The thing I thought the Netherlands was most famous for was its liberalism. That this was always a place where people of different religious, intellectual or philosophical beliefs could take refuge and create ideas, regardless of where they were from.
This tradition resulted in some of the better-known Dutch policies, like toleration of prostitution and ‘soft’ drugs like marijuana. This tolerance came from a sense of pragmatism, because you can’t stop people from buying sex, or getting drunk and high, you can only drive such actions underground. But Dutch liberalism isn’t just pragmatic, it’s also useful, because tolerance of different races, religions and philosophies provides an astounding marketplace of ideas from which to create better living.
Unfortunately, the Netherlands seems insistent on shifting away from this policy of liberalism, towards one of exclusion. Two recent examples are the ‘Dutch only’ discount at KPN, and introduction of the ‘weed pass’. KPN recently ran a promotion giving a 50% discount to Dutch passport holders. Apparently this was a mistake, and the discount was supposed apply to both Dutch passport and Dutch residency permit holders, but the furor that resulted indicates how non-Dutch residents often feel living here – the feeling of being second-class. No doubt this isn’t just because of the more radical views of Dutch politicians like Geert Wilders, but for other reasons, e.g. the Netherlands is the only EU country blocking entry of Romania and Bulgaria into the Schengen open border zone. And because so many people would need to allow such a mistake to go so far, it’s hard to decide if KPN employees are simply subtly bigoted or just incredibly incompetent.
Another example of the Dutch abandoning pragmatism for idiotic conservative ideals is the ‘weed pass’, which restricts the sale of marijuana in coffeeshops to residents of the Netherlands and has already been implemented in Limburg, with introduction in the rest of the country to begin in 2013. Why is this pass idiotic? Because it won’t stop people from buying weed here, but rather will only drive sales underground. All this pass will accomplish is that some Dutch residents will become middlemen between coffeeshops and tourists, and the Dutch government will lose the ability to tax and regulate the trade. Which is already happening: arrests of street dealers in Maastricht have already increased and the amount of drug tourists in Nijmegen, where the pass hasn’t been introduced, increased by 20 to 30 percent. Apparently tourists from Belgium and Germany are just driving a bit farther, and hence the real winners of this policy are the petrol companies.
It’s no secret that many TU Delft students like to smoke a joint, and why not? Plenty of students drink until their words are slurred, and the truly unruly tourists in Amsterdam and elsewhere aren’t stoned, they’re drunk. And while I can’t think of any intellectuals or scientists who attribute inspiration to drink, I can think of some, like Carl Sagan, who attribute inspiration to pot.
It’s a shame the Netherlands is changing. People don’t come here for the food or weather; they come here to experience a certain state of mind, one that encourages creations of new arts and science, that encourages free thinking and mixings of people and ideas. Unfortunately, Dutch liberalism seems to be giving way to an ingrained attitude of exclusion. What a pity.
Devin Malone, a recent MSc graduate in industrial ecology, is from Anchorage, Alaska.
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