The Smallest Minority

Good Grief the crazy Dutch. As I am visiting every blog in Arizona I see tons of stuff I wish to link too. I might try to link to that article you wrote yesterday

OK for why I am here
Please read this urgent appeal from Conservatives and Republicans to all political bloggers in Arizona
http://theponderingamerican.blogspot.com/2006/08/urgent-post-to-all-political-arizona.html
Uh and this isnt spam please read yall

Sweet Jumping Jesus! Somebody tell the Supreme Court! They simply MUST start basing decisions on this!

Hmmm, it says they might get 1000 votes. They could just round up those thousand voters and stick them in a big tube and fire that tube into space.

Keep in mind this is the land of other goodies, such as infant euthanasia and polygamy. The Dutch are probably the weirdest people in all of Europe (it must be the French influence), but they are at least consistent with our own home-grown lefty kooks. They are all for the broadest interpretation of freedom when it comes to protecting bizarre and libertine practices, but not when it comes to fundamental freedoms like possession of arms.

Sarah, I don't think poligamy is allowed in Holland.

Whatever the case, the core if your statement is valid. It's a perversion of liberty, I daresay.

So I guess by the same precident there could be a restored National Socialists Dutch workers party, whose main goal is to conquer Europe, etain and murder all non-Aryans, and this would be perfectly allright in the uber-tolerant Netherlands.

Actually, that may not be too far off since they already tolerate Western-hating Islamists within their own borders.

Crazy.....

Fabio,

Polygamy is effectively permitted in Holland, in the form of civil unions.

DFWMTX,

Ironically, the Dutch are actually leading the rest of Europe in terms of dealing with unassimilated immigrants. They are kicking out large numbers of Muslim non-citizens, and requiring that all immigrants take Dutch language/culture classes. Their affinity for unrestrained access to the more visceral pleasures of life may have something to do with it, as Muslims tend to be quite the party-poopers.

In defense of the Netherlands, they have a very open political system, much more so than ours. This allows mistakes to be made, but also allows mistakes to be undone. In this case now pedophiles will have an identifiable group to join, and thereby be recognized, identified and watched. More so than now, anyway. If you think the NL cops wont be watching them closely, think again.

The NL was among the first, and may have been the first, to lessen penalties on drug use, legalizing possesion and tolerating sales, with the result being the almost complete elimination of violent drug wars and police corruption by drug dealers, with no increase in drug users.

Sex work is legal and regulated, with the result that trafficing in women is almost unheard of, and spread of disease almost eliminated in that part of the population. Compare that to the degrading, exploitative, disease ridden, slave market that exists in the prostitution market in most of the US.

As noted above, they are leading the attempt to assimilate immigrants rather than letting them isolate themselves into pools of festering violence, as in France, England and Germany. This may have been the result of the assasination of Pym Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, and other problems, but the fact is, it is the Netherlands, and not other countries, that are doing something.


It is possible to own a firearm there, though the restrictions are tough. Not as as bad as places like England, but not as easy as, say Switzerland. There is debate on this, but not at our level.


So far as civil unions goes, what business is it of anyone how people choose to peacfully spend their lives together? No one is forcing anyone to join in them, nor is anyone forcing churches or other religous groups to accept unions or marriages that they do not agree to. It seems like a sensible policy to me to let people make a voluntary, legally binding commitment to each other under whatever auspices they choose, church or civil.

So the NL isn't perfect, but in many social and political areas they have outdone the US and other countries in finding peaceful solutions to problems we continue to ignore or make worse with blue-nosed intolerance, religios-based ignorance and hatred.

If ever I found myself a religous or political refugee from the US, the NL is one of the places I would try to go to.

tomWright,

Thanks for filling in some details I didn't know about Holland.

Well said, tomWright.

...we continue to ignore or make worse with blue-nosed intolerance, religios-based ignorance and hatred.

Hatred of what, exactly, tom? However misguided, criminalization of things like drug use and prostitution is an attempt to enforce virtue on people for their own good. Christians do have this unfortunate tendency; but I'm having a hard time figuring out how hatred factors into it.

Incidentally, NL is tightening its gun control laws.