The argument that the Dutch are tolerant needs to be addressed as I don’t think it’s an accurate description. Here’s what I said earlier:

Dutch tolerance doesn't necessarily find its origins in liberalism. Above all, it's pragmatism that has driven the Dutch to adopt a level of flexibility with regards to social issues that is hard to find anywhere else, but that doesn't make them tolerant.

The Dutch rebellion against the Spanish king which lasted from 1568 to 1648 has often been qualified as the struggle of the protestant Dutch against their catholic superiors in Madrid. True, but only up to a point. There was no such thing as the “protestant Dutch”, and the war against Spain was an insurgency incited by nobility and wealthy elites whose grievances were primarily focused on the taxation levels they were subjected to. Impoverished ordinary citizens were initially passive and the protestant-catholic divide in Holland is something that remains a fact of life to this very date. The quest for economic freedom was pragmatist: we need freedom to trade and generate wealth, freedom to trade required freedom of information which in turn helped spawn religious openness. The latter actually turned out to have huge benefits: Portuguese Jews, French Huguenots and English Pilgrims (historical note: the ancestors of the Bush family set sail for the new world from Holland) contributed to a vibrant economy largely based on trade (the Dutch East Indies) and services (banking, insurance) with science, arts and the humanities benefiting from the wealth that flowed into Dutch coffers from all over the world. For a brief period of time during the 17th century, the Golden Age as we call it, Holland was the most powerful nation in the world. No successful economy, especially an urban one, can thrive without a fresh influx of ideas, transparency, freedom of information, and the rule of law.

I spent seven years of my life in Hong Kong, equally a city-state that for its very survival as a separate entity had to rely on unfettered trade and thus a free flow of information. The British successfully implemented this and to date the Chinese, with a few aberrations, have managed to keep the fragrant harbour a free market. The Chinese who make up about 95% of Hong Kong’s population are by nature not very open or tolerant but out of sheer pragmatism they have put up with a lot of stuff that under different circumstances they would happily banish from their streets. The same is true for the Dutch, who at the root have a very peculiar culture that frowns upon achievement and non-conformity. A nation that coined the phrase “act normal, that’s strange enough” to me is not a hotbed of uniqueness and innovation. Conformity is both prevalent and expected. So underneath the reality-based approach to make things work (for more reading check my discussion of pillarization) is a very bourgeois culture that despite its adherence to freedom is not all that tolerant.

Demographic realities and the quest for economic growth after the Second World War led to a huge influx of immigrants from Southern Europe and North Africa. Economic growth was nothing short of phenomenal and in the late 1960s this coincided with the soft revolution that started at universities but pretty soon took over much of the country: women’s emancipation, gay rights, affirmative action, decriminalization of soft drugs and the right the participate at every level with a form of democratic participation swept the country. Again the Dutch sense of pragmatism enabled a quick adoption and institutionalization of the various demands, but we should not forget that the Dutch well had been poisoned by a devastating occupation by Nazi Germany from 1940 to 1945. Events of those years gave an enormous boost to minority rights and to a culture that would transform itself into a benchmark of political correctness. A nation that stood by idly when 100,000 of it fellow Jewish citizens were butchered was ridden with a sense of guilt for generations to come. As a result Muslim immigrants to date have been put on a pedestal and have been treated with a soft glove not so much because of Dutch tolerance but as a result of simple economic realities combined with a deep sense of guilt.

From that perspective we can try and figure out where the Dutch should go in the near future. No, populists like Wilders may enjoy stellar poll ratings now but his solutions are neither economically pragmatic, nor very creative. If there’s a struggle with Islam then passing on the opportunity to embrace a secular entity like Turkey, which Wilders advocates, is not exactly a hallmark of outside the box thinking. A better option would be for the established parties would be to look at the legacy of the incredibly gifted Fortuyn who combined a tough approach to immigration with a clear sense of economic needs. Not only was he as a PhD in sociology well aware of the dramatic impact of social change, as a student of economic history he knew where the solution to the Dutch conundrum ultimately was. He was called a racist when he argued that Dutch cities deteriorated when city centers were taken over by impoverished immigrants while the Dutch middle class disappeared to the suburbs. But he was right, the cradle of Dutch wealth has always been formed by the vibrant cities and they stand to gain most not from tolerance, but from simple goal oriented pragmatism. The comparison with America is interesting as the “blue state – red state” analogy points to something similar. Coastal urban communities require openness, social change and economic freedom as the key ingredients for economic success, competitive strength and continued renewal. As such they tend to be more open to certain liberal attitudes but that doesn’t mean they are tolerant.

The same holds true for the Dutch. Their approach to the world changed by the trauma inflicted by the German occupation, the economic abundance of the post-war years and the transformation of a liberal revolution into a stifling politically correct straightjacket. Everyone argued: “the Dutch are so tolerant” and the Dutch proudly stated “we are so tolerant” but in reality their pragmatism had gone haywire. Fortuyn drew ridicule when he argued to resurrect the Golden Age, but his critics not only missed the point that he was able to cast this call in today’s economic terms and realities, they equally missed the argument that it could unleash a dynamic that would help quell the social ills that are now plaguing Dutch life.

At the moment, there are no Dutch renewers or reformers to be found. But a second Dutch revolution is still possible by returning to the core values that helped build a prosperous Dutch city state in the past while at the same time taking on radical Islam. It would require a reformer, someone to break with the statist economic models and leftist inflexibility that have dominated Dutch society in the post-war years. If that sense of pragmatism results in tolerance, great, but tolerance should never dictate pragmatism.