Spring is here!

The Sun shone finally this enlightened season and I had a coffe outside at the harbor café. There was not really much warmth in the Sun and a cold wind blew. A few boats passed by but I had to have another cup at home to warm myself up after this years outdoor première.

Apparently other people are also thinking on the perennial question "Vart är vi på väg?". One escapist disappeared in culture and this is an old trick when it comes to flight from reality.

Another became geopolitical and started to divide Europe into the Germanic and Slavic, bar Britain, and the Latin. Britain I guess will remain in its historical cradle, in splendid isolation. Especially now when the US has a Pacific president. Deutsche Welle, however, said the other day that France and Britain are talking defence together. According to Montesquieu the Nordic countries belong among the German länder. I am not so sure. What is interesting is if the predicted fusion of Eastern Europe with Russia and Germany is going to become smooth. They have been bent rather to America.

Dividing Europe up in new functional constellations is probably an irritating pastime to some that still believe it is possible to fuse the different cultures further. This was an excellent goal for Europe as long at it functioned. Now separate goals will begin to crystallize and the question is if history is going to repeat itself. The division is not just geopolitical there are philosophical bounds. The German philosophers created marxism and nazism. The English liberalism. Now, after a financial crisis in liberalism, Germany is going to modernize Russia and according to some they want the Baltic region with them. Theoretically a new cultural region post-1989. So what is your enthusiasm for this new development?

After giving up on the EU project, I have begun to think that maybe Sweden is best poised in another peninsular splendid isolation with its old neutrality politics, peace and feminism line of work. Germany is one third Catholic. Poland more so. This does not mix well. The non-EMU Norway and Britain are closer. Germany is however our largest trade partner. This is another reason for why a splendid isolation could be the best--it is not possible to chose.

So I end up with the problem of choosing the new government. It would probably be best and let Anders Borg finish our exodus from the financial crisis along the lines he has been so far. Changing strategy in the middle can only be bad. However, the Red-Greens offer that splendid isolation. We should have a woman PM, of course, and a vice-PM environmentalist. A Red-Green government would replace religion in our secular country with egalitarian environmentalism. A devout nation.

Europe 1859 and now?

On Liberty/Chapter 3 - Wikisource: "The modern regime of public opinion is, in an unorganized form, what the Chinese educational and political systems are in an organized; and unless individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against this yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents and its professed Christianity, will tend to become another China."

John Stuart Mill writes this in 1859 in his book On Liberty, still in print today, and the book of office of the Liberal Democrats in the UK. It bothered Mill that Europe seemed bent to become ruled by the tyranny of mediocrity, the masses.

Today we have acknowledged that the masses did not turn out to become tyrannical but understanding as to the need of innovation. Even the Chinese speak of it but does not agree on how it should be fostered. Furthermore the masses are not considered mediocre since politicians, even if they are not eccentric or exceptionally high IQ, have a political intelligence important for resonance with the masses. We speak also about the wisdom of the masses.

What is interesting though is the almost spastic talk about innovation today in the "modern regime for public opinion". My question would be if it is possible to increase innovation in the West? We can perhaps increase the per capita education but do we at the same time increase the per capita innovation? If I am right we would be able to increase our ability to capitalize on innovations but not increase their numbers in a given population. People are nervous these days because China and India are bringing in more people from poverty and are thus increasing their innovation per capita.

What can we do then to stay competitive? Well, if Europe will become another China, as Mill feared, he meant static for centuries, we will start treating people non-individualistically. We would start locking people up in collectives. We would prevent free discussion, something Mill also warned against. We would prevent freedom of thought and like the Catholic church rely totally on dogmatic tradition.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a contemporary of John Stuart Mill and he famously said "gather from far every ray of various genius to our hospitable halls". This is why America today is more competitive. They import talent to increase their per capita innovation. Just increasing the amount of money you spend on innovation is not going to do the trick. Europe must become hospitable to foreigners and empower the individual.

The Sweden of equality--does populism even exist?

”Sveriges radikala elit har blivit den nya överheten” - DN.se: "Verklighetens folk har jag kallat den breda del av Sveriges befolkning som lever ett alldeles vanligt, hederligt arbetande liv och för vilka politik kommer i andra hand. Det kan vara allt från undersköterskor till professorer".

The moderates now also preach "jämlikhet", ie, equality, in a recent move to the left, otherwise the one catch-word of the Social Democrats.

When David Brooks today discusses populism in the US, he talks about populists and the elite. Göran Hägglund's "verklighetens folk", or "people like people usually are", honest hardworking people that consider politics secondarily, are not like those defined by Brooks. Brooks think more in the line of the Tea Party crowd who are politically active.

If Göran Hägglund with "radical elite" means the leftish elite that pushed eugenics, being against mentally weak people, as described by Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist in their article about the foul smell of "Folkhemmet" (S) and (SD) är samma andas barn, I can understand what he means by "verklighetens folk". Honest, non-judgemental, people. But is Hägglund not falling a little in his own trap when he speaks of "verklighetens folk" as needing someone talking for them--"förmynderi", something (KD) even has been accused of in terms of alcohol practices, not to mention snuff.

