My baby loves the cold (must be because she was born in Chicago in winter...) The thing that frightens me about the article isn't the leaving the baby outside in the cold, but the leaving the baby out where it could be stolen...
My relatives keep mentioning the possibility of my son being stolen, which seems absurd to me. I was very curious what the real odds of your child being stolen by a stranger in the US are.
EDIT: The post motivated me to do some quick Googling... one article I found said there are roughly 40 children abducted by strangers or slight acquaintances in the US annually which would make your child "700 times more likely to get into Harvard than to be the victim of such an abduction".
The kid is probably more likely to be struck by lightning while you're walking around in the park on an overcast day than being abducted by strangers.
But parents of newborns are rarely sensible about their risk assessment, and obsess over amazingly unlikely scenarios while forgetting about the plausible and common ones.
Risk analysis isn't just about probability. It's about the cost of prevention relative to the probability of a bad outcome multiplied by the cost of a bad outcome. Parents worry about children because the cost of losing a child is ruinously high to a parent. Meanwhile, little preventative measures like not leaving them outside are cheaper than putting them in little baby Faraday cages on cloudy days. Hence why parents worry about child abduction and not lightning strikes.
Yes, but they aren't so careful about things like drowning or road safety. I'm not certain about the actual risks (digging through the data is kind of depressing), but in general people tend to over or under estimate risks based on a few factors: malice, familiarity, how dramatic it seems. A crazed gunman is scary. Not looking in your mirror when backing out of the driveway isn't.
Not that long ago some friends were mid argument when we turned up. She was saying that, hypothetically, if she ended up in a river with her baby she would hold it up, save it, and drown if it required that to save it. Her husband was saying save yourself first, you're no good dead and if you drown, the baby drowns too. And they wouldn't shut up. I hadn't seen anything like it before, but now we have a child, and strange crap happens.
Cost of being afraid about possible abduction of your child is extremely underestimated as this fear twists your world view, possibly world view of your child and prevents your child from some things that could be beneficial for him/her.
Conversely cost of not having a pool or a gun is much lower and does more for the actual safety of your child.
As a parent of two small children, I can assure you I obsess over the plausible and common scenarios as well.
If you look at it rationally, having kids is utterly terrifying. We have logically evolved to care very deeply for our offspring. So you have this tiny living organism whose health is critically important for your own happiness. And this organism is physically separate from you, mobile, frail, loud enough to draw attention to itself, unable to protect itself, inquisitive, and completely unaware of danger.
I shared these worries but we parents really need to get over it. It is actually dangerous for kids to have worrying parents. Kids need to build self-confidence, mostly copying yours.
So here are some tips that helped me and my wife to hide or diminish our worries.
kids, even newborns, are actually more resilient and solid than their parents in many respects. If I got half the knocks on the head my boy got this week at school, I'd be in hospital.
Worries and fear are contagious, don't spread it. If your wife is a bit sensitive to the sight of blood, ask her to go in another room when your kid has a little nosebleed. Seeing worries on her face well not help in any way.
Trash immediately all those culpabilizing books on parenting: the best gift you can do to kids is culpability free parents.
Best wishes to her. Fatherhood of a daughter is an awesome responsibility, which I have found often turns into sheer delight. (My daughter was born after we had three sons beforehand. We like them all, but there is definitely something different for the dad about having a girl in the house.) Did you know that the current projection of cohort life expectancy is that a girl born in the developed world since the turn of the century has a better than even chance of living to age 100?
>Did you know that the current projection of cohort life expectancy is that a girl born in the developed world since the turn of the century has a better than even chance of living to age 100?
If I don't drop her on her head. That's the "awesome responsibility" part!
Having a newborn that just came off of 9 days on life-support, I can say without a doubt that having children is the most terrifying thing you'll ever do in your life.
Watching our 3 year old discover his physical limitations is an amazingly ulcer-inducing activity and I find myself constantly expecting the worst.
After witnessing the many falls, bruises, scrapes, and assorted damage that kids endure, I'm constantly amazed they survive into adulthood.
I've really enjoyed talking to my family and strangers about their irrational fears that exist around children. It's incredibly fascinating to me. That said, I have been totally terrified to board an airplane for the last 3 years (use to fly once a month) so I don't have much of a leg to stand on.
There are few others besides the car that American citizens seem (italics would be ideal here) blinkered to. It seems obvious to an outsider - who is possibly indoctrinated the polar opposite way. however the topics are all so inflammatory that even HN can get uncivil.
