Muslim city workers in Amsterdam don’t have to shake women’s hands

“Snouck Hurgronje” writes from the Netherlands:

While you in the USA are obsessing about your society being destroyed by liberalism and you being powerless to do anything about it, liberalism is shredding ITSELF in The Netherlands again. Just as Communist Gorbachev started the end (Glasnost) for Communism in the Soviet empire, our Socialist Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen yesterday gave Leftism/Liberalism another kick where it matters when he said that it was okay for Muslims municipal workers not to greet women with a handshake.

Go Geert Wilders Go!!

LA replies:

Unbelievable. But are you so sure that this will discredit leftism/liberalism in the Netherlands? Remember, conservatives are constantly thinking that “this” liberal outrage, and then “this” liberal outrage, and then “this” liberal outrage, will finally be the thing that will snap society out of its liberalism. But it never happens. Instead of rising up and saying “No!” to the latest liberal outrage, society goes along with it. Thus the very thing that the conservatives thought would lead to the defeat of liberalism, turns out to be another advance of liberalism.

The conservative hope in an imminent defeat of liberalism is founded on the belief that there is some “normal” source of authority that is still operative in society that will eventually reassert itself and prevent the society from going to extremes, like a parent who will appear and stop children from misbehaving. But the terrible realization that conservatives must go through is that there is no parent waiting in the wings to make things right. The parent has long since been banished, with the conservatives’ tacit approval, when the conservatives went along with one aspect of liberalism after another. The fundamental error and illusion of modern conservatives is that they do not realize the extent to which they themselves are liberal.

Also, I don’t see an analogy between Gorbachev, who sought to moderate Communism, and this Dutch mayor who is taking liberalism/leftism to a new extreme.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 14, 2008 10:03 AM | Send