I'm arrived and well in Amsterdam

I'll never get over the concept of being halfway around the globe in less than half a day.

Anyway, in my hotel, free wifi access throughout the place - woo woo. And it seems to be quite nicely located, and a nice place. I've got coffee scheduled with the local AMERICAblog readers at 4:30pm this afternoon at the Cafe Americain at the American Hotel, which should be fun (assuming anyone shows up LOL).

Not too many first impressions of Amsterdam - it's been 20 years since I was here last.

I was reading the International Herald Tribune over breakfast (they include breakfast too, God bless 'em), and there was a fascinating op ed about Muslims in Holland. One of the more interesting parts of the article is how open the Dutch have been to immigrants over the centuries, even welcoming Jews when others would not. That's now changing, post September 11, and post the very high profile murder of a Van Gogh heir who was killed for insulting Islam.

Just as interesting, a rabbi is running a group that's leading the charge in defending the rights of Muslims from discrimination, discrimination that sounds all too similar to what Jews face. The rabbi talks about how Jews have managed to maintain their faith and vales while becoming good citizens in their own home countries, and notes that this is what's needed by Muslims as well. But, the Jewish clinging to tradition and culture came at a price, and it likely will as well with Muslims.

But I worry whether the Muslims are going down the same path as the Jews, the Greeks, the Italians, Latinos, Asians, and every other immigrant group that has gone from one country to another. It would be fascinating to study the history of immigration into the US, or anywhere, and see if the same problems and concerns existed about integration, violence, attempts to force the home culture to adapt to the immigrant culture etc. A lot of that of course did happen, and it's not a bad thing - America is clearly an amalgam of its immigrant cultures. In America, for the most part, we were able to successfully assimilate everyone into the larger melting pot, rather than have immigrant groups try to force the pot to become more like them. But isn't that what some of the Muslim population is demanding in Europe? That their adopted homes become more like their original homes? Then again, is it wrong for them to seek such change in a democratic society?

And why limit this discussion to Muslims? This become-like-me-or-else mentality is exactly what America's religious right is doing to our country today, as is the Republican party. They are trying to drag America and its culture and its values and its laws far to the right so that those things only represent one small minority of American values. A minority that clearly thinks its values are the right values, to hell with the rest.

That kind of thinking is as dangerous for America as it is for Holland.

But what do you do in response? I've said before that the only thing that keeps America's religious right relatively non-violent (other than blowing up abortion clinics and murdering doctors) is that American culture wouldn't put up with them adopting more widespread violence. And if that's all that separates America's religious extremists from Islamic fundamentalists burning cars in the streets of Europe, then maybe this problem is much bigger than Christians and Muslims, Arabs and Europeans.

Maybe the problem is religious fanaticism and its efforts to overthrow liberal democracies. If that's their goal, and I think for many American and foreign religious fanatics it is exactly what they intend, then they must be stopped, as their ultimate plan is to destroy our entire system of governance, destroy our democracies, and that cannot be tolerated, even in the name of tolerance.