Saturday, August 08, 2009

The Threats to the Nordic Model

Below is another guest-essay from our Norwegian correspondent Zylark.


The threats to the Nordic Model
by Zylark


During the entire post-war period the three Nordic countries, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, have excelled in one thing: well-being.

The “Social-Democratic” paradises, so to speak. The Third Way — not quite socialism, not quite capitalism.

It was the child of Labour rule. A system by the people and for the people, whilst keeping the industrialists and innovators happy and thus providing work and a future for the people.

In every person there is a worker just bursting to participate in the joy of contributing to society, or maybe to start his or her own business. At the very least, realizing oneself and one’s potential without artificial boundaries. A meritocracy, as opposed to the nepotism which was the earlier paradigm.

That is how it was anyway, or at least what the Social Democratic ideal was. And in denial of reality, many Social Democrats still think it is.

That was before about half the working population was on some state benefit. It was before we imported “immigrant-workers” of the Muslim kind, where only one in three actually work. Which I guess is why we need more “Muslim immigrant workers”. Though, with one new taxpayer for every two new moochers, I don’t see any profit coming out of this scheme anytime soon.

All other immigrant groups for some officially unexplained reason show comparable or higher work-participation than even natural born Nordics. Which is why I am all for immigration as such, just as long as we keep the slacker Muslims out.

No society in 1400 years has benefited from Islam gaining a toehold, much less having a say. It’s just centuries of looting and mooching on the back of others. This lack of willingness to build good societies but instead to destroy existing ones seems endemic in the Muslim world, history and genesis.

That Islam is detrimental to any society is pretty obvious. One need only look at Muslim-ruled societies. It is, after all, an ideology born out of the idea that one can take what one wants with no need to work for it. As exemplified best by their dear pedophile prophet, a warmonger and pirate. His favorite target for looting was Jewish villages, which were at one time not all that uncommon in the Middle East. Why did they disappear shortly after Islam became dominant in the region?

A more immediate concern than Islam, one which is more detrimental to the country, is the behavior of our own political parties. Social Democrats of all stripes — whether they are called socialists or “conservatives” — are supposed to care for the population in general, but they do no such thing.

They do not care about reality, only ideals. They follow a map that has long since lost any relevance to the terrain.

We Danes, Swedes and Norwegians are proud of our societal model. We like it. It worked. We worked hard for it.

Yes — past tense. It does not work anymore. The welfare model require honesty and willingness to participate. Sadly, both attributes are declining.
- - - - - - - - -
Where is the honesty in women’s rights organizations and governmental departments that are mysteriously quiet concerning honor killings, female genital mutilation, spousal rape, hijabs and, those tents which must be worn at all times outside of the home? I guess “equal rights!” is not as important as “I’m not a racist because I refuse to criticize backwards culture and ideology posing as religion!”.

The very liberal gay movement seem to suffer from the same diminutive (dhimmi even, are the words related?) attitude. Sure they put on their parades, but when attacked with ever increasing intensity and violence in our “liberal” cities, as they invariably are, it is all just some cultural misunderstanding. Say what? Better walk quietly, don’t tell, certainly don’t show; it might offend someone.

What is most scary is the blatant Jew-hatred. Imagine, just some sixty-four years after we defeated Nazism, we can again hear mobs calling for the gassing of Jews in our streets! The saddest part is that the people who enable these Jew-haters are those I once thought of as defenders of human rights and equality, the leftists and liberals. In fact, they are in the same mob, speaking the same hatred, only disguised as anti-Zionism or some other “Israel is a bad racist monster; Muslims are peace-loving pacifists!” delusion.

Never mind that the organizations in our midst claiming to speak for Muslims have this tendency to connect large pebbles or high-strung nooses to concepts such as homosexuality, Judaism, and unenslaved women. Not to mention us, the heretics who follow no scripture or deity but only reason, and even dare speak our minds contrary to their very sore toes regarding anything embarrassingly Islamic. Even concerning Islamic terrorism, which I have yet to see a Muslim demonstration against. While they wish death and beheadings on practitioners of free speech, on the other hand…

Not only that, our teens can not any longer have school class parties, for fear that gangs of violent enrichers might crash them. Our critical politicians, publishers, writers, and cartoonists must have 24/7 security details assigned to them. Lucky for them I guess, since our kids who speak their minds and stand up for themselves in the schoolyards all over Europe have no such security against these supremacist barbarians.

