Dutch Courage

It seems Dutch MP Ayaan Ali Hirsi may not be moving to the USA any time soon, after witch-hunting Dutch immigration Minister Rita Verdonk was ordered by Parliament to hold back on cancelling Hirsi's Dutch citizenship.

The tale is more revealing of the culture wars in America than anything else. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think thank, welcomed Hirsi should she move countries. That is, American conservatives were willing to embrace a Third World black female who stands for religious tolerance and for women's rights, especially within Islam.

Contrast this to the leftist administrators of the USA's famed Yale University. Despite voiciferous objection, they granted a university place to high-school educated Ramtullah Hashemi. He is the former unrepentant official spokesman for the fanatical, misogynist Taliban 'government' of Afghanistan. Hashemi routinely defended stoning women to death for adultery and banning them from going to school or even from selling bread.

Thinkers say that the left long ago lost the battle of the mind in the West. Some even say the Western left is willing to appease the forces of intolerance, the way the intellectual classes of Europe fawned before fascism and Stalinism in the 1930's. Go figure.