For this one day of the year, no introduction is needed. Few dates stick in the memory as solidly as that September 11th, which will go down as one of the darkest days in modern human history. 2,974 innocent people, along with their 19 barbaric murderers, died in the attacks on New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, changing fundamentally the way that we live our lives.

11 September 1609 was a far quieter day, but no less significant in the history of New York City. On that day, the English sea explorer Henry Hudson sailed his ship, the Halve Maen, into what is now New York harbour, discovering it for the Dutch East India Company. Five years later, the colony of New Netherland was founded, followed by the foundation of New Amsterdam - now New York City - in 1625.

Like the Dutch homeland, then fighting for its independence from the theocratic Habsburgs, the city was a beacon of liberty in an otherwise deeply oppressive world. The settlers were bound by the colony’s charter to respect freedom of religion and conscience, to a tolerable degree of taxation and government intrusion into the people’s lives.

The importance of this tradition was proven in 1664, when King Charles II invaded New Netherland, home to thousands of dissidents that had fled from religious persecution at the hands of the Stuarts and the Cromwells alike, seeking to annex it into New England. The Dutch company directors refused to defend the colony, arguing to the (conservative) Director-General Pieter Stuyvesant:

We are in hopes that as the English (in New Netherland) have removed mostly from old England for the causes aforesaid, they will not give us henceforth so much trouble, but prefer to live free under us at peace with their consciences than to risk getting rid of our authority and then falling again under a government from which they had formerly fled.

The English commander recognised the Dutch administrators’ resolution, and promised the Dutch commander that the people could “keep and enjoy the liberty of their consciences in religion”, which Stuyvesant accepted without argument. And thus did what would become the world’s second-greatest city pass into the hands of England, and afterwards Great Britain, in whose hands it remained until its independence as part of the United States a century later.

The inhabitants refused to bow to authoritarian demands by the new administration, but equally had refused to grant their previous Dutch masters the right to ride rough-shod over the rights, which they had won from the Spanish only after eighty years of war. In true reflection of their status as servants of the people, and defenders of their rights, the government acquiesced. The actions of the Dutch government in the 17th century were nothing short of heroic, showing restraint and poise in crisis to best serve their citizens’ interests, even if it meant losing national pride.

The same principles can just as readily be applied today. Our governments, in their haste to ‘defend’ us from future terrorist atrocities, commit atrocious crimes against their own people’s civil liberties. They arrest us without cause, and detain us without trial. They try us behind open doors, and do so without a jury of our peers. They force us to bear identity cards, and track us with a national database. If the government truly wished to do justice to the memories of the 2,974 innocent innocents that died in 2001, they would should the same respect, and the same decorous and liberal principle that were displayed by the Dutch governors of New Amsterdam.