Starting a weblog

There are a number of reasons for me to start my personal weblog in English. I have been writing in Dutch for about a year now, for websites Het Vrije Volk ("The Free People") and since recently HoeiBoei (not translatable). Both are grassroots initiatives by serious and clever people in (or at least from) the Netherlands who are tired of the socialist and multiculturalist policies of our leaders, and of the biased media endorsing them.

My personal weblog in Dutch, Een Andere Stem ("A Different Voice"), falls into the same category. Having been influenced by authors such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Friedrich Hayek, Leo Strauss, Francis Fukuyama and the one and only authoritative conservative from the Netherlands, Andreas Kinneging, I am strongly committed to individual liberty and (true) democracy. My great political example is Ronald Reagan, who combined his personal confidence in American values and moral superiority vis-à-vis the "Evil Empire" with free-market economics and an assertive foreign policy. He deserves the honor of appearing on the first picture ever published on this weblog (as part of an article, that is).

I agree with Reagan that socialism is evil. But present-day Western Europe, unfortunately, has issues beyond just economics. Home to perhaps as much as fifteen million Muslim immigrants, our cities are slowly but surely becoming the center stage of a clash of civilizations. Paris already burned for weeks in the hot summer of 2005, and the Dutch cities of Amsterdam and Utrecht have suffered riots, car burnings and some sectarian violence as well. Not to mention the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London, and the murder of Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, of course.

Am I a fascist or a racist? Absolutely NOT, although my political opponents no doubt would love to accuse me of being the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler himself (surely my defense of American policies abroad does not take away their idiotic suspicions). I have always been a staunch defender of Western values and even of the self-ascribed "Dutch tolerance". Anyone who embraces our traditions of freedom, democracy and secularism, is more than welcome in the Netherlands, as far as I am concerned.

I do fear, however, that significant parts of Islamic scripture and traditions outrightly oppose these values. My views on this issue derive from the works of Bernard Lewis, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, the Dutch Arabist Hans Jansen, and also from studying the Qur'an itself. Although not a foreign policy "realist", I do believe in Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" theory. As long as European Muslims do not dispose of the nasty illiberal tenets of their religion, and as long as they remain locked up in their socially and economically backward parallel societies within European societies, sectarian tensions in Western Europe will escalate, not diminish.

At the same time, European leaders keep indulging in what Mark Steyn has labeled the "secondary impulses of society": welfare, socialized healthcare, and "tackling" climate change. Last but not least, they are crafting a thoroughly undemocratic and increasingly bureaucratic European Union, which brings us socialist directives, unwanted meddling into national policies, and perhaps in the not so distant future the admission of Turkey, with disastrous consequences of its own. Recently, the slightly altered EU Constitution was adopted in Lisbon, and will now be ratified by the Dutch parliament without a referendum. Although our governing social democratic PvdA party promised its constituency that it would vote in favor of a referendum on any new European treaty, this so-called "Reform Treaty" -- with enormous consequences for the future of the Netherlands -- is now forced down our throats.

Our liberal elites keep downplaying Europe's real problems and offering phony solutions for imagined ones. Europe does not need EU institutions in order to function as a free market consisting of sovereign liberal democracies. It does not need a Common Agricultural Policy that subsidizes rich French farmers but keeps out imports from the developing world. It has no interest in an EU blue card which will no doubt invite even more fraudulent attempts by economic refugees to enter its member states. European countries do have to address some painful issues of their own, including economic reforms and problems concerning immigration and integration of their Muslim populations.

As long as the majority of politicians and most media address these issues insufficiently, bloggers will have to do it for them. I hope you will enjoy reading this weblog. I will post an article shortly.