I have been marveling over the

recommendations the cultural left at the NYTimes and within the Netherlands

have been doling out to the Dutch people in the wake of the Theo van Gogh

murder by Islamic jihadists. Their prescription? Be more sensitive to Muslim

immigrants. In fact, as a Dutch government report from January concluded,

infinite patience and tolerance with these immigrants over the past 30 years

has been a failure. Holland now has an alarmingly large, alarmingly radical

Muslim subculture to deal with, and the people there are just now waking up

to the sobering fact that multiculturalism — the idea that all cultures are

equally good, and that making distinctions among them is racist and immoral

– is a lie. A frustrated Dutch friend e-mailed on Sunday that the papers

are full of journalists telling people that they need to dialogue with more

sensitivity with the Islamic extremists among them. Wrote my friend, “What

[barnyard epithet]! No matter how nice we put it, they will still want to

kill us.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali ex-Muslim who is now a Dutch member of

parliament, and who has gone underground after Theo van Gogh’s murderer(s)

threatened her life, has accused Dutch society of cowardice in the face of

Islamic fundamentalism, in part because in her view, it suffers from

“misplaced guilt.” If you want to understand those people, you could hardly

do better than to recall the talking cow in Douglas Adams’ sci-fi comic

novel “The Restaurant At The End of the Universe.” The cow has been

genetically modified to want to be eaten. It presents itself at the table to

discuss its fate with those about to eat it. The cow’s job is to assuage the

guilt of the diners, and to make them feel better about eating it.

Imagine a nation whose governmental and media elite are a bunch of cows who

want to make those who plan to devour them feel comfortable about the

devouring, and you have the Netherlands today.