Our tax money goes to support these seditious elements in our midst. The very ones seeking to destroy our way of life are the ones we support by giving them the resources to live in our highly developed culture, and plenty of idle time to spread their Islamist Nazi ideology.

They see something despicable and sinful in our culture of equality, mutual respect, and tolerance, where I see options and freedoms. The two perspectives cannot live in peace, and the two are by no means equal.

Immigrant moochers and seditionists aside — of which there are plenty — another big problem is the indigenous population’s lack of effort. This is a far larger threat to our secure welfare societies.

We had a nice little sandbox, where all the able kids did their part, and all were equal. The poor and disabled kids were taken care of. Unlike kids in general, in some of the other sandboxes, we’re not cruel, not by design at any rate.

Now we have a bunch of “disabled” able kids, wanting to play on equal terms with their toy-cars in the sandy city we made. As if that is not enough, from dysfunctional sandboxes we have invited the ones who cried the hardest, and now demand that we take care of them whilst they’re stomping on our carefully made sandcastles.

We had rules that said if some brat comes here and try to ruin our fun, we’ll deny him access to our sandbox. Those rules are gone.

We had rules that said if you can handle any kind of job in our sandbox, you can take that kind of job. Even if that just means filling the bucket of the resident sandbox engineer, who made a four story castle just yesterday, and is trying for five today. If not, your toy car is not welcome. Those rules are also gone.

Now the indigenous among us are too lazy to do work that for some reason is “beneath” us. Non-localized back-pain and various other less-than-debilitating complaints are the number one cause of “disability” pensions. Which is a polite way of saying permanent social security for the lazy amongst us, those who could not quite see themselves working at some low-level job fitting their skillset, and don’t see the harm in collecting benefits on the back of the rest of us.

In short, it has become common, and respectable, to not work.

What the hell?

That is not why we have welfare! That is not why I pay taxes. We do not have a very generous safety net so that people who are able to work may live a good life not working. We have that security so that those with genuine disabilities, genuine mental problems, genuine strokes of bad luck, can live a decent life through a period of hardship, and preferably, despite their disadvantage, eventually return to contribute again.

I simply refuse to believe that 50% of the Norwegian workforce (between the ages 18 and 65) are so disabled that they can not contribute. Danish and Swedish numbers are not that different. There is something very wrong here. Our welfare model has taken a wrong turn if we think this is in any way, shape or form sustainable.

We try; oh, do we try! We bend over backwards to make things just right to accommodate the disabled. Pay half-wages for a year or two? No problem. For those who are willing, it does help get a foot into the workforce. Make the workplace fit your ergonomic necessities? Not a problem. It may help tremendously. Supply you with a custom-made car so you can commute efficiently? Not a problem. The only thing worse than public transport is to be disabled and relying on public transport.

But, of course, all these supports require one thing, one thing that most on disability pension lack: the will to get back into productive work.

Those who do want to work but are on disability are the ones who do get to work and do get off disability. What we are left with is a minority that needs the disability benefits for genuine reasons, and a majority of people who are nothing more than deadbeats.

What we do see is that only those with some spirit and self-respect in them, no matter the disability, resume contributing by working. These are people playing to their strengths, and not seeking pity for their handicaps. They deserve all the support they can get. These are the ones we want to bend over backwards for. They are true heroes.

That is a liberal Social Democracy. Doling out benefits right, left and center is not. That is just idealistic naïveté. If you give without making demands, then you get nothing in return. Actually worse than nothing; a deficit, a burden.

Our society was not built on nothing, it was built on the work ethic and participation. On equality and duty. It is time we wage earners (let’s face it, that is most of us) re-establish our power, and once again remind our politicians that we are their bosses, not the other way around.

By some freakish turn of events, most of our politicians, even the ones claiming to represent the people — the majority that elected them — are a severe echo-chamber of a minority of academics who are out of touch with the real world.

Don’t get me wrong; higher education is invaluable, and can give us insights. But amongst us academics there is a certain schism between the postmodernists (a.k.a. relativists) and those of us who find Occam’s razor an indispensable tool. Our groups don’t usually see eye to eye.

Politics has become a profession. Like that of a physician or engineer, only without the final exam that says you have any real proficiency. Politics is a highly-paid profession that requires the possession of politically correct opinions. That ensures two things: careerists with a bloated sense of self-worth flock to it, and they will say and do anything as long as it does not put them out of favor with the established order.

I apologize for the generalization to the few honest, working-or-the-people politicians that we do have. But you know who you are, and be certain we wish there were more of you.

