Sign of the Times in Holland

With ethnic tensions between native Dutch and recent immigrants boiling over in the Netherlands, it seems that not a few inhabitants of that bastion of liberal tolerance have decided to flee, looking for greener pastures. The Telegraph (U.K.) reports:

The new wave of "middle-class flight" has quickened this year following rising ethnic violence and crime committed by and against immigrants, and in response to fears that social order is breaking down. In the first six months there was a net outflow of 13,313 people.

According to the article, those seeking to emigrate from the Netherlands are the native born, heavily educated Dutch. The Telegraph notes - with what sounds suspiciously like a note of incredulity - that this exodus has been gaining stream "even though unemployment remains low at 4.7 percent and per capita income is higher than any major country in Europe." So why are the Dutch beginning to long for foreign shores?

They are disengaging from a multicultural experiment once hailed as the model for the world but now stretched to breaking point. They are also escaping traffic jams and chronic over-crowding.

Requests for visa information have exploded since the murder of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch film-maker and acerbic critic of Muslim views on women.

An all-party report by the Dutch parliament this year concluded that the country's immigration policy had been a failure, leading to sink [sic] schools and ethnic ghettoes. [emphasis mine]

The Netherlands has been transformed in barely 30 years from a tight-knit Christian society into a polyethnic state, with three million people of immigrant background.

A failed multicultural experiment? Why surely that's impossible! After all, endless liberal talking heads, policy wonks and virtually the entire American academic establishment have been telling us for the last quarter century that the multicultural society is the best possible society, in fact, the only moral society. Evidence for these statements is never provided - in fact, history suggests the opposite conclusion - but questioning multiculturalist doctrine provokes instant accusations of racism, imperialism, etc.

And where are the new Dutch emigrees heading?

Lawyers, accountants, computer specialist, nurses, and businessmen are lining up for visas to the English-speaking world, looking to Australia, New Zealand and Canada as orderly societies where people have the space to breathe.

One wonders how disappointed these newly wandering Dutch will be when they arrive in the soon-to-be-formerly English-speaking realms only to discover the same disastrous social experiment slowly ruining the very countries to which they have fled.