Eat the Rich

gouging the rustics. The Swedes never had feudalism to build a real Magna Carta hatred of central power. The Swedish constitution is long and so detailed that somewhere in it is probably a schedule for trimming the hedges, but it doesn’t contain checks and balances. There is no Supreme Court, no federalism, no Tenth Amendment. The Parliament can do anything it wants, including change the constitution (by voting to do so twice with one parliamentary election between votes). Not that the Swedes are alarmed by this. “We think of the government as one of us,” they say. The government is part of the community, and a very strong sense of community have the Swedes. Perhaps too strong. Dr. Westholm, of the Federation of Private Enterprises, said, “There are no Swedish moral scruples about taxes.” Otherwise a marvelously honest people, the Swedes have a blind spot about taking certain property that isn’t theirs, as long as the loot is fairly divided. And come to think of it, the Vikings were the same way. It makes you wonder what was going on in those longboats. Maybe discussions of political economy, Viking style. “Yah. We pillaged Ireland. Good. But Sven had seven rapes, and Nils only had one, so we all get to rape Sven.” Sweden is no longer the homogeneous herring-choker back-forty that it was when the Swedish model was invented. More than 12 percent of today’s Swedes were born abroad or have at least one foreign parent. They’ve come to Sweden for the same reason that Swedes went to Minnesota: to find a better life. They’ve also come to escape oppression. Sweden has a generous refugee policy and gives political asylum to some 20,000 people a year. Thomas Gür, a Swede of Turkish descent and the author of a book about the problems of immigrants in Sweden, offered to show me Rinkeby, one of Stockholm’s “toughest” neighborhoods. We left from the subway station at Sergels Torg, a large sunken plaza from the Brady Bunch architectural era and one of the few truly ugly spots in downtown Stockholm. It’s known as the “declining square” both because the terrazzo paving has a distinct slant and because of the people who hang out there. This is the gritty heart of the metropolis where drugs are sold and youth gangs roam. Or are supposed to. The gangbangers and dope pushers seemed to be on one of their five weeks of legally mandated vacation when Mr. Gür and I walked through. Swedish subway stations are each decorated by a different prominent

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