Posted on 12/29/2001 12:10:35 AM PST by madprof98
It's the Christian Coalition's worst nightmare. Gay and lesbian marriage, prostitution, marijuana, abortion on demand, physician-assisted suicide -- all are part of everyday reality in the Netherlands, and completely legal. What's more, the Dutch are happy with it, and the experiments are spreading elsewhere in Europe, as described by journalist Gilbert Charles in the December 7 issue of the French weekly news magazine L'Express.
Beginning April 1, gays and lesbians have been able to marry. No "domestic partnerships" here -- these are full-fledged marriages indistinguishable from heterosexual marriages, and bearing all the same rights, including the right of adoption.
In May, the Netherlands fully legalized medically-assisted suicide. Prostitution has been legal since 1999, and is treated as just another ordinary business. Abortion has been legal since 1984, and the law now allows abortions through the 22nd week (about 5 months). Marijuana has been on sale in misnamed "coffee shops" since 1976.
Predictions of social disaster have not materialized. The Netherlands has one of Europe's lowest rates of abortion, including for teenage pregnancies. Marijuana use is no higher than in France, and the rate of addiction to cocaine and heroin is half what it is in France. That suggests that legalizing marijuana makes it less likely that youthful experimenters will try more potent narcotics. Moreover, permissive Dutch policies have reduced the spread of HIV.
The Netherlands' liberal policies enjoy wide public approval. 87% of the population approves of medically-assisted suicide. Even among Catholics, 70% favor abortion on demand, and more than half the priests say they are ready to marry homosexuals within the church. Resistance is limited to three small Protestant fundamentalist parties that hold only 8 out of 150 seats in the lower house of parliament.
Not surprisingly, the Dutch example is spreading. Belgium and Switzerland have recently decriminalized possession of marijuana. Belgium is preparing a law to legalize gay and lesbian marriage. Germany is getting ready to legalize prostitution.
But not everyone is happy in the Netherlands. Prostitutes and houses of prostitution complain that they now being taxed, that they have to submit to hygiene inspections, and that they must carry health insurance.
Compiled by Andrew Reding
Either way, looks like socialism and a service based economy are working out well for the Dutch.
Well... let's not get carried away.
In any case, decadence and societal decay aren't anything new. If Sodom may or may not be have happened, we know for a fact that the great Greek civilization experienced nearly-similar symptoms before it decomposed.
Long live the Dutch empire. Or not.
This is an interesting gimmick - throw in a name that will ensure readership of an otherwise vapid and stupid article. It's like that guy who wrote a book titled, 'Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot.' If he hadn't put the name of a superstar on the cover, nobody would have even looked at the book.
The Dutch can have their society if they want it. Of course, it will spread through the rest of western civilization eventually. Men always tend toward their own destruction if they forget about G-d, and men always forget about G-d. Then, when civilization is fallen and men realize they aren't as all powerful as they thought they were, they turn back to G-d and He forgives.
It has happened many times in history, and it will happen until history is no more.
But the Christian Coalition will ignore all of this because it has nothing to do with US politics and the Christians will do their best to pick up the pieces during and after the fall of western civilization.
Shalom.
I wonder why we haven't heard of weather disasters, terrorist bombings, or serial murders in the Netherlands.
If God is using the weather and terrorists to punish the U.S., why haven't we heard of daily disasters striking the Netherlands?
He described the conditions aboard this ship. There were three bars: one for the officers, one for the senior petty officers and one of the lower enlisted ranks. Moreover, the crew was completely coed, and it was more like a party cruise than a fighting ship. While this may sound pretty good to an 18-year old seaman, I rather doubt that their combat efficiency would measure up to ours (not that we don't have our share of "love boats"). The attitude of the Dutch navy pretty much reflects life in their homeland.
That's why the whole pro-dope, pro-porn, pro-sodomy set-up "works" there. Taxpayer monies are used to pay for teen abortions and contraceptives, to benefically police and medically treat prostitutes and their clientele, and to support dopers who would rather spend their days getting high than being profitably employed. Drug-related crime is low because the dopers can have their dope and an undemanding life too--all at taxpayer expense ("uitkering").
There are vigorous hate-crime laws in effect that stifle public criticism of homosexual behavior, so naturally anyone who is asked will tell you he or she is perfectly happy with the whole sodomite scheme.
A few heroic Dutch capitalists carry the entire sorry abomination their backs.
