<![CDATA[A Most Despicable Man Pieter Verhaeren!]]>I feel I must respond to a most insulting opinion piece written by a Pieter Verhaeren. From what I read of him he is a Flemish man, and a radical Dutch nationalist who has written inflammatorily in favor of the secession of Flanders from Belgium and furthermore its integration into the greater Netherlands! Despicable! He is already very controversial, and the article I read about him was very unflattering anyway (it was especially critical of his once longheld sympathies for Afrikaans nationalism and the South African government policies of Apartheid; I must admit I am ignorant of its history but I assume it is bad). But to think that he is telling people to forget their nationality after years of history marked with bloodshed for something as superficial as a common language makes me furious! And he does so on the basis of a most absurd argument; that the Dutch language somehow binds the common culture of the Flemish and Dutch: “The historical bonds of Catholicism are dying in Belgium, and Flanders is moving farther away from the Walloon region and ultimately toward the Netherlands, a country with the only feature of unity that does not decay with history: the Dutch language.”
It is people like this who are stalling the common goal of peace and prosperity and would kill my country!
Reynald
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