The Truth About Sweden and Socialism

For years, I’ve heard American leftists say Sweden is proof that socialism works, that it doesn’t have to turn out as badly as the Soviet Union or Cuba or Venezuela did. But that’s not what Swedish historian Johan Norberg says in a new documentary and Stossel TV video.

“Sweden is not socialist—because the government doesn’t own the means of production. To see that, you have to go to Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea,” says Norberg. “We did have a period in the 1970s and 1980s when we had something that resembled socialism: a big government that taxed and spent heavily. And that’s the period in Swedish history when our economy was going south.”

Per capita gross domestic product fell. Sweden’s growth fell behind other countries. Inflation increased. Even socialistic Swedes complained about the high taxes.

Astrid Lindgren, author of the popular “Pippi Longstocking” children’s books, discovered that she was losing money by being popular. She had to pay a tax of 102 percent on any new book she sold. “She wrote this angry essay about a witch who was mean and vicious—but not as vicious as the Swedish tax authorities,” says Norberg.

Yet even those high taxes did not bring in enough money to fund Sweden’s big welfare state. “People couldn’t get the pension that they thought they depended on for the future,” recounts Norberg. “At that point the Swedish population just said, ‘Enough, we can’t do this.'”

Sweden then reduced government’s role. They cut public spending, privatized the national rail network, abolished certain government monopolies, eliminated inheritance taxes, and sold state-owned businesses like the maker of Absolut Vodka. They also reduced pension promises “so that it wasn’t as unsustainable,” adds Norberg.

As a result, says Norberg, his “impoverished peasant nation developed into one of the world’s richest countries.”

He acknowledges that Sweden, in some areas, has a big government: “We do have a bigger welfare state than the U.S., higher taxes than the U.S., but in other areas, when it comes to free markets, when it comes to competition, when it comes to free trade, Sweden is actually more free market.”

Sweden’s free market is not burdened by the U.S.’s excessive regulations, special-interest subsidies, and crony bailouts. That allows it to fund Sweden’s big welfare programs.

“Today our taxes pay for pensions—you (in the U.S.) call it Social Security—for 18-month paid parental leave, government-paid childcare for working families,” says Norberg.

But Sweden’s government doesn’t run all those programs. “Having the government manage all of these things didn’t work well.”

So they privatized. “We realized in Sweden that with these government monopolies, we don’t get the innovation that we get when we have competition,” says Norberg.

Sweden switched to a school voucher system. That allows parents to pick their kids’ school and forced schools to compete for the voucher money. “One result that we’ve seen is not just that the private schools are better,” says Norberg, “but even public schools in the vicinity of private schools often improve, because they have to.”

Sweden also partially privatized its retirement system. In America, the Cato Institute proposed something similar. President George W. Bush supported the idea but didn’t explain it well. He dropped the idea when politicians complained that privatizing Social Security scared voters.

Swedes were frightened by the idea at first, too, says Norberg, “But when they realized that the alternative was that the whole pension system would collapse, they thought that this was much better than doing nothing.”

So Sweden supports its welfare state with private pensions, school choice, and fewer regulations, and in international economic freedom comparisons, Sweden often earns a higher ranking than the U.S.

Next time you hear Democratic Socialists talk about how socialist Sweden is, remind them that the big welfare state is funded by Swedes’ free-market practices, not their socialist ones.

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New York Times Bias Exposed

President Donald Trump has called out The New York Times for its bias numerous times and it turns out he was actually right. Former New York Times editor Jill Abramson’s soon-to-be published book “Merchants of Truth” suggests the magazine’s news reporting has become “unmistakably anti-Trump,” Fox News’ Howard Kurtz reports.

The fact is, The New York Times has had a liberal bias that started long before Trump was elected president. This often came through in more subtle ways, such as the stories it chose to cover—and how it treated Democrats versus Republicans. This is old news.

What has changed is that the Times is now so aggressively hostile to the president that it’s made it more hyperbolic and reckless, even in its straight news reporting. Trump has merely exposed the long-term biases that media organizations like the Times and The Washington Post have always had, but now those outlets—in their zeal to undo his presidency and get clicks—have undermined their own credibility.

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Debunking Two Moral Questions People Often Ask to Support Lax Border Policy

Within some religious communities, as well as outside houses of worship, a question often being asked is: How can we turn away people from our borders in light of the Bible’s statement “Thou shall not afflict the Stranger”? Former President Obama, in concert with many liberal leaders, are in speeches across the country quoting this very passage to justify a lax, almost open-borders policy. The truth is that the Bible is speaking of individual sojourners and not thousands marching at one time, whose sheer numbers and concentration could immediately harm society.

America is not afflicting strangers within our country. Those in the caravan outside our borders could have spared themselves their discomfort along the way if they would have followed the common and lawful practice we’ve created for making application at our embassies back in their home countries.

