Presumably they are going for the drugs and prostitution.
Up to 4,000 social conservatives are expected to descend upon liberal Amsterdam, Netherlands, on August 10-12 for the biennial World Congress of Families, a meeting that brings together scholars, academics, policy makers, elected officials, and activists for four days of speeches, lectures, and networking.
The Netherlands beat out four other countries in its bid to host what is the largest gathering of social conservatives in the world. Russia, Bolivia, Latvia and Nigeria lost out after the Dutch proposal included support from the government though a promise the liberal government would not interfere with what will be a politically conservative program….
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Why the surprise? The Netherlands is one of the most conservative countries in Europe. People there use less drugs than other countries, much less than the UK and USA. People there tend to marry, and divorce less than most places, again well behind the UK and US.
They tend to view other people’s drug use and divorces as none of their business, which seems to me a conservative position. Unlike “conservatives” in other places who like to preach their principles without following them.
And yet people over here know Amsterdam as some kind of Sodom / Gomorrah. I can see how the Overton Window has been dragged all the way to the right, and I can see how the super-near-fascist-conservatives honestly think that being slightly left of center means being “far loony left”, so I can tell why they go on and on about how Obama’s a conservative. But when I see the word “conservative” in context of another country, I assume it just means being slightly right of center, usually fiscally pragmatic, and socially libertarian.
What can we do to drag that Overton Window back to a reasonable frame, where people who are only slightly left of center are no longer viewed as loons, and people who are hard-right are no longer viewed as reasonable conservatives?