No matter the topic, some Americans will be worried about it. Still, the list might include:
Many western countries have a state television service, funded by a TV fee or a special billing system. The goal is to have a news source which is (nominally) independent of the government and which is not beholden to advertisers. The US was once worried about this, but the FCC eliminated the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.
Most of the citizens of the other western countries are agog at the US for insisting on privatized medical care. (As lostlogin also pointed out.)
My experience in visiting Europe is that nationality and ethnicity are much more closely tied. A second generation Arab in France or Turk in Germany may still be considered a foreigner. Apparently we are more oblivious to the need to regard the grandchildren of immigrants as still untrustworthy. (At the very least, xenophobia in Europe feels different than in the US.)
GMO restrictions are much, much higher in Europe than the US. Apparently Europeans believe in this concept of "freedom of choice to the farmers and consumers", and insist that GMO foods be labeled as such, while the US does not require that labeling.
Privacy laws are higher in Europe, in part because of strong memories of how "World War II-era fascist governments and post-War Communist regimes" used that information.
Someone from Bhutan might say that the US and most other countries are too interested in their country's Gross Domestic Product and not in Gross Domestic Happiness.
The main problem with the Fairness Doctrine is it's a limitation on freedom of speech. This is something that Americans can be quite sensitive to, more than Europeans, if we'd like to talk about people having blinkers on. :)
The Fairness Doctrine was designed in 1949 to "provide adequate coverage of public issues", and when challenged in court it was judged constitutional specifically because the radio and television airwaves were limited. With expanding sources of media, including cable television and the Internet, the availability of broadcast airwaves no longer presents a substantial limitation on Americans being able to access any given point of view.
Modern attempts to revive the fairness doctrine are led more or less exclusively by partisans who favor the Democratic Party and preferred the content of political speech under the old system. (For example, Bill Clinton stated that he supported it "because essentially there's always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows.") Many of these partisans would like to apply the doctrine to cable television and other non-public-airwave broadcast media. However, court rulings made it quite explicit that if they ever found that the doctrine was limiting political speech, it would be found unconstitutional, so it is likely all of these attempts will fail even if legislated or regulated.
Neutrality and "fairness" is, of course, impossible to judge objectively. Just ask any Wikipedia administrators dealing with edit wars. ;) Government regulation of "fairness" and government domination of the media have the potential to present significant limitations on political freedom - look at various South American dictators' and their forays into controlling the media and bullying opposing points of view. It is the fox guarding the henhouse. Of course, sometimes you may have relatively benevolent foxes (I hear the BBC's okay!) or you may just have suicidal hens who fawn over the latest bit of personality-cult politician voluntarily (no further comment on this topic, this post is enough of a digression).
I remember reading Pipi Longstocking, where she's asked why she's walking backwards. She replied 'Why not? It's a free country.' It was rather a surprise to me since I used to think of that as being an American reaction, not a foreign one. But Sweden (where I now live) is rather proud of its free speech heritage, and you can see its history in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Sweden . The Press Freedom Index rates it much higher than the US for its freedom of the press.
This does not apply to all of Europe. I do not like several ways in which Germany restricts speech, including its 'blasphemy against religion' laws.
In any case, it's true that I did mix up two different points to make a comparison. The BBC model, used also in the Nordic countries, does not have a monopoly on television broadcast. Other broadcasters, including commercial ones, can and do exist. The Fairness Doctrine does not apply, no, if others can and do broadcast? (Though on the other hand, radio here is not that diverse. I miss listening to odd-ball student radio.)
The Swedish view is that an independent news source, independent even of the advertisers, makes for a more informed public. Notice please that I'm saying "independent" here and neither neutral nor fair. Italian public television is part of the government, and not run by a (mostly) independent organization.
This also different than the US model, where public television is sponsored by its own viewers and by various grants. In the BBC model, the funding comes from the TV license fee, and the rates are under review by the legislature and subject to a charter. (I actually don't know how the Swedish equivalent works here.)
So, in the US we think that the news should be funded only by the people who watch it, either through voluntary membership payments or indirectly through its advertisers. In the Nordic countries (and others), they think that leads to a less informed public.
Great comment.
