’t smell like fish.
TIME magazine is now saying that the CONSERVATIVE MOVMENT is over what a load of bull kaka from the most far left manure spreader in america
It’s long by blog post standards.
It’s technically incorrect to refer to the Netherlands as “Holland.” Holland is the name of two provinces (North H. and South H.), but because these regions encompass the country’s major trade and political centres (Den Haag, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, etc.), the provincial name became synonymous with the national name, especially among the non-Dutch. It’s similar as referring to the whole of the UK as “England.”
The solution is simple:
Have much more ‘whitey” babies…Canada’s aging boomers will soon be replaced by the #1 immigrant import: The muslim baby factories.
But having babies in the western culture means depriving oneself of status symbols like a summer cottage, a boat, trips down south in the winter and a cellphone for little jack and Jill and stress teraphy sessions for poor old Rex who is abandonned every week day home alone because mom and dad both have to work to keep paying and supplying more and more “status symbols” …
+ Now we are being brainwashed by Gore/Suzuki and the environuts of all stipes that having babies is putting more pressure on poor old mother nature.
Taxes in Canada need to come down; SIGNIFICANTLY so to encourage having homegrown babies while keeping our consummaristic addictions going.
But that would mean having true right wing/small governments/less socialistic structures…
Simply put…Were screwed, brother.
Discussion of the Avi Lewis “Why I Really Invited You Here” interview(??) with Ayaan Hirsi Ali gets rather heated on The Michael Coren Show, repeated today on CST at 2 pm eastern.
I live in Amsterdam. I’ve asked around among my colleagues (all Dutch nationals), and the unanimous response is this: “Thanks for the concern, but the Netherlands will do just fine. You can sit in North America and criticize and judge us all you like. But for us, we’ll simply deal with the inevitable problems as they come, find solutions as we always have, and move on. Life’s too short to waste with fear and hatred. Proost!”
The real question, A’dam, is whether your colleagues will have the guts to properly identify the problems and carry out the required solutions.
the farms just north of Calgary are being bought up by Dutch farmers . they site the declining condition of the Netherlands and the huge administrative burden of raising anything in the EU. up to 6 tags per ear of a dairy cow. in the EU everything is compulsory or verboten.
Holland will soon get to yell out like Braveheart- “Freedom “- while its guts are torn out.
Many of my relatives live in Holland. Very few are really aware of the threat of Islam from the Muslim immigants. Except for my conservative brother, who read “While Europe slept” and confirmed his findings, most are liberal or socialist and don’t really worry about it much. It reminds me of the apathy and ignorance that was prevalent in Holland in the couple of years leading up to WW2. Consequently, Holland was not prepared for Hitler.
Many of those who recognize the danger are packing their bags and heading over here. Holland is a welfare state and trying to be “tolerant” as Peter Dorsman describes well. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has an interesting website with occasional articles in English. The ones in Dutch, which I read almost daily, give a much more disturbing picture than A’dam presents.
Cal2
Dutch farmers have been migrating to Canada (and many other places) for a long time.
Emigrant boers are generally right wing Reformed Church goers (not from North or South Holland) and rarely liked the political/social scene they left behind in the “ranstad”. Not surprising they joined the islamophobes.