In times past, the Bible would have seen the amassing of 7,000 on its borders, with still more threatening to come and charge the gates, as something worrisome and something quite political, which is precisely what some of the caravan sponsors and marchers – who are against the concept of a nation-state – have in mind.

The sojourner stranger of whom Scripture speaks was a harmless individual. This cannot entirely be said regarding the immigration phenomenon of the last few years. Among the caravan activists are former criminals, gang members, mules for drug lords, people carrying contagious diseases, and ANTIFA-types who pose a grave threat to the American population. Undoubtedly, the Bible would not demand a scenario where a host population and its families face their own form of potential affliction. The Bible, as the Constitution, is not a suicide pact and would not stand in the way of a vetting process that for safety and national security reasons takes place outside our borders.

Furthermore, not afflicting a newcomer living among us is a universal application of decency, but does not matriculate automatically into a right for citizenship in a particular country. Neither is there a biblical right to enter a country and thereby be supplied open-ended and across-the-board subsidies burdensomely placed on the backs of a tax-paying citizenry that itself does not receive such largess.

Self-defense is a primary theme in the Old Testament, and defending the country, as our Founders saw it, is the first duty of an American president. In the caravan and particularly among certain Middle-Eastern and North African countries, there is a worrisome proportion with tendencies and outlook which can result in certain forms of jihadism or extreme Shariaism. Here again, this is not the innocuous stranger and newcomer of which the Bible speaks. Statistics reveal that once migrants physically enter our borders, they often elude us forever, as was the case with the 9-11 hijackers; thus, our need for meticulous and comprehensive vetting off-shore.

The other question often posed in certain religious and secular communities is how a universal God, who is the father of all humanity, could allow a country to shut its doors to the needy trying to get in? While many to various degrees are needy, some of those trying today to enter our country pose a real threat to us, and even a universal God tells us of the need to protect ourselves from those among His creation who can harm us.

Among the most profound convictions of the Bible is that of personal responsibility. We are responsible to take care of and protect those we have freely chosen to live with: first our family, then our community and nation – in that order. One cannot shirk and displace this priority, this personal responsibility in the name of universalism or mankind.

Turning a blind eye to danger to those who directly depend on you, be it a head of a household or a president to his citizens, in the name of universalism is not moral. Morality is not what makes us feel good about ourselves or looks good to others, rather that which we ought to do, doing that for which we are personally responsible.

One of the gems of biblical understanding is that while God is universal and many of his laws and prescriptions universal, the incubation, implementation, and success of its ethos depends on what is done within the particular – the particular family, community and nation. It is within particular constructs that the Judeo-Christian paradigm is honed and flowers, and from inward is released outwardly. The universal is born and depends on what happens in the particular, i.e., subsidiarity.

Borders, distinct and sovereign nations are vital. No wonder when speaking to ancient Israel the universal God proffers the people with the following blessing: “And I shall protect your borders so that strangers and enemies not fill your camp and become a thorn in your side.” As with protecting one's home and family residents inside (Exodus: 22), so too the God of humanity prioritizes the legitimate need for protective borders and its citizens inside.

While we cannot absorb all who wish to come here, we can as humanitarians export our American prescription for a workable and productive life to those who wish to accept and import it. Absent that, our first responsibility is to protect this nation from harm, be it economic, social or physical. Defending our nation and families is a noble part of who we are.

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The Personality Cult of Ginsburg

Many Americans lament the demise of the federal judiciary from an independent and objective part of the American system into a branch of government that seems more self-serving and politicized than ever before. But while leftist and conservative justices alike have strayed from the vision of our Founding Fathers, none have eclipsed the cult-like status of the Supreme Court’s oldest justice: 85-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Of course, Supreme Court justices are only human, and they’re just as susceptible to outside influences as any politicians on Capitol Hill. But the very nature of their position demands more discipline in order to fight the temptations of a society that can turn just about anyone into a celebrity overnight.

And even the most independent nominee can become more ideologically hardened after surviving the grind of the nomination process.

Politico’s Peter Canellos writes, “Even if nominees aren’t particularly partisan at the outset, they quickly learn to recognize their friends and enemies; the loyalties forged in the furnace of the confirmation process carry over onto the bench. It’s only human that such anger or gratitude, growing out of a trauma that some compare to a near-death experience, would alter judicial decision-making.”

Canellos adds, “There’s a third element to the politicization of the courts, though. That’s the visceral sense of approval and validation that judges get when they please their fans. The 60,000-member Federalist Society provides conservative judges with a Greek chorus of admirers. And many members of the Supreme Court, such as the late Antonin Scalia, couldn’t resist taking bows before conservative audiences for court rulings that devastated liberals.”

