How is Sweden a “shithole”? And what, exactly, is “crushed” about the condition of its people?
You kiddin’ me?
They wrote the funniest joke ever.
I’m wondering how far down the slippery slope the neo-cons will go. Today liberals, tomorrow progressives, then the “liberal” portion of their own party, then the moderate section…how many years will it take until it’s down to DeLay and Rove, sitting across from one another, pointing fingers?
(I know it’s just a fantasy, but it gets me thru the noc).
Me, I’m glad that Bricker is happy about the turn of events. That makes one.
Sweden isnt a shithole, its people arent cruched. It isnt the den of iniquity that the right makes it out to be, but niether is it some sort of socialist paradise that the left makes it out to be. Sweden has privatized its railroads, is privatizing parts of its healthcare system (right now in the Stockholm area) and is adopting free market policies in other areas. This is in part to convince successful Swedes to stay in the country and not emigrate. Sweden is progressive in the sense that it is ‘progressing’ beyond the immature adherense to any one particular ideology; there is a growing trend in pragmatic problem solving.
Unfortunately, by then, the rest of us will probably have been shipped off to “re-education camps” and won’t be able to enjoy the sight.
Either that, or we’ll luck out, and the blue states will have already broken away from Jesusland to join Canada. 
That makes one of 60,608,582, you mean.
I have a suggestion for you, Bricker. When you want call attention, once again, to the overwhelming crushing landslide of a mandate and its ringing endorsement of the Shining One’s every word and deed, why not just say “Ditto!”, and we’ll know what point you are making. Once again.
Think of all the time you’ll save!
That sounds very encouragine. What about the shape of society in Sweden? The social classes, the gap between rich and poor? Are all Swedes born with roughly equal chances in life, as Americans are not? Do the rich wield political power out of proportion to their numbers, as they do here? No doubt they have an “institutional elite” as every modern society does, but are most of the politicians, top-level business executives, foundation chairpersons, university professors and administrators, senior military officer, etc., drawn mostly from the upper class, or more or less equally from all classes?
To me, that’s what socialism is all about – not big government, not small government, not a planned economy, not a free-market economy, but an egalitarian, as-near-classless-as-practicable society, however it be achieved.
And how does Sweden differ, in these respects, from other European countries?
Not exactly. Today the word is used in the sense described in post #57, above(which is not much like what you’re describing). In American in the early 20th Century, “Progressivism” referred to something very different (and again, not much like what you’re describing): An upper-middle-class movement, heavily influenced by the “moralistic” political culture of New England and the Upper Midwest, devoted to “good government,” honest, transparent, vigorous and effective government, but also to fiscal responsibility with no deficit spending. The Progressives had a technocratic, professional vision of government that purported to transcend ideology, class interests and partisanship – an old Progressive slogan was, “There is no Democratic or Republican way to pave a street.” (Which is horseshit, of course – you also have to decide which streets to pave and that bings in questions of class interests and ideological value judgments.) The Progressives were disgusted with partisan politics as they knew it – the corrupt urban political machines of the time, but also ordinary legislative backscratching and logrolling. The devised various means for the people to circumvent the existing political process – their legacies include the initiative and referendum, the recall election, non-partisan municipal elections, and the city-manager form of government. Also the 16th (federal income tax), 17th (direct election of senators), 18th (prohibition of alcohol – repealed by the 21st), and 19th (women’s suffrage) amendments to the Constitution. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Progressive_Party and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era. Old-school progressivism tends towards socialism on economic issues, libertarianism on social issues. The Reform Party was always rather incoherent in its message because it had no clear ideology – it was an uneasy and unstable (and ultimately doomed) alliance of old-style progressives, and paleoconservative nativist populists like Pat Buchanan. Today, the old-style progressive political tendency is best expressed by Jesse Ventura’s and John Anderson’s Independence Party – http://www.mnip.org/.
We’re talking about liberalism, not libertarianism.
We are looking for words to better describe political positions and ideologies – not political parties and organizations. And no, in terms of foreign policy the Republicans are not “progressive.” The word has meant several things, as we have seen, but it has never been a synonym for “aggressive” or “proactive.” The desire to impose secular capitalist democracy on other countries is not “progressive” in any sense of the word.
