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Democracy bites back, Dutch style

May 12, 2002 ~ 4:50 p.m.

Amazing what only a day�s worth of news can reveal.

I was going to comment about the necessity of immigrants assimilating into American society and culture, and I was going to link this to the recent assassination of Pim Fortuyn, the �far� right-wing Dutch politician.

I intended to write a discourse on how the intolerance of an immigrant community in the Netherlands�a Muslim community�was hostile to his policies. Far right-wing policies? Hardly. Fortuyn took a pro-legalization stance on soft drugs, though he disdained the use of hard drugs, encouraged laxer rules on euthanasia, and was openly gay and who said on a BBC Radio 3 interview just days before his death, �[Sexuality] is so important and everyone should be able to deal with it in a way that comes naturally to them.� In this, he stood for the tolerant society that all visitors to Rotterdam or Amsterdam have witnessed for themselves. The Dutch had their own society and culture, their own ideals and beliefs. A Christian nation that stood for tolerance beyond what most Christians thought decent. But it wasn�t Dutch Christians who stirred a backlash against the outspoken and flamboyant Fortuyn.

For the record, Fortuyn advocated greater private sector participation in health care, a tough, no-nonsense crime policy (pledging to raise the numbers of cases solved from 15 to 35 percent after four years), a status quo approach to the environment, and advocated that the Netherlands become a republic�all central to his image as a man of the Right. However, it was his anti-immigrant stance that caused a controversy and branded him a racist.

Fortuyn was no J�rg Haider�the xenophobic Austrian politican�or Jean-Marie le Pen. His argument was that Holland was full, time was needed to assimilate the teeming number of immigrants already in the country (he never advocated deporting immigrants as Haider and Le Pen are wont to do), and was, in particular, concerned about Dutch society changing for good under a vocal and powerful minority of Islamic immigrants who threatened his idea of a tolerant society. In his recent book, Against the Islamicization of our Culture, Fortuyn wrote that Islam was a �backward-looking and intolerant culture.� Regardless of how strong these words seem, it does appear that these immigrants think they have a right to demand their culture outstrip that of the land to which they migrated�the land that accepted them and allowed them a shot at democratic life, which they are rejecting.

Should there be any wonder why as much as 23 percent of the Dutch electorate was prepared to cast their vote for Fortuyn in the May 15 general elections? The Dutch were burying themselves alive under concessions to a minority in the same vein as Americans. Yes, folks, there is such a thing as being too tolerant.

This is what I was going to write about.

But then, the very next day (in the May 9 news), it was revealed that Fortuyn was shot by an animal-rights advocate who did not care for humans at all. There is no evidence which has surfaced that would suggest that Fortuyn was in favor of vivisection or particularly hostile to animal welfare. In fact, as Martin Fletcher of The Times put it in his report: �The image is of a super-vegan killing the man who aspired to become the country�s first gay Prime Minister; a man so compassionate that he would �protect the fleas on a dog,� as [another] acquaintance put it yesterday, coolly pumping five bullets to a human�s head and chest from point-blank range. The victim (Fortuyn), moreover, was a man whose single most endearing trait was the love of his two pet dogs.�

I can sort of see how some people can end up caring more for animals than their own species. The possibilities for this state of mind do exist. The assailant was likely a man who had been ostracized all of his life. But to see no good in the human species at all and to so brazenly end a decent human being�s life is despicable. And the shooter did no good at all to the animal-rights cause that he advocated. When loonies like this act in the name of animal rights, it�s no wonder the majority of people get turned off the cause.

So in the end, Fortuyn�s life was ended as a result of no policy or philosophy. Fortuyn�s crime was to be human. And crackpots like the man who shot him will always breed in a democracy. There�s the sad part.

� M.E.M.

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