All libertarians in California who are cheering that nanny state's pro-dope, pro-sodomy changes should peer deep into the Dutch experience. It is their future.
Well, let's see - the dikes broke in the early 50s in the "Springflud". Drowned 40% of the country!
There was the fireworks thing last year. There are others. They wanted to build a 30 story pig barn in downtown Rotterdam.
It's a small place. It floods easily. One Cat 1 hurricane and it's gone for good.
Of a more serious immediate nature, two things you can do to make your own life much more pleasant - the first is to never make use of the services of any physician who trained or worked there - the probability of latching onto a "killer doc" is too great a risk. The second is to never put a Nederlander in charge of your cashregister. They have entirely too many personal vices to trust them with money these days.
There, that said, I suppose you were questioning whether or not the Dutch are paying for their sins. Well, they are. You just don't hear about it because there are so few of them. You will hear less as there are even fewer. The whole country should just disappear, people and all, within the next 25 to 50 years - it will be but a passing memory - important to the history of New York City but not much else.
Perhaps you can distinguish for me how taking their wealth and handing it to their drug-abusing losers is somehow worse than taking our wealth and paying to hunt down and imprison ours (not to mention feed, clothe, and pay for their cable TV and lawyers).
Not that I approve of either course of action. They should be left to depend on voluntary charity, as long as they don't harm or threaten another. BTW I consider abortion to be "harming another".
He described the conditions aboard this ship. There were three bars: one for the officers, one for the senior petty officers and one of the lower enlisted ranks. Moreover, the crew was completely coed, and it was more like a party cruise than a fighting ship. While this may sound pretty good to an 18-year old seaman, I rather doubt that their combat efficiency would measure up to ours (not that we don't have our share of "love boats"). The attitude of the Dutch navy pretty much reflects life in their homeland.
Well hey, sign me up for the Dutch Navy!
Yeah, it sucks when not everyone in the world holds the same war lust that the Anglo/Prussian societies do. Here we are, trying to keep people at some articficially high level of blood lust every ten years or so, glorifying war for the State above all other things, and there go those wacky Dutch thinking that life is about fun and enjoying oneself. While I think that their socialist economics are wacked out, at least they seem to understand that life isn't about a constant need to kill, constrain or limit individuals (outside of the sphere of economics at least).
And contrary to popular belief among NeoCons, America was at one time a pretty fun place to live as well. But that was before we readopted our British/German "motherland" lust for war and death. Remember the saying "no entangling alliances", the thought that a standing army was actually wrong and bad, and the idea that the Pursuit of Happiness on an individual level, free from puritanical crusaders backed by the state, was a good thing?
Thank goodness we woke up during the 19th century and became puritans again, else we might have missed out on all those wars which eventually set up this nice, fine National Security, Homeland Defense, Safety before Liberty State we have now.
How dare the Dutch remind us that life doesn't have to be that way.
What I really remember was this incredibly cute little redheaded petty officer...
17:28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
17:29 But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
17:30 Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed
The Netherlands lost a lot of good, hard working people during the Nazi occupation, and even more to emigration to Canada, Australia, and the USA after World War II. In my experience, the Dutch migrants are among the most upright, God-fearing Christian people you'll ever meet.
Then consider who stayed behind.
"Is there any reason to lament the death of a civilization that has done so much to contribute to its own demise?"
--- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
When would you date the 19th century turn to blood lust, nimrod, I guess before Francis Scott Key wrote the Third verse of the Star Spangled Banner:
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
No blood lust at all in these pacifist lyrics, right?
Uh-huh. If you go and see the horrendous social mess Amsterdam is in, they'll say, like Clinton, "Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"
When the power of the govt is used to institute what today you feel is right, they will sometime in the future use that power to do what is wrong.
Well said. Those that believe in God will be around a lot longer than the Netherlands. This is not the Christian Coalition's worst nightmare, it is Netherland's worst nightmare.
When would you date the 19th century turn to blood lust, nimrod, I guess before Francis Scott Key wrote the Third verse of the Star Spangled Banner:
Wow, you even started with a personal attack. Thanks, I suppose your argument is that weak that you would need to bolster it with name calling.
There is self defense, which the colonists were engaged in against the British crown, on one side, which I have no problem with whatsoever. On the other side of the coin we find states and people who see the need to remain in a constant state of war, and in those brief preludes of peace/rearming, see a need to keep people in some kind of "War" (War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Crime, etc), which is the situation we are in now.