Your comment on GMO. I had always thought that Monsanto had huge sway in American political circles, although I have no idea where I got this from. Unfortunately the big stick seems to be used to get other countries to accept Monsanto friendly labeling - American backs its businesses in a way not all other countries do. This doesn't have to be a bad thing though.
Touchy ground! The two I had in mind were the lack of effective gun control and the problems associated with a lack of socialised healthcare. I would characterize these as both being partly due to an us/them 2 party government system, which encourages exclusion.
I should add that New Zealand isn't free of gun issues, healthcare system problems or political parties playing BS games, its just they seem to pale compared to US paper headlines. I should note that prevailing views here on HN, are vastly different to those I notice in US papers and TV.
I think it has something to do with wide spread circumcision.
Once in you life you've felt like a god and then one of your subordinates came and cut off part of your penis. You can never feel safe after such event.
That kind of statistical hand waving is irritating. First, it's 40 abductions where parents are characterized as being paranoid about their child being kidnapped. The statistic says nothing about how leaving your kid on a sidewalk might affect the chances of abduction. Your chances of getting hit by lightning aren't as slim if you're a golfer.
Also, 700x more likely to get into Harvard as an applicant or just a US born child? Does that include post-graduate Harvard institutions? How is 'getting into Harvard' a useful benchmark for acceptable risk?
Clearly leaving a child unattended is going to have an effect, and so are many other factors going to have an effect on admission to Harvard.
Furthermore, the hand waving statistics are off by an order of magnitude as far as I can tell. 40 * 700 = 28,000, but the cohort of births in a given year result in a student body closer to 2,800 than 28,000.
It probably came from comparing accept percentage of Harvard (6% now but 7% a couple years ago) with a kidnap chance calculated for the whole of children born in the US. Of course applicants are already a selected subset and not representative of all candidates born in the same year. It's a pretty useless comparison.
e.g. 40 kidnaps per year for 10 years = 400. 400 * 700 'times more likely' = 280,000. Divide that by 4mil children born in a year to get 7%.
Depends on the country and how much the population is mixed.
Yes, it may sound evil or anti-immigrant, but it does not matter where, if the location has people of uniform ethnic identity, they tend to treat everyone around them as distant cousins (and there are biological reasons for that) and some negative actions people don't feel like doing it.
In places with lots of random ethinic identities mixed, leaving your baby outside is BAAAAAAD idea.
And Sweden is NOT diverse as US, Sweden has as the "biggest minority" the Finnish (that are not that different from Swedes), any other population is very small except on some specific cities.
US has a great population of people from several backgrounds.
Also the same is in my country (Brazil).
Here, I see people being much more lax with their security when everyone near them are of the same ethnic background, be it white, black, native american, whatever.
It is just that everyone is born to not trust strangers, foreigners, etc... And "race" is a very quick way to assess that.
Not that I think we should go hating each other or anything like that, but it is how it works, and it is very visible, the more mixed a place is, the less people trust each other, with some specific exceptions (ie: places that are truly cosmopolitan like Universities or some workplace cities).
As shocking as it may sound, I noticed the same thing in the caribbean where population is very mixed. It's not about racism - it's more as if a shared group identity encouraged cooperative behaviour.
Even weirder - there seems to be a trigger effect : until the non visible minority reaches 5% the cooperative behaviour keeps working.
Funny thing - it seems to works even if you account your own ethnicity - i.e. when you are in the <5% you will get more cooperation by people with a different ethnicity than you !!
Cross the 5% mark and it won't work as well - apparently even with people of the same ethnicity as you. Weird.
Some may call that parochialism. I find that interesting.
I've been quite puzzled by this (it contradicts all the mainstream thoughts about diversity) and I would love to know more about such issues (scientific research - can anyone with a sociology background give more details about that?)
The Finnish minority is followed closely by immigrants from former Yugoslavia (166k vs 155k). Sweden has accepted a large number of refugees from Iraq & Iran, together they outnumber the Fins.
Here. Why shouldn't something like education, and generally doing a great job at not being completely depraved by consumerism, lead to less stupidity, and therefore also less stupidity in the form of racism? Why assume instead they're just as racist, but it's just they're all the same, so they trust each other? You can't just latch on to the first random thing that comes to mind, to me there is zero indication that any of this has to do with racial diversity, and pointing out differences in said diversity, even if I accepted them, would still be a non-sequitur, correlation ain't causation.