Maybe this discussion of the variant meanings of “left” and “right” in politics will help clear things up for you, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-Right_politics:
So when is a child a child? What defines a human being? When does a woman lose the rights over her own body? What, in other words, have you based your decisions on?
I’m sure you are convinced, but what are your arguments?
It’s just that I have heard this whole debate so often, with so little understanding for both sides of the story and so little understanding for what life is.
I can answer this. Personally, I beleive a human life is a human life at conception, and that abortion is wrong except in those cases where it is medically mandated. That’s what my heart tells me is correct.
I don’t however beleive that I can govern with my heart, or inflict my beliefs upon others. I need to be rational.
A few years ago I had a debate with Gaudere where we seemed to come to agreement that what makes a human being a human being is the capability of human thought. After much give and take we pegged this capability as occuring in a fetus around five to six months. To be conservative for early starters we more or less arbitrarily moved it back a month and agreed that abortion after 4 months represented the death of a human being.
That seemed to make some sense, and was consonant with the idea that if you were brain dead, you were dead.
I’m not completely sure what I think now, but I’ve found this line of reasoning to be less than satisfactory.
According to who’s athority are we defining human thought?
I am quite certain that according to any criteria an average adult dog functions at a higher level than any newborn, and I don’t think there is any test that defines what “human thought” is. How is the feeling of comfort different for a dog than for a newborn?
What I’ve come up with is this:
It is not our ability to think that makes us human, it is simply our potential to contribute to participate in humanity that makes us so. A brain dead individual no longer has the ability to participate in humanity. His life is over and he is dead.
A newborn may not think as well as a dog, but it has the ability to develop into a participating member of humanity.
So, I think that upon conception a human being has the ability to become a participant in humanity. That is the only thing that it has.
I don’t think that anybody has the right to take that away unless it threatens that same quality in another person.
I think this is pretty rational. What do you think?
After generations, literally, of discussing the topic, the consensus certainly seem to have settled closer to Arwin’s point of view, unfortunately for you. Your view is not more valid than hers, no matter how dismissively you may put it.
Majority opinion is an argument you consider valid, isn’t it? Or only when it works in your favor?
The Scandinavian welfare system has been spectacular inept at breaking the social inheritance and promote social mobility. Much worse than more liberal (European meaning) economies like the UK and the USA. Born lower class, stay lower class. For instance, despite free university education a near 100% of those attending university are children of parents with a university degree. Despite very generous child care laws, Scandinavian women show a worse track-record attaining the top powerful corporate posts, than their American sister. (A recent report gave blame for the latter directly on the high tax rates)
There was a minister of education (Social Democrat) in Denmark who is infamous for these words: “What not everybody can learn, nobody shall learn.”. There’s an egalitarian for you. And how utterly contemptible. Incidentally she’s also infamous for getting sacked after using an ungodly amount of money on stays at Parisian Ritz Hotels. Do as I say, not as I do. has always been one of the strongest sides of socialists. And incidentally the Swedes are now on average poorer than African Americans, supposedly the poorest class in the US, and as a nation would be poorer than Alabama, supposedly the poorest state in the union.
Neither Communism nor Socialism will help you attain the “classless society”. They do make everybody a bit more equal, mostly by making the richer poorer. But at the expense of making it so much damn harder for the have nots to ever become the haves.
As for the OP. The Danish left wing’s rally cry this last couple of decades has been something along the lines of: “Preserve The Welfare System” Don’t change a thing. Preserve. Preserve. Preserve. Instead of labelling yourself “The Progressives” I suggest you go with “The Preservatives” (“scumbags” for short).
That’s a very wise question to ask.
Good thinking too.
But a cell and a sperm have this capacity too. To make things worse, we now know that in theory any cell of the human being has that capacity.
I’m not sure - to me it sounds more like a mild rationalisation of what ‘your heart tells you’, rather than building on what you’ve reached in your previous discussion. I think where you stranded was where you defined it as the ability to participate in humanity. It’s in the right direction, but not precise enough to be satisfactory.
Issues to consider, I think, is the factors that memory and reason, and the development of an identity and self-awareness play. I think this is what you were getting close to when you got to the definition of ‘capable of taking part in humanity’. The mental development of children is very interesting in that respect, for instance there is a fixed point in the development of children where they realise that other people are individuals with their own mental world (forming usually around the 6th year). There’s tonnes more to be said about this that we can get into, but to keep it short for now, including the safety margin you also mentioned I think you got the place of the (relatively arbitrary) line at a fairly decent fase of the pregnancy. I think there are arguments to be found to put it at a later time if you want to be more precise, but in practice this is rarely necessary and just complicates the issue more than necessary. Key is the realisation that human life gains value through investment, not through conception.