The irony is that the careerist party-politicians who claim to speak for the people and for the benefit of the majority deride the parties and politicians who have an ear to the ground and take the people seriously, and do not see them as just an obstacle to be duped, I mean, overcome, at election time.

Careerist politicians, hatchlings of the political establishment nest, think so-called populist politicians are simple, not smart. Not able to connect the purported oblique dots which require years of study to interpret properly. What they are bickering about is who is right in his interpretation. None of them seems willing to look at the premise: what are the dots?

Using another more down-to-earth set of eyes, the dots are rather apparent, not obscure, and it is a simple matter of drawing a line from one to the other.

We might get it wrong, so we prefer pencils, not ink. When we make a mistake, we admit it, and try something different. Only morons do the same thing over and over and expect a different result to happen eventually.

We’ve been doing the same thing over and over now for more than thirty years. We’ve gone full circle and we are back where we started, with political nepotism compounded by a quagmire of political correctness. It runs rampant in our societies, contrary to all our ideals, and it is time we put a stop to it.

It is time once again to put some reality into politics — sacred cows be damned!

18 comments:

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

Zylark hits the nail right on describing both how it used to be and how it is now. Obviously it wasn't so different to grow up i Norway that it was in Sweden which is really telling of how similar our countries are with only minor differences. He also draws the right conclusions. An excellent article!

Anonymous said...

"The welfare model require honesty and willingness to participate."

This is very important and does not relate only to immigrant issues. The same thing can be said about the free-market, classical liberal ideology : yes, it can work, provided there is honesty and willingness to participate.

These qualities do not spring out ot institutions, laws or economic models. Either a people has them, or it has not. This is beyond the choice of a political agenda.

Anonymous said...

"The welfare model require honesty and willingness to participate."

The welfare model requires a stong Protestant work ethic that includes among honesty, a pride in self-reliance of looking after the family, without state interference.

Of course it is easy to pay taxes and allow the state to look after everyone - but that way eventually leads to totalitarianism - soft as in the case of the UK or Canada, and hard, as in Cuba.

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

Milk, bread and a book.

What I think is not being understood here is that there is an unseen war raging against the indigenous 'underclass' of the U.K. contrary to the propaganda, visit any indgionous council estate in the U.K. and scratch the surface what you will find is a people who's conservative values are still deeply entrenched. These are the very estates where the U.K. recruits its soldiers from.

The Neo-liberals know that real opposition to its policy would not come from the higher social groups as they were simply indoctrinated by the education system, bought off with government jobs, or in the case of the private sector allowed to act without moral hazard - as is the case with the U.K. financial sector.

The vanguard of the attempt to destroy the core values of the indigenous population was to first undermine the education system and destroy economic opportunity, that is why there has been no social mobility in the U.K. for decades and a large and consistent welfare take up from this group (even in times of boom).

Neo-liberalism and cultural relativism is a top down ideology that is why it can more readily be found higher up the social scale, preached in the universities but is an anathema in U.K. council housing estates.

Jungle Jim said...

"The welfare model require honesty and willingness to participate."

It is inevitable that any welfare state will end up becoming a nightmare. There will always be someone who will take advantage of it. And then others will wonder why they should work when the welfare cheats are living it up for nothing. Eventually the entire system collapses into abject poverty and totalitarianism.

Dymphna said...

The metaphor of the sand box is apt.

If you've ever had a sandbox in your garden in which children can play, you know that you have to keep it covered when the kids aren't around. Otherwise, stray animals will find it and put it to uses you never intended. This will make the sandbox unsanitary and no longer fit for kids.

Yep, that's what strays do: they mess up the sandbox. They do what they know because they come from a much larger, less rigorously attended-to sandbox than we take into account when we admit them to ours.

We've been indoctrinated with the specious, toxic notion that all people are alike and they just want the same things. I'll agree that they do want similar things, but they often don't agree with our methods of attainment and they don't care if grabbing these things out of someone else's hand causes a problem.

IIRC, most of the countries The Unassimilated come from don't have a middle class. There is no one in their country of origin for them to emulate. All the cultural barriers and differences aside, it is moving from one class to another that appears insuperable.

Zenster said...

No society in 1400 years has benefited from Islam gaining a toehold, much less having a say.

I also noted this and have yet to see anyone, even Solkhar, successfully refute this observation.

They see something despicable and sinful in our culture of equality, mutual respect, and tolerance, where I see options and freedoms.

Remember that Muslim protest sign?

FREEDOM GO TO HELL!