Maybe these people have simply realized there isn't any point whatsover in stealing random babies, which is not rocket surgery. Kidnapping? Sure. But stealing babies because you care less about people because they have a different skin colour? WTF. That's such a brainfart if you ask me.
It's called World Factbook, not worldbook, "white vs. non-white" has nothing do with it as far as I'm concerned (skin color is related to sunlight, not culture), and last, but surely not least.
As of 2010 however, 1.33 million people or 14.3% of the inhabitants in Sweden were foreign-born. Of these, 859,000 (9.2%) were born outside the European Union and 477,000 (5.1%) were born in another EU member state.
At the beginning of 1992, immigrants and Norwegian-born to immigrant parents totalled 183,000 persons, or 4.3 per cent of Norway’s population. Twenty years later, at the beginning of 2012, these groups had risen to 655,000 persons or 13.1 per cent of the population.
So, my bad; at least these two nordic countries are even MORE diverse than the US. Which is hilarious because I was totally gambling with my initial post, thanks for making me look for confirmation. Of course you might say the real problem is that many US-born citizens have dark skin, while many immigrants to nordic countries have white skin, but that's the point where I leave the discussion.
At any rate, there are differences between the US and those countries, but immigration does not seem to be especially prominent. So no, that can't be it.
20 years? Try going back 400. 99.1% of the US population are descended from immigrants. Ignoring genetic differences and only going with cultural, you are really talking about how quickly immigrant groups homogenize to a standard culture of the country (or region when talking about America). The answer is it varies. A lot. Take any major Scandinavian city. How big and old is the china town? Japan town? Little Italy? German town? Irish population? Puerto Rician population? All the many flavors of Hispanic populations? Asian populations? Slavic populations? African populations? Many American cities have long standing examples of most of these. China town in San Francisco, for example, started shortly after the gold rush. There are many Chinese there who are multi-generational Americans but have not homogenized to the standard culture (if such a thing exists in SF). I have known families in the central coast just south of the silicon valley who can trace their Spanish descendents to pre-gold rush and even have some Ohlone descendents in their past, the people who originally inhabited this part of California. They are very Hispanic culturally.
I read an article a while ago about problems teaching immigrant kids English in the Alum Rock school district. This is just a single school district out of many in San Jose. If you are unfamiliar with San Jose, think south Silicon Valley. They typically have to deal with students who speak 40 different languages. Now that is diversity. Anything similar in Scandinavia?
As I have never been to the Nordic countries, I think it's possible but highly unlikely they are anywhere close to the diversity of the US. I would need to see a lot more than 20 years of immigration statistics to believe it though...
That has nothing to do with anything I said, try to respond in context. However, they have an amazing diversity of people in Nordic countries, and there is also amazing diversity among "whites", as well as similarites to "non-whites".
>amazing diversity among "whites", as well as similarites to "non-whites".
I'm not sure why you persist with this laughable line of argument. I have yet to visit Sweden but I hope to eventually as I have free lodging with family friends. I am quite sure they would get a good chuckle from your assertions.
Sweden according to wikipedia (and CIA factbook) has most of the population being Swede + Sami
Cia factbook on United States:
79.96% are white, but this include some hispanics.
Brazil the most recent census (I will find the link to IBGE site later) is about 45% of the population being white. almost 50% being mixed race (usually between black and white) 5% black (and some below 1% minorities).
Politically? I moved to Göteborg a few years back. The day after I arrived was May Day. The Socialists, Marxists, Marxist-Leninists, Social Democrats, Leftists, and Red Front political parties each had their own march. Then of course the Christian Democrats, the Moderates, Center Party, and the Green Party are 5 of the 8 parties with representation in Parliament. (The Pirate Party has 2 people representing Sweden in the European Parliament.)
In the US there's the two major parties, and Bernie Sanders as the only self-described socialist in Congress. In non-national offices there is a handful of Greens and Libertarians. When was the last time you saw people who were self-described as something other than Republican, Democrat, or independent as a regular commentator on a political discussion show in the US?
That seems like a lack of political diversity in the US, compared to Sweden.
Sure, but they were all Protestant Social Democrats, nevertheless. I mean, they may call themselves Marxists or Sweden Democrats or Red Front or whatever, but still they'll fundamentally believe in a society where everything's lagom.
But of course there's been political diversity in the Nordics; however e.g. the likes of Arvo Kustaa Halberg were a bit too politically diverse to live in Finland so moved to the U.S.
