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: Tyranny for the law-abiding. Anarcho-Tyranny.
The result is gross and wild injustices. The weak but law-abiding citizens have hardly any meaningfull recourse to justice, while those ruthless enough to pursue a criminal lifestyle can enjoy a high and tax-free income, with hardly any effort.
As a result the willingness to report crimes has fallen and police records are not any longer reliable indicators of crime levels. And since 1980 in order to have a meaningful statistical indicator of crime the CBS, the Dutch government statistic bureau, conducts surveys to estimate the level of crime.
The Stats
The SCP, or government Social-Cultural Planning bureau, reported in their "crime victims" report, that:
in 2004 3,4 million Dutch citizens fell victim to 4,6 million crimes.
3,6 million crimes were theft of vandalism. 1 million were violent crimes
The number of crimes has been quite stable in the past 24 years: it rose from 4 million in 1980, when the surveys were first compiled to the aformentioned 4,6 million in 2004.
In the case of 1,3 million crimes victimes actually bothered to report the crime to the police. 147.000 cases the police got around to hearing suspects. This led to 100.000 cases for a Dutch court of law. In 54.000 cases a suspect was convicted to a punishment, a prison term of a fine.
Car break-ins and vandalising saw the mighty-est rise. Actually I saw an American with a rented car (German licence plate) which was broken into 70 meters from my house 2 hours ago. He looked at me suspiciously. Hey, we are on the same team, buddy!
The chances that a suspect is heard by police has dropped from 34 percent in 1980 to 15 percent in 2000. This is called "case being cleared up" in statistic-speak. It rose to 21 percent in 2004. That does not mean a lot. Obvious criminals are let of after a cursory interview is my experience. The police is just engaging in statistical window dressing after the rucus about the low "clearing-up rates" in the 2002 "Pim Fortuyn" election.
The report was presented to Minister J.P.H. Donner of Justice, a few weeks ago. Donner likes to tell us that Islam is here to stay and we just have to accept that.
We will see about that.
The population is on to the injustice. When the SCP-report made the internet sites of the papers the forums were overwhelmed by furious comments on the uselessness of the police who are able to collect millions of dollars in fines for people driving too fast on the highway, but not able to arrest and deter the criminals. For the absurdity of criminalizing speech we have got Geert Wilders.
crime
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The Netherlands
3 comments:
If you follow to the end your logic, and I agree with it, you should conclude that top elites have a destructive agenda against society. It is more difficult to know which is their ultimate goal, the theories are almost infinite.
We are living under a dictatorship, subtle if you want, but very real.
My view is that the ultimate goal of elites is to destroy almost everything civilized and later out of the resulting chaos they would appear as our saviours and they would set up a "humanist" dictatorship. Something like Communism. Obviously for them individual freedom is a hindrance.
Excellent analysis, and I must say that this is also similar to the U.S. The difference in the US is the phenomenon called "white flight" (which now encompasses all races of a certain socio-economic status) of people to the ever-sprawling suburbs of the major cities. These cities, also, within the last 15 years or so have increased in number and population to the point of problems with infrastructure, crime, cost of living, etc.
JMaria:
"It is more difficult to know which is their ultimate goal, the theories are almost infinite."
Snouck:
same goal as usual. Same goal of all living things. Increase of power and sense of control.
JMaria:
"My view is that the ultimate goal of elites is to destroy almost everything civilized and later out of the resulting chaos"
Snouck:
Destroy or at least damage the civilisation of those under them. Thus increase the power of the elite.
JMaria:
"they would appear as our saviours and they would set up a "humanist" dictatorship. Something like Communism."
Snouck:
this time there is no blueprint as with Communism. It is just the amassing of power for its own sake. If there is any goal, it is doing damage to white ethnics by taking their political rights. Civic society is indeed the biggest threat to them.
It is all very irrational. Like Communism. But it is a very soft Communism. No gulags. No firing squads. Just the creeping forward of soft state power.
And already they are getting more insecure and doubtful. Things are NOT going as planned.
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