Because the Dutch have always been the smartest Europeans. They had the first genuinely capitalist economy on the continent, which in turn created the freest society and the best artists. What we're seeing now is a great nation rediscovering its roots- I hope the same thing happens soon in Canada.
They also had a bitter and brutal 80-year long struggle against Spanish occupation and domination, and they *won.* (That would have been England's fate as well, had it not been for the Battle of the Armada going in England's favor.) But right now it seems like the Dutch are their own worst enemy.