CONDITIONS IN SWEDEN HAVE DETERIORATED DRASTICALLY

In this mailing: Bruce Bawer: A Meaningful Milestone in Sweden? Majid Rafizadeh: Iran to Have Nuclear Bomb in a Few Months? A Meaningful Milestone in Sweden? by Bruce Bawer  •  November 26, 2019 at 5:00 am       Conditions in Sweden have deteriorated so drastically -- with everything from child care to elder care being deprived of funds that are instead being used to feed, clothe and house refugees, faux refugees, and other foreign freeloaders -- that many Norwegians worry, with good reason, about a massive spillover of social chaos, poverty and crime from a country with which it shares a thousand-mile-long border. One is reminded, of course, of the indefensible way in which British authorities handled -- or refused to handle -- decades of child-rape cases in Rotherham, Rochdale and other cities throughout Britain. But in Sweden -- whose distinctive history of ideological conformity and self-image as a "moral superpower"... the readiness to deny unpleasant realities is even more widespread and deep-seated than in the U.K. and other Western European countries. It was the Social Democrats and Moderates that created Sweden's current crisis and allowed it to endure and worsen and be considered beyond criticism.... The Sweden Democrats' triumph, then, may well be at once a genuine milestone in the advance of Swedish democracy and individualism and a mere turn in the road to ultimate cultural displacement. If recent poll numbers that show the Sweden Democrats to be the most popular party should translate into an equally impressive victory in the next general election, it will amount to an earthquake in Swedish politics. Pictured: Jimmie Åkesson (left), leader of the Sweden Democrats, speaks at a campaign rally on September 7, 2018 in Nykoping, Sweden. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images) When I moved to Norway twenty years ago, a term I encountered often was "American conditions" (amerikanske tilstander). It was always used disparagingly. It referred to such things as urban sprawl, strip malls, inner-city gangs, school shootings and private health care. After Barack Obama became president, I heard the term far less frequently -- in Norway, after all, you cannot get too rough on a country with a black president, especially a president to whom you have given the Nobel Peace Prize. Continue Reading Article