From fellow Blogger Snouck over at his site Snouck Hurgronje, an interesting report on crime, a subject which keeps being mentioned here lately. This is a must read:
The Netherlands is a seriously liberal country. Since the old order collapsed with little more than a whimper in '68 the country has been lighting the road towards a brave new world of Liberalism. A state were most people can enjoy the unbearable lightness of being. Painful consequences of foolish or mistaken decisions are softened by a generous state. Just fill out that form!
The onslaught of Liberalism
The "Liber" of Liberalism means "free" of "freedom". In order to free themselves of the ultra-conservative pre-68 Dutch order the Dutch tried to get rid of society's repression of crime.
Kill the messenger
For a long time it was a taboo to be concerned about crime. People who had a problem with high crime levels were told to subscribe to another newspaper. This referred to the "De Telegraaf" newspaper, the biggest Dutch newspaper which maintained a popular law-and-order profile.
Cassandra
In 1978 Renate Rubinstein (Dutch) wrote in her "Tamar" column in leftwing weekly "Vrij Nederland" about this attitude. When she wanted to discussing the rising experience of crime of people living in Amsterdam, she was hushed up by the enlightened set of Amsterdam. Rubinstein put this down to the even more taboo insight that most crime was ethnic crime and commited by Black and Muslim immigrants. She also noted the hypocritical behaviour of the left wing cognoscenti and literati, because she was taken home at the end of the evening in order to protect her against non-existent and unmentionable crime! "Walking home is unsafe". Unmentionable why. Sky falling in?
Ideas have consequences
Obviously this climate was not conductive for effective law-enforcement. A society that does not place real crime (vandalism, theft, assault) outside the borders of acceptable behaviour will see rising and rising crime levels. In order to forestall discussion of this all too obvious phenomenon article 1 of the Dutch constitution outlawing discrimination by the state was amended in such a way that it became illegal for citizens to discriminate and that speech pointing out differences in behaviour became an offence. This is the pc-pincer: first the lawless are liberated from the repression of the law: this is Anarchy for the lawless. Second: criminalisation of "offensive" Speech: Tyrranny for the law-abiding. Anarcho-Tyranny.
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Read the rest at Snouck Hurgronje
1 comment:
Sounds exactly like the direction the Uk is going in- vandalism, burglary and common assault are all crimes which it is being recommended are "punished" by nothing more than a caution. At the same time a man who yelled "Go Back home" to a group of Muslims entering a mosque was jailed for three months for "racially aggravated harassment".
PS- One of the crimes for which you'll receive a caution is threatening to kill.
British "justice".
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