Equally important I think is determining at which point in time you decide that an embryo is no longer a part of the mother, but has a status of its own, and what the consequences to women are if you say that at the moment of inception they have been invaded by an individual and have to share their bodies and life resources with this individual from this point on, by force of law. I am not sure many, obviously especially men, understand the kind of pressure this puts on women even just when dealing with men, and how much more tied down they become and how much freedom is taken away. It’s a sad thing that this discussion that took place 30 years ago has now almost been forgotten again, in a time when you would think history isn’t forgotten as readily as it has wont to be in other eras.
I admit that it can be difficult to talk about these matters rationally, but I applaude that you recognise the value of that, and ironically, our capacity to look at things rationally is what makes us humans such special animals that we sometimes actually think we are more than that.
Absolutely. Majority opinion is a fine barometer. This particular conversation started when Eve bemoaned being marginalized by the popular forces that - among other things - wished to stop abortion. She was suggesting that popular opinion on the issue is changing, an dI was voicing my support of that change.
I absolutely would not want abortion outlawed by some sort of edict. I favor the democratic process… if my state’s legislature is moved to permit abortion, so be it. If they are moved to outlaw it, that’s great.
That has nothing to do with the system, and everything with the influx of foreign people, which is very low in Sweden.
Based on what kind of figures? In my experience, btw, it is true that Scandinavian men are less modern than Scandinavian women, a situation that seems to be the reverse of that in the Netherlands.
Every side has their extremists, and extremists are generally … well … extreme. And in a complex society, extreme generally doesn’t cut it.
Nothing to do with socialists, but because in Scandinavia the socialists have traditionally been mostly in government, you have a skewed view of this. Compare, for instance, John Major’s moral-conservative ‘Back to Basics’ campaign, and the scandals half his cabinet were involved in - prostitutes, cheating, etc, the
(actually quite sad) death by auto-erotic asphixiation of a conservative civil servant.
Poorer in what way? Because their standard of living still ranks 6 places above the whole of the U.S., and the African Americans aren’t quite above average just yet.
That’s one way of putting it.
As mentioned above, I contest that. In fact, it’s demonstrably not true.
Certainly conservative forces exist on both sides of the scale. I have found it very enlightening to see in my country a government consisting of both the traditional socialists and the traditional liberals (that’s what we call republicans over here, I can’t help it, and I can’t use the term republicans because we’re still a monarchy, we just concluded that conservatives exist on both sides - maybe I should just stick to ‘right’ and ‘left’) - yes, in other words, a government in which both the left and the right took part, for the first time in many years that not either one governed with the christian ‘central democrats’.
The right are as healthy a force in our society as the left are, I certainly recognise that, and I think issues are quite simply best dealt with in a near scientific way.
Really? That picture is not supported by the Wikipedia articles on Sweden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden#Demographics) and on the Demographics of Sweden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden) – but then, it isn’t flatly contradicted either. There’s just not enough information.
Does anybody know of a web site or other source that analyzes and compares the class structures of different countries, and levels of social mobility within them?
And what, in your opinion, would help us attain a classless society?
Where are you getting your figures?
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_(Contemporary_issues):
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Sweden:
I don’t see where you’re getting the idea that Swedes are economically worse off than African-Americans, or Alabamans.
Based on a scale that counts income in relation to the national average, and discounts income above that average, under the theory that all you need for contentment and happiness is to make the national average wage. A pretty leftist view, and one that I repudiate, along with the rankings of nations that it generates.
Yes, but what you’d be basically saying that things the Swedes buy through tax don’t count for anything. If that makes you happy, fine, but it doesn’t do reality much justice. People with higher incomes in the U.S. generally also buy similar social security and that comes at a hefty price, that appals your average Swede, who already think that the Dutch have to pay an aweful lot for their insurance (we’re sort of halfway between the U.S. and Sweden, in many ways). It’d be equally, if not more, plausible that the Swedes get more value for less money and that the U.S. despite its immense financial wealth (second wealthiest country per capita in the world) doesn’t manage to put this money to very good use in comparison.