12 Comments

1. Connecticut Yankee:

LGF has just started a thread on this topic. Charles linked to a Reuters article–

Noting that Fortuyn’s murder and that of Van Gogh came 911 days apart — a reference to the U.S. abbreviation for Sept. 11 — De Telegraaf newspaper said lenient immigration policies had turned an open society into a “resentful and intolerant” one.

“Afraid of being called racist, we have been so tolerant with regard to these religious fascists that they have been allowed to merrily undermine the roots of our freedom,” it said.….

A survey last week showed that a majority of Dutch said they expected to no longer feel at home in their own neighbourhood in five years due to the rising number of foreigners. In the three biggest cities, immigrants make up about a third of the population and form a majority among young people.

The Algemeen Dagblad daily called on the government to clamp down further on immigration and also demanded that Muslim groups to do more to condemn the killing and threats against others.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L03601241.htm

Nov 3, 2004 - 12:55 pm 2. Oyster:

Regarding “Old Europe’s” wake up call. I find it interesting that so many here in America want to be like Europe and Europe is struggling to be like us with the “United States of Europe”. Listening to NPR this morning I heard that even the most affluent parts of Europe are only 70% as affluent as the US. Can anyone doubt that their first step toward this goal was the creation of the Euro? They need to take care with it. Their currency laws are, as of yet, not up to the task. As new as the Euro is and as relatively debt free as it is, it is already being laundered on a massive scale.

We’ve been at this for over 200 years and they are of the mind that they can acheive it in a decade or so.

And the terrorists? They don’t care how much Europe capitulates or how sympathetic they are. Europe will still be as much a target as anyone else. Can you say Spain?

Nov 3, 2004 - 1:09 pm 3. Barbara Skolaut:

Authorities in Amsterdam are reporting the arrests of eight “Islamic radicals” with respect to the murder.

Gee, ya’ think?

I was sure it would be Norwegian Lutherens. Or possibly radical Amish.

This is what is known as a DUH moment.

Nov 3, 2004 - 1:12 pm 4. Rhod:

This topic was discussed at length on Tim Blair’s Aussie blog too (now in archives). I noted that by 2020, the majority of males under age eighteen in Holland will be Muslim immigrants, or first generation of same. Can Sharia be far behind?

Native Dutch seem particularly unsuited to the type of effort necessary to encourage assimilation of the 30,000 Muslims who enter the country each year. Holland, in my mind, is the canary in the mine. What happens there will be the signpost for the rest of Western Europe with this particular demographic challenge.

A Hollander posting on Blair’s blog describes the situation there first hand; it is very grim, and he doubts Dutch authorities have the will to prosecute this crime.

Nov 3, 2004 - 1:13 pm 5. syn:

Fortuyn’s comment on “fear of being called a racist” gave me an eerie sense of what I experienced over the last three years living in NYC as a Republican accused of being a Nazi.

Van Gogh death is a reminder to me that I can no longer cower to the fear.

Nov 3, 2004 - 1:19 pm 6. Terrye:

This horrible murder does seem to have galvanzied people in Europe.

I think they really believed that if they were open minded and tolerant that somehow people like this would not hurt them.

I just hope there are not more instances like this. I saw the other day that more graves had been vandalized in a Jewish French cemetary, I wonder who could have done that?

Nov 3, 2004 - 1:24 pm 7. chris_m:

You remember the famous social science debate of hawks and doves? Well it seems as the tolerant Dutch have all become doves, and the hawks are amassing, just wait for the bloodbath.

You gotta have some hawks, sorry you doves out there.

Nov 3, 2004 - 1:46 pm 8. Coisty:

The second man to be gunned down for speaking truth to power in a small country were political assasination was completely unknown. Just imagine the outcry if two Muslim leaders or intellectual lefties had been assasinated. There would have been warnings all round of the “white supremacist” threat and the need to combat racism and intolerance. It will be intereting to see if this murder galvanises the growing resistance to Islamisation in the Netherlands or causes them to cower.

Nov 3, 2004 - 2:28 pm 9. lindenen:

It scares me to think that they may need to one day soon resort to mass deportations.

