The Dutch Adrift
Despite what you may hear these days about the Netherlands, it wasn’t always a European center of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Although a kind of libertarian humanism, typified by Erasmus of Rotterdam, does seem to have characterized Dutch society for centuries, it wasn’t quite the secular humanism of today.
Holland’s current aimlessness, its society’s loss of roots, the relativism that guides its academic elites and its generally feckless political class have made it incapable of any real assertion of national self or any meaningful defense of beliefs. The national identity has been hollowed out over the years; traditional Dutch beliefs have been forsaken; and the past has been extirpated. Nihilism of this sort, regardless of the number of tulips that garland it, is an insufficient foundation on which to base liberal, democratic values or a vibrant, civil society.
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