Many Muslims regard freedom as unwanted and undesirable. It too easily allows questioning and critical analysis of Islam's fragile and brittle construct. Far too many holes can be poked through its tissue of lies.

If freedom were of any value in Islam, it would not be so conspicuously absent in nearly every single Muslim majority nation on earth.

"Freedom" and "Islam" are mutually exclusive terms.

We had rules that said if you can handle any kind of job in our sandbox, you can take that kind of job. Even if that just means filling the bucket of the resident sandbox engineer, who made a four story castle just yesterday, and is trying for five today. If not, your toy car is not welcome.

A wonderful metaphor that clearly distinguishes between those who seek to achieve and those who are merely parasites.

In short, it has become common, and respectable, to not work.

As Ayn Rand noted, if there is one meaning to life it is to be productive. That a lack of productivity should be, not just rewarded, but respected is symptomatic of an even greater social malaise with regard to how creativity, innovation and industry are no longer held in such esteem.

Life, and survival in general, no longer pose such tremendous burdens upon us whereby ability and skill carry anywhere near the cachet that they once did. Two hundred years ago, people who demonstrated such mastery and competence found, more often than not, success of some sort awaiting them.

If Western culture is decadent, then it is the admiration of unearned wealth and adulation of unmerited fame, that embody this decadence.

[to be continued]

Zenster said...

New York Giant's quarterback Eli Manning's six-year $97.5 million dollar contract equates to a full-time job that pays nearly $7,000 per hour. His actual pay rate comes out to somewhere around ONE MILLION DOLLARS PER GAME. That is orders of magnitude beyond $7,000 per hour.

Halfwits like Regis Philbin and Paris Hilton are famous for being famous. No heavy lifting required, just smile for the camera.

The pursuit of unearned wealth and quest for unmerited fame signal a near-fatal deline in societal ethics and aesthetics. Little wonder that such a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing like Islam has managed to infiltrate the fold.

What we do see is that only those with some spirit and self-respect in them, no matter the disability, resume contributing by working.

Self-respect is a key issue. Amidst all of the self-loathing the concept of self-esteem that derives from genuine accomplishment is a forgotten thing. Children are being taught that self-esteem is automatic and failing students are given "social promotion" to avoid any stigma of being held back a year. There has even been talk of eliminating grades altogether as they cause feelings of superiority or unworthiness in students. As one wag put it:

NEVER HAS THERE BEEN A GENERATION SO FULL OF SELF-ESTEEM ...

FOR SO LITTLE REASON!


Politics has become a profession. Like that of a physician or engineer, only without the final exam that says you have any real proficiency. Politics is a highly-paid profession that requires the possession of politically correct opinions. That ensures two things: careerists with a bloated sense of self-worth flock to it, and they will say and do anything as long as it does not put them out of favor with the established order.

Long ago, any sense of service to country and duty to one's fellow man were replaced by the current political paradigm of unadulterated narcissism blended with a towering sense of indispensability. These elite political vermin cannot possibly imagine how the world might continue to exist without them at the helm.

It is time once again to put some reality into politics — sacred cows be damned!.

No better time than now to remember that sacred cows make the tastiest hamburgers.

laller said...

Some times I wonder where people get there figures from. Accroding to the Danish Bureau of Statstics, nearly 4/5(~78%) of the "workforce"(all people between 16 and 64) are employed or seeking employment. The reamining 1/5(~22%) are the physically and/or mentally disabled, the housewives/-men, students without part-time jobs, the homeless and/or criminals etc.

That unemployment should be "respectable" is in my oppinion b/s. It may true in some/certain circles, but in general? Hell, more and more people are, according to news articles, informing authorities of people who commit "social fraud"...
I've been unemployed for a long time now, I'm suffering from Dysthymia and Avoidant personality disorder(look 'em up if you want), and in that time I've seen someone with cancer throughout half his body, who wanted to work. I've seen people with backs in extremely poor conditions, who wanted to work. I've seen people with various mental problems, i.e. anxiety and depression, who wanted to work. In fact, the vast majority of the people I've come across in "the system" wanted to work, and the vast majority feel embarrased for not having a job... I dare say that the idea that it should be "respectable" to not have a job is ludicrous. Yes, there are cheaters and abusers(like people who receive "early retirement benefits", yet work full-time). Any sytem will have cheaters and abusers.


Zenster

What does it mean to be "productive"? Is it to produce items? To work?

Regards

Watching Eagle said...

Zenster,

The BEST article I have read. Check this link out for why their is no drive for a war against Islam. See our 'news' media at work. This you got to see.


