Nienor asks
Will the American right ever stop bitching about poor Sweden?
The American Right thrives on the politics of fear. Part of their past success was based on the fear of the Other - the Immigrant, the Unionist, the Catholic, the Jew, the Black, the Communist, the Radical, the Socialist...... anyone who was different in thought or belief or demographics could be isolated as the real enemy. All this was done to justify their own policies even if the people promoting them knew that these were mostly paper tigers who posed no real threat that could not be routinely dealt with.
I have always been amazed how the Right contradicts itself regarding Communism as a governmental and economic system.
One the one hand they tell us that the system was doomed to fail eventually because it is founded on a lie. On the other hand they tell us that Ronald Reagan and the Cold War get lots of credit for bringing Communism down since it forced them to spend dollar for dollar against the West and that bankrupted them causing their downfall.
So are we to assume that if there were no expensive Cold War that the Soviets and others could have thrived without those huge military expenses? Would Communism then be alive and well in thos nations? Was it doomed to failure all along?
We will never know.
Joseph McCarthy scared the living hell out of Americans waving his lists and telling of Communists in various agencies of the US government. In one way or another, this policy was kept up for decades with the villians changing only marginally. Bush justified his power grab with the fear of the other - this time Islamic terrorists.
So Nienor, its been a policy that has reaped rewards for the Right in America. I just hope it is now impotent and near death. But you can see that some here who still embrace the Right and its fear mongering have not yet let it go completely.
Walter Shapiro, wiriting in the New Republic, has a rather thought provoking article in which he says the the Right is in a rather poor position to benefit from any public anger about the economy:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html? ... 2d222161d8" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank
So maybe the American public is wising up after fifty years.