Benjamin Moser: evaluation

Transcript context

…How much do you feel you’re living in what is still, ultimately, a Calvinist country? Or not? They always say it. Every time somebody is a little uptight or conservative or not as fun, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s because you’re such a Calvinist. ” It has a heritage of Calvinism, but don’t forget that half the country is Catholic. Fifty percent. It was always about 50/50. It’s not a purely Protestant country like Scandinavia or something. It was always a very mixed country racially, culturally. It’s always been right in the middle of the three biggest countries in Europe. It’s managed to keep both open to the world, while also being its own thing. The Calvinist thing — I never even really know what that means. Calvinism is a very dark, very terrifying view of God and the world and mankind, and I don’t necessarily feel this is a very dark country. I see some disparate facts about the Netherlands today, and maybe you can make sense of them for me in a kind of simple, unified theory. Drug use and sex work — they’re more legal in the Netherlands than in most other places. It’s a long-standing history of toleration, which you could even say is unparalleled, and yet in the latest election, Geert Wilders takes the greatest share of the vote. People claim, as of February 2024, if there’s no coalition formed and another election were needed, he might take even more of the vote. How does this all fit together? Explain it to me, an outsider.…

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