But earning the admiration of a respected organization like the Federalist Society is nothing compared to Ginsburg’s celebrity status among leftists, many of whom weren’t even born when Ginsburg was appointed to the High Court by Bill Clinton in 1993. From the “RGB” documentary of last year to the recent biopic entitled “On the Basis of Sex,” the leftist Supreme Court justice is being turned into a mythical figure. How can fair-minded Americans expect Ginsburg, a former ACLU general counsel, to make independent decisions based on the law when she’s been deified by millions on the Left?

As Ginsburg said in the RGB film, “I’m 84 years old and everyone wants to take their picture with me.”

In 2016, seemingly emboldened by her superstardom, she joked that it’d be time to move to New Zealand if Donald Trump were elected. “I can’t imagine what the country would be,” she said. Later, under intense criticism from both the right and the left, she admitted regret for the comments. But she never apologized — not to the American people, nor to the Republican nominee.

As Stephanie Mencimer writes at the far-left Mother Jones, “Ginsburg has since been tattooed on women’s arms, immortalized in song and a children’s book, and featured on [‘Saturday Night Live.’] She’s had her face plastered on everything from tote bags to water bottles. This merchandising could not have happened without the justice’s blessing; the law gives her a fair amount of control over the use of her image, as she well knows. Rather than start copyright battles, Ginsburg has encouraged her cult following. She assisted Carmon and Knizhnik with their book, appeared in the CNN documentary and makes a cameo in ‘On the Basis of Sex,’ carries an RBG tote bag in public, distributes RBG T-shirts to friends and admirers, and generally has reveled in her celebrity.”

Mencimer adds that Ginsburg’s desire to hang on to her position on the Court actually threatens to undermine the Left’s agenda. For years Ginsburg rejected suggestions by “progressive” supporters that she retire during the Barack Obama years to ensure a like-minded successor. Now, her desire to fight on through various health issues — including recent surgery for lung cancer — at an advanced age may be setting the stage for a conservative replacement if she’s unable to outlast Donald Trump.

But that’s not stopping her.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg writes, “Even as she was secretly undergoing a series of tests and consulting an array of doctors, she made multiple public appearances and was interviewed in front of audiences three times, at one point reciting from memory the words of several arias from an opera about her famous friendship and legal dueling with the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.”

The Left has professed to do just about anything, even offering to donate their own organs to Ginsburg, in order to keep her on the bench.

But should Ginsburg retire or pass away before Trump leaves office, allowing him to replace her with a Constitution-friendly justice, the Left may one day regret the cult of personality that they alone created. And rightly so.

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Elizabeth Warren, the would-be Queen

She planned to rule American businesses from atop the  Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but Trump's victory took that away from her

On December 31, Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren launched her 2020 presidential exploratory committee. A prominent member of the Democratic party, it has long been speculated that Warren’s ambitions were greater than the Senate.

Warren has positioned herself as an advocate for women’s rights, universal healthcare and the working class. However, this is nothing more than a carefully cultivated facade. When faced with even the slightest scrutiny, it becomes apparent that Warren’s priorities are not with the American people but are instead focused solely on serving her own ambitions.

Since first being elected in 2011, Warren has gained a reputation of hypocrisy. Focused on promoting herself instead of the interests of Massachusetts, Warren took every opportunity to be an incendiary roadblock to progress.

In 2016, Warren voted against the 21st Century Cures Act, a bipartisan bill that would have provided over $12 million in funds for fighting the opioid epidemic in her home state. That same year, she proceeded to criticize the Trump administration for not doing enough to combat the opioid crisis.

In another flagrant display of hypocrisy, Warren vocally aligned herself with the #MeToo movement while simultaneously accepting a $10,000 donation from a self-confessed sexual assailant, and ignored calls by opponents to return the funds.

Warren has proven repeatedly that she is willing to promote any stance that will win her national favor, even at the expense of her own long-term credibility.

During her first term as senator, Warren demonstrated that the health of Massachusetts was secondary to positioning herself as a 2020 contender. During her first six years in office, Warren focused her efforts on authoring two books, touring across the country holding book signings and speaking at campaign rallies across the country. Her constant travel to states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa and California drove her opponent Geoff Diehl to create a “Where’s Warren?” campaign, which highlighted the Senator’s constant devotion to everyone but her own constituents.

Despite spending the majority of her time out of state, Warren refused to admit her presidential ambitions. In a blatant display of dishonesty and deceit, Warren claimed that her goals if re-elected would be to continue serving Massachusetts and that a 2020 bid was not on her mind.

When called to sign a pledge to serve the full term if re-elected, Warren refused, but was quoted several times stating clearly, “I am not running for president.” In a move that surprised no one, Warren did not even make it 60 days post re-election before breaking that promise.

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