All Protestant Social Democrats? Here I thought only the Social Democrats were Social Democrats. I think you mean 'social democrats', meaning the belief and not membership in the party named 'Social Democrats.'
To think that the Christian Democrats, which were founded out of the movement against removing religious education from elementary schools and is most strong with the evangelical Christians, has the same idea of "lagom" as the Left Party is like saying that the US parties are the same because they all support a free market.
All Protestant? Given the number of atheists in Sweden, that's also unlikely.
I looked up a bit about Arvo Kustaa Halberg. As far as I can tell, he never lived in Finland or any of the Nordic countries. "Hall was born Arvo Kustaa Halberg in 1910 to Matt (Matti) and Susan (Susanna) Halberg in Cherry, a rural community on Northern Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range" says Wikipedia.
I see no evidence that he moved from Finland to the US, much less that the move was based on a lack of diversity, so I fail to understand your point.
Well, what I meant is that fundamentally, Swedes are - or at least have been - very homogeneous, when compared to Americans. Even where people have labeled themselves with various extreme political affiliations, their way of thinking has been not too different from each other.
Some of my pronouncedly Atheist friends who have worked in Saudi Arabia have told about this. There, when you apply for visa/work permit, you have to state your religion in the application. There's no box to tick "Atheist" or "Agnostic". They ticked "Christian", and later said that this is where they realized how deeply they are products of Evangelic Protestant culture.
Gus Hall of course was born in Minnesota - he couldn't have stood as a presidential candidate unless he were born in the U.S. But he inherited his political affiliations from his parents, who came from Grand Duchy of Finland, where they were indeed too diverse to be palatable those days.
My comments are not about ethnic diversity. You said 'nordic countries are much more homogeneous than the US, ethnically and politically' and I objected to the term 'politically.' (I reserve the right to object to 'ethnically', but I don't wish to have that argument.)
In order for me to understand your views better, could you explain how the US is less politically homogeneous than Sweden, and also how ethnic homogeneity necessarily implies political homogeneity?
I look at the nationalist politics of the Sweden Democrats, the democratic socialism of the Left Party, and the liberal conservatism of the Moderate party, and see three quite different political philosophies with independent party representation in national politics. The Sweden Democrats think immigration has been a failure, the Center party wants more immigration. The Christian Democrats with their anti-homosexuality position, were the only party to decline to participate in the Stockholm Pride parade.
I look at the US and see only two real national parties, with planks which are moderate for one and conservative with the other. While there are certainly a wide range of differences in the people who make up the party, the obligation is to support others of ones own party, and the voting patterns reflect that homogeneity.
You wrote "But of course there's been political diversity in the Nordics; however e.g. the likes of Arvo Kustaa Halberg were a bit too politically diverse to live in Finland so moved to the U.S." Then you wrote that it was actually his parents who had to make the move, due to their political viewpoints. This makes me feel like you are having difficulties in explaining your point. Could you elaborate?
As far as I can tell, his parents were Wobblies. The IWW started in 1905 in the US and Gus Hall was born in 1910. That's very little time for the movement to make it to Finland, his parents to become Wobblies, feel like they have to leave Finland, and migrate to the US.
In any case, Finland was an autonomous part of the Russian Empire until 1917. As best as I could tell, socialism was not an oppressed political viewpoint in Finland in and around 1900. Eg, the Finnish Labour Party started in 1899 and changed their name to the Social Democratic Party in 1903, which remains as a party. The Communist Party of Finland was banned in 1923, but that's well after Hall's family moved to the US, and it still had behind-the-scenes influence on Finnish politics.
Would you please elaborate on how his parents' political viewpoints lead them to leave Finland for the US? And elaborate on how politics in pre-independence Finland reveals insight into a lack of modern political diversity in the Nordic countries? (Though I would prefer that you stay with Sweden, since that was my point.)
Nixon famously tried to get John Lennon deported because of the singer's involvement in the anti–Vietnam War movement. The courts eventually decided against selective deportation for political reasons, but Lennon also had the money and connections to fight that battle. Does this show a similar lack of enthusiasm towards political diversity in 1960s US?
The political systems in U.S. and Nordics are different, much of it coming from election systems. The U.S. "first past the post" guides to a two-party system where the different views are merged to one political party and battles are fought within the parties, while Nordics have many parties - even if social democrats have been quite dominant - and voters choose between these. But the parties however overlap a lot. Your average Sweden Democrat is not much unlike your average Social Democrat, really. In fact, he's probably just a disillusioned Social Democrat. So number of parties is not a very good measure of diversity one way or the other.
