- Joined
- Aug 8, 2005
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Social democrat, you say! Maybe this label is me. Unfortunately, too many right wingers automatically assume that I want to nationalize petroleum companies, banks, and airlines as well as set marginal tax rates at 95%. Then I would give everyone a job where they didn't have to work. Then I would set up a police state that jailed anyone who opposed me. Then I would kill others just to show how powerful I really am.
I just saw a documentary on a railroad that is run in the Norway and Sweden. I am uncertain whether this railroad is government owned or private, but it was interesting to see how the employees were quite motivated to adhere to schedules and deadlines, despite being such a socialist culture.
That doesn't mean that all social democrats are extreme liberals. I daresay a good many social democrats might be somewhat conservative on a good many issues, economic, social and legal, and even with regard to foreign policy.
It's just that in other countries, most of those "conservative" or "libertarian minded" social democrats see a line around a small handful of issues which are considered essential to human harmony and survival in a diverse modern industrialized world.
Thus, it is indeed possible to support universal access to higher education, health care and infrastructure while still being quite the Right winger OR libertarian on foreign policy or on the free market. I know social democrats in Canada who want the government to leave the petroleum industry alone and stop meddling in import/export markets.
I know Swedes who want tighter immigration rules, and who want new arrivals to demonstrate increased willingness to assimilation into Scandanavian values. And yet they are the first to insist on the right to a free or heavily subsidized university education and free health care.
Being a social democrat does not automatically turn a person into a confiscatory bolshevist, contrary to popular American opinion on the Right.