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Notes -
How Peaceful Sweden Became Europe’s Gun-Murder Capital
This link is probably paywalled for most, so some of the salient points:
It might also be helpful to look at this article in conjunction with this Free Press article on violence in Sweden: Two Bombings in One Night? That’s Normal Now in Sweden.
At least on its face, this situation has a clear cause (migration from non-Western countries) and a simple solution (stop accepting migrants and remove many of the migrants that are already in Sweden), but to even state these facts gets you labeled a "right-wing populist" (nice of WSJ to omit the customary "far right populist").
I do see where the Left is coming from here. Most migrants aren't committing violence, and it does seem cruel to kick out people who have been living somewhere for years or even decades. But I also think a given community has the right to maintain the integrity of its society and culture. That's also why I'm more okay with something closer to open borders in the USA: Our culture is already so hollowed out that migrants moving here are probably adding, not subtracting, from whatever "culture" there is in the US.
Sweden had and still has that right.
They chose to let in migrants. They chose to have a non-ethnic conception of citizenship.
Everything happening is Europe's choice. None of these Ancient Roman comparisons really map. One of the wealthiest, highest human capital regions in the world is not being presented with a fait accompli by Somalians or a technical problem it can't figure out.
This is just what they chose.
Who voted for mass immigration?
Take the UK - since the 1990s both major parties consistently said they'd be tough and restrictive on immigration. They then proceeded to increase it while in power. https://twitter.com/t848m0/status/1560662923101347840
The governments of Europe and the European Union make the choices, not the people. Consider how much intense opposition there was to Brexit, something that really could be considered the people's choice! It eventually happened, after a great deal of fooling around and delaying tactics. Or the many times states have rejected EU integration in referendums, only to be made to vote again or their decisions were ignored. Capital punishment was abolished decades before it became unpopular.
What is the point of democracy if the major parties consistently lie about their plans and implement their agenda regardless of what the voters want? Or if they form a 'cordon sanitaire' to prevent political representation of undesirables? Or if they manipulate the media by omission, lies, slant and emphasis to enforce ideological orthodoxy? Middle East Wars are the primary example. Russiagate is a secondary example, now that the Durham report has been released.
Unfalsifiable, else Brexit would have falsified it. You can’t expect the state to act on every whim of the populace. The promise of democracy is that the little guy gets some power, a backstop, not unlimited, on-call power.
Take away all his power, and he just might find himself in a Putin's invasion situation, where it’s not just a few dollars and soldiers on the line, but his life.
Say you're in a restaurant and you specifically order steak but get served tomato soup. Once, twice, three times... They say that steak is on the menu, yet keep giving you soup. Isn't this egregious? You're still paying for the meal. And it's not like they ran out of steak! You're not ordering something outlandish like unicorn fillet or dragon sausage, steak is well within the capacity of the restaurant.
If people were asking for low taxes and high spending, then sure, that's unreasonable. But it's not hard at all to reduce immigration. It's trivially easy, unless you have an enormously large border like Russia or perhaps the US. The UK has absolutely no excuse, it's an island. Don't grant so many visas, don't let people come in, expel those who do. The Royal Navy has plans to combat China in the Pacific, they should be able to secure the English Channel from unarmed boats.
Well the whole point of Brexit was to reduce immigration... which still has not happened. If you ask Brexit voters what they wanted, they would say they want reduced immigration.
Eyes national debt charts nervously...
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