Caliphate for the average Joe

Concerning the welfare state, it destroys honesty and willingness to participate.

We must fix our own problems first, before the "cuddly Lion cub" of Islam grows big enough to take over.

Watching Eagle said...

I meant, this is the best post of Zenster's that I have read (he has had many good posts.

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

Thank you Eagle for sharing this female rocket scientist with us.

EscapeVelocity said...

To the OP, well said.

One of the reasons for the success of highly collectivized welfare statist system in the Scandanavian countries was their relative homogenaity. The socieity was at peace with itself and could reinforce socieital norms informally.

Multi-culturalism doesnt work so well, espeically within a massive welfare state. The US model is designed around this diversity of population, (well it was this is and has been changing thanks to the Western New Left since the 60s). Anyways, the deal is that much lower welfare safety netting encourages people that want to prosper to self integrate. To not only get work, but keep work, and improve your position and income, you dont make demands for special treatment, instead you go along to get along. European immigrants in teh Early 20th century, discouraged the use of the old language and promoted English usage by their kids...so that their kids could do better than they. In today's climate the Left is not only supporting mass immigration of new voters but also demanding that the host society pander to their new culture. This is true even in the US.

What a dissaster the 60s New Left and the spoiled post War Baby Boomer generation has been for Western Civilization. The Cold War seems to have been a Phyrric victory.

That is all.

EscapeVelocity said...

One more thing, Zenster is right on the money.

Kids are being taught to be good little Socialists. They come out of school ill prepared with life skills and with a massive sense of entitlement.

The Western Left is the true enemy of Western Civilization and peoples. The 5th column, driving societal decay and celebrating the destruction of Western Civilization. Without the Western Left, Islam is no threat.

Anonymous said...

Very insightful article and as a Dane, living in Sweden and also worked in Norway, I can guarantee that Zylark is very close to the facts.
When I started my adult work life as carpenter in the sixtees, there was solidarity and morality in the society, this is in many ways begone in parity with the growing rate of Islamic immigrants, people that don't want to participate and share, but only demands in a never ending history.
I wont be here when Muslims is in majority in Europa, but my three daughters, my five grandchild (so far)will, and they have to solve the problems we in my generation passed over to them, its scary and I'm ashame to leave this nightmare to the next generation.

laine said...

Here's a little summary of what leftist "intelligentsia" did (and was allowed to do by supine voters) in full public view. In Scandinavia it is in full flower but the process is well underway in every Western country.

The elites kept raising taxes to pay for bigger government (power and perks they could never achieve in the private sphere despite their degrees) and entitlement programs to buy off voters/peasants.

Eventually many working citizens (like Elizabeth on another thread) now feel they cannot afford any or more children because through their taxes they are supporting adult dependents like lazy bureaucrats, Welfare deadbeats or "artists" who make bad art no one wants to buy.

The elites who created this situation where one half of a couple toils to pay government taxes and the other for personal family use now cry "We are short of youth manpower, especially to care for our elderly in nursing homes!"

Next, the elites import masses of unassimilating and uneducated immigrants from a culture with a terrible work ethic. (This would be funny if it were not so destructive). These immigrants of entitlement especially won't soil their hands with menial work in nursing homes for people they consider beneath them and their undisciplined "youth" run free in feral packs to terrorize the native elderly. The immigrant families are a NET DRAIN on the host society's resources and set about undermining it culturally as well as economically so the elites' "cure" is tenfold worse than the "disease" they caused.

An analogy would be that the elites slowly bled their productive citizens dry with transfusions into the government blood bank. Then they imported leeches to "fix" the anemia.

Anyone who objects to further immigration for self-evident reasons receives the full wrath of the elites, their propagandistic media and the police whose main job has evolved to protect the parasites from reprisals.

Sure leftists are deeply stupid or insane, but they invented a powerful witches' brew of white guilt, one-way multiculturalism and political correctness that paralyzes their victims. The fact that they themselves will be among the first to perish is cold comfort to the rest of us fighting off the alien spores they've loosed.

Zenster said...

Watching Eagle: Caliphate for the average Joe.

Watched it. Want to vomit. Satisfied?

Theoden said...

I agree with most of this post but the statistics are not correct. The Nordic countries actually have a higher participation in the workforce than other countries.

Here is the percentage of employed people in the ages 15 - 64 in various EU countries (in Swedish but you can probably understand the names of the countries):
http://www.scb.se/Pages/TableAndChart____75359.aspx