A political editor for one of Sweden’s largest dailies (Svenska Dagbladet 27/9) has recently encouraged the liberal conservative alliance to leave the worn Work Path and take the adventurous Freedom Trail instead. The parole
Arbeit Macht Frei is stigmatized. Everyone can see all too well how self-sacrifice – working ourselves to death – promises to set our souls free, but affords a meager vision. Our parents may have approved of it in one way, Hitler may have promoted it in another, we may have followed it in still another way, but what way are our children to take?
Freedom is as exciting as the gift of life itself. Unfortunately, a sense of individual freedom, save personal responsibility, has managed to erode the Swedish welfare model. Plenty of sirens appear luringly on the horizon. Not all are real, but some are real warning signals. Who wants to be fooled by some slipshod utopia.
For those of us who are young and healthy and just beginning our careers, the lure of sweet singing is particularly great. Bob Dylan's "Forever young" is enough. We can hope that we will eventually grow wise enough to bear witness to the fruits of our choices. In the meantime, we must live to the fullest, prepared - to the extent that the rules of the game are changing, and our tax burden lightens - to pay the price for health and welfare, education, etc. Let us not be tempted (like many of our Swedish parents were, in the name of tax deductions) to consume everything we lay our hands upon in the name of freedom, without considering the longterm consequences.
For those of us who are unhealthy, or otherwise handicapped, the Freedom Trail is pure myth. We have never been politically correct. Think of the hoards of Scandinavian immigrants who were drawn to the Promised Land, and how they were forced to undergo medical and legal inspection before they were allowed to enter. Those who didn't pass the test were turned back.
For those of us who are retired or close to retirement, having spent the better part of our lives working hard in the service of Swedish welfare, the choices appear suddenly to have become very limited. Whether or not this is true, remains to be seen. While we may have had little use ourselves for the welfare benefits for which we have paid a very high price to date – we are likely to need some now, or soon. And so we have
no choice but to invoke the terms of our original contract. Having shouldered the highest tax burden in the world for decades to this end, we demand the healthcare and retirement benefits for which we have paid and been promised.
The hair comb has long been a metaphor for European social democracy (as well as socialism). Today there is still an implicit grief over her toothlessness, straggly hair and sagging breasts. The comb has become a useless tool atop her European vanity. Once indispensable in the fight against parasites, today's comb has largely been replaced by drugs. Furthermore, globalization has brought us to appreciate combless coifs, such as dreadlocks, cornrows, and other natural hairstyles that were still exotic wafts in the hey-day of social democracy. Today, in the wake of Stalin and Hitler, we are forced to question the values upon which social democracy was based. How viable is a utopia that envisions and treats human beings like equal strands of hair that sometimes need to be straightened out, freed from snarls, tangles, and rid of parasites?
Whatever happened to the value of human capital in Europe, to the value of energy and involvement, education, experience, and wisdom? When did the human being become a burden, as opposed to an asset, in European societies? We grieve the toothlessness of our old combs (overused, abused, overheated, useless because they've run up against so much resistance) because needless-to-say - many dangers, toils and snares await along the alternative “Freedom trail”.
When the comb has lost its efficacy, the questions remain: what are the choices, whose, why, what, how much, and for how long?
