A Dynamic

In a Front Page Magazine article about the killing of Theo van Gogh by a Dutch Jihadi, a thought came to me while reading this paragraph:

Holland is a country where drugs, euthanasia, and gay marriage are legal, and prostitutes and the military are unionized—simply put, a real country as close as possible to a liberal, tolerant, multiculturalist utopia on earth. And that, as the Dutch have belatedly discovered and become angry about, is precisely the problem. This belated anger—two years after the equally shocking assassination of gay, environmentalist, and equally libertine populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn by an “animal rights” militant claiming to “protect” Muslims—explains the post-van Gogh attacks on Muslim schools and mosques (there have been retaliatory attacks against churches, as well) in a country famous for its strong distaste for argument. Add to that the fact that prior to Fortuyn there had been no political murder in the Netherlands since the 1584 assassination of Wilhelm of Orange, the nation’s founder, and one begins to understand why one murder in Amsterdam may have an even more profound impact on Dutch culture and behavior than 3,000 deaths in America on 9/11.

What jumped out at me was: "Holland is a country where drugs, euthanasia, and gay marriage are legal, and prostitutes and the military are unionized—simply put, a real country as close as possible to a liberal, tolerant, multiculturalist utopia on earth. [Holland is] a country famous for its strong distaste for argument." And it struck me that in the US after 9/11, no mosques or schools were attacked, but in Holland they were.

Here is my thought: Could it be that a society (Old Europe) which has an ethos of unquestioned (and it is; there is no abortion debate in Europe whatsoever, nor is there much debate--yet--about the welfare statism that is killing European civilization), bland, socialistic relativism, and where being argumentative is frowned upon, could it be that this sort of passivity means that there is no emotional safety valve whatsoever, so that when sufficient provocation comes, a surprising level of violence is the result?

I have a vague intuition that sometime in the next few decades, extreme "at each others throats" violence is going to break out in Europe again. The bovine ideal of tolerant-of-anything, docile, egalitarian, no-one-should-try-to-get-ahead-of-anyone-else, eat-drink-and-be-merry, six-weeks-of-holiday conformity, just isn't in accord with healthy human nature. These people are going to go berzerk.

Have you ever seen the old Star Trek episode, "Return of the Archons"? This is the one where they go to a planet (which is in a sort of small cowboy town Victorian era) where everybody is super polite, childlike, peaceful, and under the powerful mind control of a central computer (named Landru, whose motto is "Peace and contentment will fill you."). Once a year, they have something called "Festival". At the Red Hour, the clock strikes 6 PM, the computer releases the mind control, and everyone goes nuts, getting into fisticuffs, raping, looting, and burning down the town.

Does a European Red Hour approach?

I've had the thought that when, say, France, decides it has to do something about its "Moslem Problem", the viciousness of the roundups, arrests, and deportations will be something to behold. Those who have complained, complained, complained about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib will finally show us as the mere pikers we really are. Meanwhile the US will continue along pretty much as it always has...