  |
28 March 2007
The fascinating, lecturing, finger-wagging, incomprehensible Dutch
I have had close contact with Holland and the Dutch for almost forty years. One of the highlights of my life was living and working in Holland 1971-73. I was at that time a pretty naive callow young man. Those who have been reading my comments would not be surprised to hear that even in my youth I never entertained ideas of the Left. Indeed, one of my enduring memories of Holland is of the manager of the export department of the Amsterdam-Rotterdam Bank, where I had brief employment, saying in some frustration to me: 'What's wrong with you? Most young men of your age are full of revolutionary ideas, wanting to change the world, wanting to kick over the traces...you've got the ideas of a sixty-year-old.'
I would like to report that I said in reply that I took that as a compliment. But the truth is that the remark went over my head. I think I mumbled an indistinct reply to the effect that I had an opinion and, by golly, I was going to stick to it. I may have been intimidated in some respects and in some situations, but I was not going to agree with views that weren't mine. I think also that I, in my artless manner of the time, did not express my opinions about Dutch society in a tactful way. I remember saying to a group of young very liberal Dutch people that an insane liberalism was running amok in Holland. I could not understand how a generally sober-minded people who had a real warmth for their country's traditions and customs could subscribe to such delusory political ideals.
There's a big story behind all this, but suffice it to say at this point that I was aware of the liberal tendency of not only educated Dutch people but Dutch society in general, and that I thought (and sometimes said) that it would all come back to bite them in the bum eventually. There is no gloating when I observe that after thirty odd years I have been proven right.
Dutch society has been for years held up as a model of liberalism. With the political assassination of Pim Fortuyn and the grisly Islamic murder of Theo van Gogh (both defending Dutch liberal society) there has been a huge awakening.
The Dutch Report aims at showing how much things have changed in The Netherlands, and that Holland can no longer be held up as the model liberal society. There is legislation and debate underway in Holland that would earn the charge of racist and Islamophobic from the PC-class in Australia.
Note: Translations of reports from the Dutch media will be mine.
  |