[The Niles]

Yes like I said the article is blatant propaganda and I would not take the conclusions seriously.

The writer is also not THAT knowledgeable about Dutch history. The story about the Dutch boy with his finger in the dijk did not "come down to us from Dutch history" as he claimed but was a complete fabrication dreamt up by an American woman (from New York I think) in the nineteenth century.

Dutch economy was not ruined by high taxes as those taxes where high even before the Dutch economy bloomed in order to finance the war with Spain.

The article is one sided and simplistic, as indeed the capitalistic philosophy is simplistic and one sided.

The freedom Peterson is raving about did not even exist in the seventeenth century Netherlands. Religious freedom was actually religious tolerance and even that failed frequently to prevail.

The article is more interesting for what it is then what it is trying to do. It is a biased review of Dutch history while it tries to show the superiority of absolute freedom. Still it is worth reading for just that.