Everyone is a liberal until they get mugged.

[dude1394]

Holland is starting to "get" it, in more ways than one. This is a powerful article about our cultural ancestors plight and the upcoming clash of civilizations.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...8514_1,00.html

Putting the fear of God into Holland
By Brian Moynahan
The Dutch have rejected liberalism in response to Islamic immigration. Some say they are now too hardline. So what can the rest of Europe learn from their crisis?
Not long ago, Holland prided itself as being the most tolerant and welcoming country in Europe for immigrants and asylum seekers. It had the credentials to prove it. So many have settled there, ethnic "minorities" are often in a majority. In the great Dutch cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague, the newcomers already outnumber the native Dutch among under-20-year-olds. They will soon be an absolute majority.

Although the slump that followed the 1973 oil shock removed the urgent need to recruit labour, the Dutch accepted that the "guest workers" in the country could remain. The policy was to create a multicultural society in which cultural and ethnic differences were accepted and appreciated.

Some immigrants came from former Dutch colonies. The two largest groups, however, Turkish and Moroccan, had no historic links with the Netherlands. The Dutch nonetheless accepted the reunification of families, and the practice of marrying partners from the country of origin, even though these can have an eight- or tenfold multiplier effect on overall numbers. Asylum seekers then arrived, in numbers that escalated from 3,500 in 1985 to over 43,000 in 2000.

The figures were pro rata among the highest in the EU. Illegals came, too, mainly after 1990, with estimates running from 100,000 to 200,000. The Dutch supplied funding for mosques, religious schools, language courses and housing. They passed special legislation so Moroccans could have dual nationality, as Moroccan nationality is inalienable under Moroccan law. Political correctness, of the sort that produced Harry Enfield's famously relaxed Amsterdam policemen, reigned. Issues felt at street level — immigration, crime, culture, national identity — were seldom discussed by the political elite.
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How did this happen? The first open shift came in 2001, with 9/11. Frits Bolkestein, the leader of the VVD Conservative Liberals, had struck a chord in the 1990s with his insistence that immigrants conform to western culture, but immigration issues were largely the preserve of "racists" and "crypto-Nazis" on the political margins. Then came reports that the atrocities in New York and Washington had been greeted with cheers in parts of Rotterdam. Forum, the Dutch institute for multicultural development, commissioned an opinion poll of Dutch Muslims. It showed that 48% had "complete understanding" and 27% "some understanding" of the attacks. Overall, only 62% disapproved. Wim Kok, the then prime minister, expressed his shock. The poll was said to be "unbalanced".
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The Dutch may be drawing the wrong conclusions, but they are surely right to be asking the questions. Western Europe is undergoing the largest population shift since the 7th and 8th centuries. This is happening just as the advent of a federal Europe, and the decline of traditional faith, are already straining its old identity.

Is the EU part of the problem, or should it impose a solution? Some say that it is undermining the validity of the nation state, without creating a coherent alternative. The EU is fine for the elimination of customs barriers, but can it cope with more? "Europe has no cultural or political identity," argues Shmuel Trigano, a professor at the University of Paris-Nanterre. "Nor does it have common values.

Its capital in Brussels is only an administrative and bureaucratic centre." The crisis in European identity, he has written, is likely to have "unforeseen and profound consequences".

Confusion abounds on issues with historic implications. The European Commission recently recommended that talks for Turkish membership of the EU should go ahead. Yet Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the chief architect of the proposed EU constitution, opposed this on the precise grounds that it was "incompatible with European culture, which is Christian".

Or was Christian. Europeans have largely opted out of Christendom at the time of both a new federalism and a Muslim challenge. The number of French who say they attend church regularly has shrunk to 7.7%. Though 90% of Italians call themselves Catholic, fewer than 30% go to Mass. In Spain, only 14% of young Spaniards are churchgoers, a 50% decline in less than four years. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, has said that Christianity in Britain is "almost vanquished".

Cardinal Adrianis Simonis of Utrecht believes that the "spiritual vacuity" of Dutch society has left the Netherlands open to an Islamic cultural takeover. "Today we have discovered that we are disarmed in the face of the Islamic danger," he said recently. He linked this to "the spectacle of extreme moral decadence and spiritual decline" that Europe offered to young people.

That bolded part sounds familiar. Hmm