The U.S. can produce, even within one political party, such diverse politicians and policies as Bill Clinton, Al Sharpton, Zell Miller, Eleanor Smeal, Ben Nelson. Anything from trade union militants to radical feminists, cow farmers and vegan activists, conservative businessmen and firebrand racial demagogues.
Regarding Gus Hall's parents, they didn't just become IWW members when moving to America; I'm sure they and many others like them actually created the IWW as it was. And yes, socialists were not entirely free to operate in Russian Empire. Many decided to emigrate to U.S. and Canada precisely because they sought to escape what they perceived as oppression.
As best as I could tell, socialism was not an oppressed political viewpoint in Finland
Well, it was, a bit. The Tsar's secret police, Okhrana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana ), was set up in 1880 to combat political terrorism and left-wing revolutionary activity. Not everyone who called themselves socialist was rounded up and sent to a camp, the Tsars being more reasonable than their successors, but people like Halbergs must have felt they'd have more room for their ideology in America.
So they left Finland, like many of their comrades left Sweden and Norway, in search of a better life in America. It wasn't all roses there either, and many moved on for the workers' paradise in Soviet Union in 1920's, only to find a few years later themselves rounded up as suspicious elements and meet their end at the construction site for Stalin's Canal. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sea_%E2%80%93_Baltic_Cana... )
Yes, I know that the political systems in the US and Sweden (as representative of the Nordic countries) are different. That is part of my thesis. The US system for the last 200 years discourages multiple concerted voices at the national level. The Swedish system does not guarantee diversity - the Social Democrats held majority power in Sweden for a long time - but your statement is that the US has more diverse politics than Sweden, and I want you to justify your statement.
You pointed out, correctly, that there are internal politics as well. How often do you hear from members who self-identify as members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus? Can you name two other caucuses, off the top of your head? Unless you are a politics wonk, I doubt that you'll be able to do so.
There's one self-described socialist in national politics. Where are the others? Where are the leftists on the American stage? Why aren't anti-war vegans like Dennis Kucinich in more of the news shows?
In any case, there are internal politics in the Swedish parties too, so I don't know what your point is supposed to show.
You say that Bill Clinton, Al Sharpton, Zell Miller, Eleanor Smeal, and Ben Nelson are examples of diversity. Neither Sharpton nor Smeal are politicians and Smeal has never run for public office, so you've opened up the field to include a very broad range of politics. Sweden of course also has a broad range of politics, once you get to individual people. There are omnivores and vegans, trans-sexuals and cis-sexuals, believers in 0, 1, or multiple gods, pro-kronor and pro-euro, and every category you mentioned.
At some point the US wins just because it has more people, so is your measure of diversity roughly the same as saying that there are more people in the US? I thought you were making something more substantial observation.
As for Gus Hall's parents, I again ask how you are sure about what you know. I found no mention that opposition to their political beliefs was a factor. I couldn't even find out when they moved to the US. My strong suspicion is that they, like other Finns during the Great Migration, did so for economic and ethnic reasons. This was the period of Russification, when the Russian government was forcing its language and customs on the Finnish people.
This includes the February Manifesto of 1899, which declared that Russian is the official language of administration, only Russian currency was allowed, the Orthodox Russian Church is the church of state, and the Finnish army is conscripted into the Russian imperial army.
It's easier for me to assume that his parents, like many others at the time, did so because of improved economic conditions and reduced social oppression in the US, and not specifically because of their political beliefs - beliefs which were also held by many Finns who remained in Finland - were under specific persecution. Can you point me to any evidence that the main reason they left Finland was because their ideas were "too politically diverse" for the country?
And it's all very odd, because you're using Russian imperialism and oppression from 100 years ago to color your views on Nordic politics now. How does that logic work?
I can't help but think that any logic you can come up with would apply even more to the US. The suppression of Communism in the US was done by its own government, at all levels of government, and 50 years more recent than Hall's parents.
This is getting long and probably not interesting for anyone else. Sure, much of the more extremes in the U.S. is simply that with a larger number of people, the extremes are also further away. But the extremes are there. Why there are not so many socialists in U.S. national politics is surely because of the first-past-the-post system, not because of lack of diversity in the electorate.
