Tuesday, June 6, 2006 |
18:24 - The Swedish flag does a dance
|
(top) |
I've got friends who love Sweden and all things Swedish. To the point where they may as well move there and be just as happy as anywhere else, despite having no family connections or anything—it's just the Promised Land.
Or, at any rate, it was.
Two Swedish girls were sent home from school for wearing sweaters showing a tiny Swedish flag. The headmaster was concerned that this might be deemed offensive by some immigrants. Helle Klein, political editor of the newspaper Aftonbladet, boasts: “If the debate is going to be about whether there are problems with immigrants, we don’t want it.” Hans Bergström, former editor-in-chief of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, worries that Sweden has become “a one-party state.” According to Friedman, the elites are nervous and worried to see their power slip away. And therefore they want to silence critics, as for instance the Sweden Democrats, a small rightist party outside parliament opposed to immigration. “It is a completely legal party, they just aren’t allowed to speak. It is absurdly undemocratic. They are marginalised. They are isolated and ridiculed. . . . and then they are called undemocratic.
Oh well—there's always England, right?
If these articles are in any way accurate—and they come from well-respected writers in both cases—Europe's in for a world of hurt. "Unless something serious is done about this" is how Fjordman puts it, but I don't know of many cures that aren't worse than the disease.
I don't even know if it's morally okay to just take stock of how marvelously good we've got it here by comparison, where not only do we get to keep a lot more of our money, but cars don't get torched and teenage girls can walk the city streets unaccosted and people are still permitted to express their dissenting opinions with as loud a voice as they can summon the power for. The number of countries in the world that get labeled as "democracies" might be rising, but the meaning of the word is apparently being diluted out of existence.
|
|