Wolin is wrong about the tolerance of the Netherlands. He completely ignores the growth of Islamophobia and xenophobia that started long before 9/11 in Europe. Pim Fortuyn, who got "1.6 million votes and 26 seats in the 150-seat parliament" in 2002, published an Islamophobic and xenophobic manifesto "Against Islamicization of Our Culture" in 1997 (see <http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/06/clash-of-civilizations-sending-pink.html> for more information about the Fortuyn phenomenon).
It is, however, possible that the French concept of laïcité is more difficult to square with religion than the American creed of separation of church and state. Moreover, OECD nations may be divided into several different broad categories, and one of the dividing lines is the tradition of political liberalism in the English-speaking nations (the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK) vs. that of statism, republicanism, and secularism in continental Europe. The former countries (in absolute number but also in proportion in the cases of Canada and Australia) tend to accept more immigrants but give them as well as citizens fewer welfare state benefits than the latter, and vice versa (see <http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/37/34607274.pdf> for the recent trends of migration into the OECD nations).
In both cases, immigrants are crucial political constituencies, especially Muslim immigrants in the case of Europe, so leftists need to make more efforts to understand their cultures and welcome them into politics on the Left. To the extent that it does so, the Left can grow.
Immigrants everywhere already tend to the (broadly defined) Left. E.g., in the Netherlands, "[a]ccording to research by the Institute of Migration and Ethnic Studies of the University of Amsterdam, 80 percent of the immigrant voters voted for the PvdA [Partij van de Arbeid, the Labor Party]" -- 85 percent in the case of Amsterdam and Rotterdam -- in the 2006 municipal elections (Philip van Praag and John Wanders, "Ruk naar links, mede door allochtonen," 8 March 2006, <http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/article240802.ece>). The Socialist Party and the GroenLinks [Green Left] got 5 percent and 7 percent of the immigrant votes respectively ("Allochtonen stemmen massaal op PvdA," 8 March 2006, <http://www.elsevier.nl/nieuws/politiek/artikel/asp/artnr/89694/index.html>).
Eventually, "a left government of the PvdA, the SP, and the Green Left would become possible," says Van Praag and Waters, for which immigrant votes would be decisive.
But leftists, especially social democratic leftists, do not requite immigrants' love of the Left: the Dutch Labor Party leader Wouter Bos says, "We are bound to get into trouble with our new immigrant councillors," for, in his opinion, "the political culture of foreign councillors does not always respect Dutch political culture, because they are 'politically committed to the culture of their country of origin, where clientelism is normal'" ("Bos vreest zijn allochtone partijgenoten," 17 March 2006, <http://www.elsevier.nl/nieuws/politiek/artikel/asp/artnr/91096/index.html>).
Is it any wonder that the Labor Party did not do well in the November 2006 general elections? The party, having lost 9 seats in those elections, is now down to 33 seats: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_general_election,_2006> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_Netherlands#Election_results_and_cabinets_since_WWII>.
Can the SP, the only former Maoist party that has become social democratic and grown into a sizable parliamentary party in the North, hold onto immigrant voters as well as others that it has peeled away from the Labor Party? If it is to do so, it, too, needs to change the party's politics about immigrants and their cultures. -- Yoshie