I am not a "pacifist" as in "against any violence under any circumstance". I think self defense is just and fine. I do find continuous institutionalized bloodlust, which is a trademark of English/Prussian cultures (among others), very distasteful and wrong. Apparently so did the Founding Fathers. Or didn't you notice their admonishment against standing armies and against entering into foreign wars (entangling alliances)?
Example - Afghanistan today, justified self defense. Vietnam in the 1960's-1970's - warfare state bloodlust.
Is that clear? Or will you proceed with more name calling for lack of a good answer?
Bullshit! I was there and I thought it was a beautiful, clean, exciting and vibrant city.
Oh, maybe it's a sewer because it has prostitution?
Maybe you could point out one, just one city in America that doesn't have prostitution. Or the world for that matter.
In Amsterdam, ALL the prostitutes are indoors. Any visible through windows are confined to a small section of town. No children will see them. They will never bring your property values down by loitering near your house.
Compare that to the day I got back to America, when I saw two prostitutes standing on the corner in my neighborhood.
I've heard about this-- what kind of laws are we talking about here?
No question there. One thing I didn't like was that if I was to walk alone at night in Amsterdam, I couldn't be armed if I chose. But then again with California's laws (not to mention numerous other states and cities), I don't know that things would be any different in LA.
If this is what the people of the Netherlands want, then so be it, its their country, good for them.
Well said!
be considered anything else than a lust for the blood of these enemies.
As far as the Vietnam War is concerned, it was one campaign of the 70+ year Cold War, the greatest military victory in American military history, in terms of political gains compared to battlefield losses. The Union lost the Peninsular Campaign in the Civil War, as we lost the Vietnam Campaign of the Cold War. But in both cases the final victory belonged to the nation that lost the campaign in question.
Actually it is their country for about one more generation. When you consider immigration and the natural (and unnatural)shrinkage of the Dutch population, they are only holding it in trust for the Muslims who will be running that land by the middle of this century.
It is really too bad the Libertarian party is so full of such whackjobs. If they realized that your average person is not impassioned by the "right" to get stoned or get a prostitute, but is concerned about taxes, gun control, and a decent justice system, they might achieve something worthwhile.
I gave up on the Libertarian party when I realized that they cared a lot more about sex and drugs than money and guns.
Pretty nice sewer, then. The parts of the city I've seen were absolutely beautiful.
And they will know it in due time. Did you ever see Bedazzled? I don't mean the new one with Elizabeth HURL-y. I mean the original with Dudley Moore and Peter Cooke. The guy sold his soul to Satan for 7 wishes. Then he would make his wish and Satan would give him exactly what he asked for, but sneak through some loophole to make the wish totally repulsive. That's how sin is. It looks like fudge, but it tastes like dogsh*t. Idiots think they just need to add more sugar. The wise realize what's up and turn to G-d for the real thing.
Shalom.
You know, the funny thing is that I reasearched their immigration policy and was told it was very restrictive. They told me that I could only spend one month a year there, and that I could never be a citizen because I come from a non-EU nation. Looking around on the net, I found that it is nearly impossible for Americans to relocate there unless temporarily through a job.
I don't know how all those troublemakers get around that. Maybe they're illegals. I think the Dutch should clean house.
If the money to care for those destroying themselves quit flowing, on what grounds would conservatives oppose the decriminalization of these?
Without the payout of funds for these losers, there is no logical reason to support a massive War on Drugs.
Of course those emotionally invested in telling others how to live will continue their tirades, but without the crutch of controlling those that are on the teat, it will be difficult to justify the huge expenditures.
Maybe we could return to the roots of our nation, when the police turned their heads to these vices, and only enforce laws when the purveyors attempt to move into family areas, or begin to prey upon innocents. Of course we could just continue to build more prisons, until there are enough to house all those breaking laws, which probably includes nearly every person in America. .
I am sorry, but lusting for the blood of your enemies is an essential part of the American psyche, opposition to blood lust is truly un-American.
First, thank you for the appology.
Second, you are not seeing my point. I am talking about institutionalized bloodlust. I have no problem with wanting to eliminate one's enemies in a just war of self defense. Besides, it scares the hell out of them when they see free and strong people rised up against them. I've no doubt the British felt this very fear, and rightly so.
What you allude to is situational bloodlust, which does in fact have its place during legitimate defense. I am speaking of perpetual, keep everyone in a state of war, type of government, which we have had since at least the Civil War (or perhaps the Spanish American war, its a grey area for me).
Does that help clarify my viewpoint?
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