Holland today is probably the worst country in Europe, a sinkhole of social pathologies that would make Berkeley blush.  And yet, at every step, the decisions the Dutch took to liberalize their formerly straitlaced Calvinist society seemed to make sense at the time, at least to some

Today, with crime rampant, social tensions brought on by enormous, apparently unassimilable migration from the Muslim world, and the collapse of its social cohesion and cultural self-confidence, the Netherlands is the Sick Man of Europe.

I originally wrote this story for the now-defunct Mirabella Magazine, to answer the editorial question: why are the Dutch so tolerant. “Tolerant” seemed like the right word at the time; today, nearly 18 years later, “suicidal” might be a better choice.

This is what I found.

The smoke is overpowering as I climb the steep stairs and enter the tiny second-floor room at a neighborhood joint called “Balou.” A group of young men are sitting at a handful of tables, talking, listening to loud rock music, looking out the window at the street below or watching a Detroit Pistons – Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game on the television perched mutely in the corner, each puffing away contentedly. The 25-year-old owner, Jerry, is standing behind the bar and gabbing affably to some of the regulars, displaying upon request a menu of the evening’s offerings. This might be anywhere, in any bar USA. Except it’s not.

Jerry shows me the menu. Compared with competing locals like “The Grasshopper” and “The Bull Dog,” it’s rather small. This is what it says: (more…)

It would seem that the Associated Press wants to consider its January 25 story by Devlin Barrett (“Feds detail Christmas Day attack”; also saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes) the last word on what occurred in the hours immediately following Flight 253’s landing in Detroit on Christmas Day.

But if that’s indeed the case, Barrett’s report also serves to prove that the wire service had no business revising originally accurate reports to remove what were apparently inconvenient facts relating to the incident.

To refresh by way of my Big Journalism post on January 15, AP’s initial reports on Christmas afternoon and early Christmas evening told readers that “the man claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over U.S. soil,” and that it had even used the M-word (“Muslim”). But, I wrote, by the middle of the next morning, “The supposedly solid AQ connection somehow became tenuous and unproven,” and the M-word was gone.

This scrubbing conveniently gave the Obama administration precious time during the weekend that followed to regain its bearings after significant initial clumsiness. Ultimately, I noted that AP’s revisions “allowed the President of the United States to inform us (on the Tuesday after the attack), without challenge and as if it was a recent discovery, that — shazam! — the attack might have had something to do with AQ.” (more…)