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| Europe |
| Bumping Into Boundaries in a Land of Tolerance |
| 2006-09-14 |
| There are two murders in “Murder in Amsterdam.” The first took place on May 6, 2002, when an animal-rights advocate, for obscure reasons, gunned down Pim Fortuyn, a charismatic politician with a populist program combining law-and-order conservatism, opposition to immigration and gay liberation. About a year and a half later a young Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent, incensed by a film critical of Islam, shot the filmmaker-provocateur Theo van Gogh dead in broad daylight. As a parting gesture, he pinned a manifesto to the twitching body with a knife. It was all, as the prime minister of the Netherlands put it, “un-Dutch.” Well, perhaps more Dutch than it seemed, Ian Buruma proposes in his shrewd, subtly argued inquiry into the tensions and resentments underlying two of the most shocking events in the recent history of the Netherlands. For one thing, both killers traveled to the crime scene by bicycle. More seriously, both murders represented the sort of highly pitched moral confrontation that could be regarded as a Dutch specialty. The killings were, in a sense, “principled murders.” Mr. Buruma writes ,“It is a characteristic of Calvinism to hold moral principles too rigidly, and this might be considered a vice as well as a virtue of the Dutch.” |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #3 Helen, please cancel my travel plans to Amsterdam for the foreseeable future |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-09-14 21:23 |
| #2 People are missing the important point. The west is largely based on the idea of reciprocation. Most reciprocation is positive sum such as capitalism (i.e. acknowledgement of others property rights), which is why we don't live in self-inflicted poverty stricken shitholes like most muslims. Some reciprocation is mutual i.e. what we call "tolerance" is actually reciprocal indifference i.e. they might not like the bible and you might not like them buggering each other but you agree not to stop each other. HOWEVER when there is no reciprocation such as islmic immigration there will be conflict. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles in Blairistan 2006-09-14 05:54 |
| #1 “Van Gogh, more than anyone, had warned about the dangers of violent religious passions, and yet he behaved as though they held no consequences for him.” That's because they weren't supposed to. People aren't supposed to die just because they hold unpopular opinions. As to perpetuatinging an ultra-violent, genocidal, mysogynistic and intolerant religion ... maybe that's another matter. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-14 02:45 |