Nov 3, 2004 - 2:43 pm 10. PeterArgus:

From the second article you post to.

And no, it’s not a time bomb ticking, the analogy that some media recycle

endlessly. It’s a gradual, step by step process in which a disgruntled fanatic

minority on the fringe is able to derail and impair liberties and freedoms,

and thus gradually society itself.

A society that does not defend its fundamental values is doomed. There

is a discussion going on on Daily Kos about values – based on the alleged exit

poll finding that many voters based their vote on values. Kos takes this to

mean values of the Christian Right exhibited by pushbutton issues like abortion

and gay rights. He quotes Obama’s speech at the convention on values of the

more liberal type – acceptance, inclusion. Not bad, but I think he misses the

real story here. Visitors to Roger’s place do not include large numbers of social

conservatives. However I think we all share a belief that Western culture

and mores are worth defending. And we believe in the idea of America as

described in our founding documents. These ideas are at the basis of social

conservative thought as well even though we may not see eye to eye with them

on the pushbutton issues. Sure the left says they do too but they are skeptical

that America generally practices what it preaches.

 

Nov 3, 2004 - 3:00 pm 11. Knucklehead:

PeterArgus,

Kos takes this to mean values of the Christian Right exhibited by pushbutton issues like abortion and gay rights. He quotes Obama’s speech at the convention on values of the more liberal type – acceptance, inclusion. Not bad, but I think he misses the real story here. Visitors to Roger’s place do not include large numbers of social conservatives. However I think we all share a belief that Western culture and mores are worth defending.

IMHO you are absolutely correct. Apparently people like “Kos” don’t have a very inclusive notion of “values”. I personally value diversity in ways the PC crowd apparently haven’t even imagined. Oddly enough they seem to have some legalistic definition that encompasses nothing more, or less, than race, gender, and sexual identity. To me diversity includes something I define, for lack of any better term, “background”. There is almost an infinite variety of diversity of “background” which yields an astonishing variety of richness when it comes to observations, prioritizations, methods for going about problem solving, etc. Get enough diversity looking at a problem and the problem will be a former-problem in an amazingly short time.

Try to have this discussion with a PC bigot and they seem to immediately assume one is operating under some sort of hidden code that is used to deny something to people of color or other PC-prefered identity group. The reality is nothing of the sort. Ignoring false designations and focusing, instead, on trying to gather together true diversity yields, invariably, a richness of diversity that boggles the minds of the PC diversity pushers.

Oh, so how do I draw this back to what Kos was apparently saying. In the Kos world they immediately focus, laser-like, on some small issue and assume that if you disagree with them on that particular thing then you must be exculsionary or bigoted about everything else that has nothing to do with that issue. If, for example, one expresses opposition to SSM it follows, to the a mind like Kos’s, that one harbors complete and total bigotry toward gays. And no evidence to the contrary can disabuse them of this notion.

The associations just don’t make sense. “I don’t like the idea of steel tariffs” immediately translates, to this sort of mind, into “Well, then, you must be against Bush!” or “I support Bush” somehow magically translates into “I support steel tariffs”. Absolutist thinking that worships “nuance” but has no idea what “nuance” is.

I have to say the combination of extreme mental stress layered on top of extreme mental fatigue layered on top of a small dose of adult beverage frees the mind to explore much territory. Of course the territory turns out to be uninteresting upon further reflection but what the heck, perception is everything and if one feels as if one is climbing Everest then, well, one is Hillary, isn’t one?

Nov 3, 2004 - 3:52 pm 12. nikita:

perhaps this really was a wake up call for the Dutch:

Netherlands Calls for Hizballah to be Placed on EU Terrorism List

Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot called for the Lebanese Hizballah organization to be placed on the EU’s list of terrorist organizations in a bid to dry up its financing from Europe. The Netherlands has drawn a distinction between Hizballah’s civilian and armed wings, but Bot told parliament they were both dedicated to the same ends. The Netherlands currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU. (AFP/Yahoo)

via Daily Alert

Nov 3, 2004 - 4:56 pm

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