Today Hägglund is inviting Muslims to join (KD). Perhaps (KD) should call themselves 'Religious Democrats'. It is of course possible that (S) has a too "förmyndande" tone against Muslims and that they would feel more at home in a less Folkhemish and state-prone party. Bard and Söderqvist group (S) and (SD) together because they idealize a nostalgic past as something Swedish. If (KD) wants to market "verklighetens folk" as something not so Folkhemish, more plural, and stand out from (SD), inviting Muslims to join might be a good idea.

In a modern multicultural party it is obviously important to distance oneself from the Biblical shepherd and his sheep. "Verklighetens folk", as Hägglund have described them, seem unfortunately a little sheepish. I guess people do not really want to be identified as sheep in this modern individualistic and innovative world. Being a conservative party, (KD) would have problems with too much tradition in this respect.

I don't have much reason to trust people, but I should apparently?

När vi litar på andra mår vi bra - DN.se: "Svenskarna litar ovanligt mycket på varand­ra, internationellt sett. ”I länder där var och en kan räkna med hjälp av samhället i svåra situationer känner invånarna större tillit – och de mår bättre och lever längre”, säger sociologen och forskaren Mikael Rostila."

If I understand the results of Rostila's dissertation, he has measured interpersonal trust across Europe and finds a gradient of lower and lower interpersonal trust as you go from north to south. He talks about correlations to this trust but many seem far fetched due to the multivariable type phenomena.

What I find interesting, however, is that it seems like the relation to the state would result in better interpersonal trust among people than would situation where the relation for security is the Church or family relatives. He seems to conclude that everything is going to be performed via the state for people to feel good. Very Alvaesque.

Conservatives must turn in their hypothetical graves when they hear such things. So would liberals. Now, can this really be true? We have seen the socialists becoming more unpopular around Europe lately? Could the explanation instead be that where family ties are not so strong people have to trust others?

Veil of Ignorance?

A Theory of Justice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Rawls develops what he claims are principles of justice through the use of an entirely and deliberately artificial device he calls the Original position, in which everyone decides principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance. This 'veil' is one that essentially blinds people to all facts about themselves that might cloud what notion of justice is developed."

In 1971 John Rawls published A Theory of Justice thus restarting political philosophy which had been in the doldrums during the 1950s and 1960s. For me this date coincides with a time just after the birth of TTDE and I can't resist speculating a little on what Rawls might have meant with the "veil of ignorance".

It seems like we are dealing with a justification of the procedure, perhaps common at the time, of organizing people in "systems" even without their consent or knowledge of the game? It became possible to clandestinely study the psychological reactions of people to posed questions and this led to the possibility of a detailed investigation of a person's prior life in order to present a thorough character analysis. Someone playing God could then place a person in this new "ministate".

The so created systems or ministates would then be more or less successful and fuse with other ministates to gradually bring us back to the national level with a set of "traffic rules" replacing the law-book of the previous society. The traffic rules are supposed to make individual paths of development possible within the system in line with a liberal set-up. People drive on the individual road and just have to stop at for example a red light now and then. Fees are collected for redistribution for the common good and helping the poor. Rawls, however, is left of the welfare state which he rejects.

Rawls ministates would ultimately form something like the society Sweden represents and Robert Nozick, also at Harvard University, produced a libertarian version of Rawls ministates calling the redistribution unfair. Each system has to decide on how large a fee would be reasonable thus perhaps making a total fusion of the ministates impossible. The nation will remain multi-fractured or fracture in larger chunks.

Just a preliminary analysis but this might be something rather than mini-kingdoms? You know, the Americans don't like Kings and Queens.

Immigration, Nordic Union and Integration?

JohanNorberg.Net#3359#3359#3359: "Invandringsfrågan är inte vilken fråga som helst, som man kan kompromissa om hur som helst. Det är en central mätare på var man står i synen på öppenhet, mångfald och gränsöverskridanden."

I agree that the issue of immigration is an important leverage point in the political debate in the EU. I find it strange if Sweden would not afford taking in asylum seekers and obviously admitting as many via "arbetskraftsinvandring" as is possibly possible. Siv Jensen apparently was introduced as someone that is a fan of Ayn Rands Fountainhead. I have not read the book, only about the book, but I don't think Rand is a good prophet for Northern Europe.

Dick Erixon calls Siv Jensen and FrP honorable populism. He is of course a populist in his discussion concerning "verklighetens folk". He is also a populist when it comes to immigration with the argument, now and then, that immigrants often becomes a burden on the welfare state and with the impossible request for absolute integration. However, that is exactly the point, humanism versus clean economics.

"Främlingsfientlighet" is a character that I have gotten the feeling is related to the talk of greater Nordic unionization. It is to me a development like that of the shogunate of Japan long time ago when they shut themselves out of the world for a couple of hundred years. It is for me the opposite to greater incorporation into the EU and to greater things. For me it is a poison for opportunity.

More discussion:
Fredrik Segerfeldt, Dick Erixon, Johnny Munkhammar, Johan Ingerö, Philip Wendahl, Aaron Israelson