Swedes Confront Shift to Right

Amy Goodman’s editorial today is somewhat confusing. Her article generally espouses her leftist leanings but she ends the article with a warning against the leftward shift in America.

The article titled, “Swedes Confront Shift To Right,” begins with recounting the origin of the Nobel Prize and the current celebration in Sweden. Then, she continues with support for and quotes from anti-war activists in that country. She praises those who do damage to property under the guise of, as she says, “the biblical prescription of Isaiah 2:4, turning ‘swords into plowshares’.” In this, she dramatically misuses the Scriptures because this is not a “biblical prescription.” It is a prophesy of Christ’s reign on earth, that He will bring peace and nations will then turn swords into plowshares.

Suddenly, the article shifts from the Nobel Prize and anti-war activists and focuses on Sweden’s Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt. She credits his ability to shift the country from the left to the right due to consultations with Karl Rove and his visit to George Bush. She claims Reinfeldt wrote a book in 1993 where he claimed “the welfare state should only prevent starvation, nothing beyond that.” [her quote, not the book]

“This week, a new coalition of center-left political parties formed to challenge this rightward drift,” she claimed after expressing her concern for the new focus on tax relief, cutbacks in social-welfare and “the silent war on the labor movement.”

Now comes the confusing part: Her final paragraph appears to be a repudiation of the failed labor movements and social policies in Sweden and America, in an apparent warning that what did not work in Sweden will not work in the United States.

“The U.S. electorate has thoroughly rebuked the Bush administration, handing Barack Obama and the Democrats a mandate for change on issues of war and health care, among others. One of the world’s leading laboratories for innovative social policies, Sweden is now wrestling with its own future. Those seeking change in the U.S. would be wise to watch Sweden, beyond Nobel week.”

Whatever it is she meant, I am going to have to agree with her as written: We have watched the failed policies of the left in Sweden and America. The last thing our nation needs is a race to socialism. And I do not believe the election of Obama was a mandate for the failed liberal policies of the Democratic Party nor for the failed labor practices forced upon our corporations by the unions. If the right was rebuked by this election, it was for getting off track and adapting the policies of the left, clinging to power over principle.

The voters claim to be looking for change, what they really want is principle.