Today

The Netherlands is a tiny country, barely half the size of the state of Maine. A burst of vigorous driving will get you from one corner of the realm to the other in a morning, and you can travel by train from Amsterdam to the farthest point of the rail network in an afternoon. The nation's 41,865 sq. km (16,325 sq. miles) are among the most densely populated in the world, holding 16 million people, or approximately 1,000 per square mile. The crowding is most noticeable in the Randstad (Rim City), the heavily populated area that includes the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden, Haarlem, Utrecht, and Delft. Elsewhere, the land is much more sparsely populated. For the visitor, Holland today presents much the same face it has over the centuries -- a serene landscape and an industrious population who treasure their age-old tradition of tolerance and who welcome people of all political, religious, and ideological persuasions. In recent years there have been indications that, faced with threats from radical Islamists, the welcome mat is wearing thin.

Holland is a constitutional monarchy headed by the ever-popular Queen Beatrix of the House of Orange (opinion surveys regularly give her an 80% approval rating). The heir-apparent is their oldest son, Willem-Alexander (b. 1967). Parliament consists of two houses -- an Upper Chamber and a Lower Chamber.

The Dutch can be both the most infuriating and the most endearing people in the world. One minute they treat you like a naughty child (surely you've heard the expression about someone talking to you like a Dutch uncle) and the next they're ready for a laugh and a beer. They can be rude or cordial (it may depend on the weather), domineering or ever ready to please (it may depend on you). In a store, they may get annoyed with you if you don't accept what they have, or get mad at themselves if they don't have what you want.

Dutch people have a passion for detail that would boggle the mind of a statistician -- and a sense of order and propriety that sends them into a tailspin if you mess things up. They organize everything (people, land, flower beds), and they love to make schedules and stick to them. They may allow you to indulge an occasional whim, though they haven't a clue what it means to "play it by ear." They do love to quote homilies ("While the cat's away, the mice will play"; "Everybody talks about my drinking, but no one knows about my thirst"; "In the concert of life, no one gets a program"), including a number that suffer in translation ("Try to find it out with a wet thumb"; "It fits like a hand shoe").

They aren't particularly emotional or hotheaded, but they aren't shy about speaking their minds either. They are fiercely independent and yet are (or have been) so tolerant of other people's problems and attitudes that their country nearly equals the United States as a traditional haven for the world's exiles and émigrés. (You find in the telephone book Italian, Spanish, and French names that belong to centuries-old Dutch families as respectable as the van Dijks and van Delfts.)

"The Dutch Disease," a conservative U.S. columnist called Holland's social liberalism. But not many of the hookers in Amsterdam's Red Light District are Dutch, and relatively few denizens of the smoking coffeeshops are Dutch. If Amsterdam's a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah, it's one mainly for visitors. The Dutch themselves are a moderate, conservative lot, whose stable history in a small, densely populated land has led them to seek social consensus rather than confrontation whenever possible.

The uniquely Dutch combination of tolerance and individualism impacts on areas of personal and social morality that in other countries are still red-button issues. In 2001, the world's first same-sex marriage, with a legal status identical to that of heterosexual matrimony, took place in Amsterdam. The Dutch parliament legalized regulated euthanasia ("mercy killing"); making the Netherlands the first country in the world to do so. And then, there's prostitution and drug use.

Authorities are not duty-bound to prosecute criminal acts, leaving a loophole for social experimentation in areas that technically are illegal. It has been wryly said that the Netherlands has one of the lowest crime rates in Europe because whenever something becomes a criminal problem the Dutch make it legal, thereby reducing crime with a stroke. Don't laugh -- at least not in Holland. The Dutch will take aim at anyone, on any issue, outside their borders. Just so long as it's understood that everything inside has arrived at that hallowed state of perfection.

Run through any list you care to write of America's international misdemeanors and the Dutch will nod sagely and open-mindedly in agreement. Laugh to your heart's content about the soap-opera antics of Britain's House of Windsor, and they will laugh right along with you. But refer, however obliquely, to negative aspects of the Dutch Way, and watch the air turn cool. Go so far as to openly criticize the country, or to joke about Queen Beatrix, and you'll find that you've touched the natives where they're tender.

Popular opinion notwithstanding, narcotic drugs are illegal in the Netherlands. But the Dutch treat drug use mainly as a medical problem rather than purely as a crime. The authorities distinguish between soft drugs like cannabis, which are considered unlikely to cause addiction and pose a minor health risk, and hard drugs like heroin and cocaine, which are highly addictive and pose significant risks to users' health. Both types are illegal, but the law is tougher on hard drugs. Dealers who import and export drugs face 4 years in jail for soft drugs and 12 years for hard drugs.

In recent years, the Netherlands has bowed to pressure from surrounding countries regarding its drug policy and has tightened the rules for "coffeeshops" -- establishments in which cannabis is sold. You used to be allowed to buy and retain 30 grams of soft drugs for personal use; now you can buy only 5 grams at a time for personal use, though you're still allowed to be in possession of 30 grams of soft drugs for personal use. Coffeeshops are not allowed to sell hard drugs or to advertise, and cannot sell to minors. If they create a public nuisance, the local burgemeester (mayor) can shut them down.

Supplying free heroin to addicts, with medical support, has helped combat AIDS in Holland and has slashed the drug's street price so that addicts commit fewer crimes to feed their habit. Both healthcare and law-enforcement costs have gone down. The Netherlands has significantly lower rates of heroin addiction, drug use and addiction in general, and of drug-related deaths than Britain, France, Germany, and other European countries that criticize Holland so fiercely on this issue.

Thin Red Line -- Prostitution is legal in Holland, and prostitutes work in clean premises, pay taxes, receive regular medical checks, are eligible for welfare, and have their own trade union. The streetwalker "heroin whores" need to be excluded from this ostensibly idyllic picture of the world's oldest profession.