As to evidence about Gus Hall's parents, that again winds up a bit too far away from the point of this thread, so suffice it to say that I just read some memoir where this was covered, can't find a reference. But his parents came from politically active Tampere, and were founding members of CPUSA. (Incidentally, Tampere was also the place where Lenin and Stalin met for the first time, in 1905, but Okhrana was on their trail and Lenin fled soon after the Halbergs. This is just an anecdote that I find funny, not something that's really evidence about politics today).
I'll concede that I can't measure political diversity well enough to convince you without spending too much time and boring anyone. The ethnic diversity was already commented by someone else with some demographic data which is more readily available.
No one else is reading this thread. I'm enjoying it though. It's encouraged me to do more research about topics that interest me.
> Why there are not so many socialists in U.S. national politics is surely because of the first-past-the-post system, not because of lack of diversity in the electorate.
That can't be the sole reason. I suspect it isn't even the main reason. Who is the modern equivalent to Eugene V. Debs in the national debates? Where is the modern Victor Berger or Meyer London, the only two members of the Socialist Party to be elected to Congress, even with the first-past-the-post system? Is it just Bernie Sanders, an independent, unaffiliated with any party?
(Debs, btw, was arrested for violating the Espionage Act of 1917; a violation of the First Amendment if I ever heard one, Schenck v. United States to the contrary.)
My understanding is that have been decades of concerted effort to suppress the power of labor, for example, by denigrating anything related to socialism, communism, marxism, or even liberal. I agree with the view that FDR could push through the New Deal by pointing out that the socialists and communists wanted much more. To that extent, I think Coughlin's denouncement of FDR as being allied with Wall Street was exaggerated, but generally correct.
(And who is the modern Coughlin, and modern equivalent of the Social Justice movement? The US revoked the second class mailing permit for the Social Justice weekly, under the Espionage Act. Not as harsh as the Russian secret police, but still effective at suppressing political diversity, no?)
I therefore see McCarthyism in part as a deliberate effort to undermine labor - child labor laws and women's suffrage being held up as examples of communist influence in US politics, don't you know.
I agree that Gus Hall's parents have nothing to do with the thread. I thought so when you brought it up. :)
As I said, I don't want to get into the ethnic debate. Sweden's history there is much different than the US history. Sweden's present is also much different than Sweden's history.
I did a very basic search for racial demographics of Sweden, the US and Brazil (since someone else mentioned it), then calculated the Shannon diversity index (lower essentially meaning less diversity) and the Pielou evenness (a number between 0 and 1 - higher means less size variation among groups). I didn't find great numbers to work with in the few minutes that I looked. I used these:
Robert Putnam's research confirms that ethnic diversity reduces trust levels and civic engagement, even when the ethnic diversity is as risible as Norwegian vs Swedish Americans in, say, Minnesota. If I recall correctly he's a Harvard faculty member in either sociology or political science. He wrote Boewling Alone and he sat on those results for like, three years because his political preferences are typical for his position. The explanation the grandparent offered may be wrong but the phenomenom is real.
That was my favorite takeaway from the article, that there is not the irrational paranoia of child kidnapping that exists here in the US.
I mean what would someone do with a stolen child anyway? Unless you are rich there is little odds of ransom, and the risk/reward of selling or keeping the child for your own seems high. If people really wanted to steal babies, they would do so at gunpoint as well, which I've never heard of happening.
There are instances of people stealing babies out of maternity wards. Sometimes this people just want to steal the baby just to raise it as their own. They want a child, and the easiest way seems to be stealing someone else's for whatever reason (e.g. maybe they are infertile).
Hi from Denmark here - the neigbour country to sweden. Where we do the excact same thing...
Anyway there was a danish woman who moved to USA once and left her kid outside a cafe while she was inside. I think she was arrested or something.
It made a great deal of fuss in Denmark, since no one steals kids here (of course thats an understatement - probaly it has happend)
- Lazy, won't go look for a job.
- Loud and obnoxious.
- Not very tasty, smells bad.
- Black market? Good luck finding a fence.
- Sexual deviant? They don't go for babies. Adults dressed as babies, maybe.
- Crazy person? Okay, that's in the realm of possibility, just because you don't
know how they'll behave. But that's a fraction of a fraction of a fraction
of a probability.
I get that parents have irrational fear and want to protect their kids. And if the risk isn't worth it, yeah, don't put them outside. But worst case you can crack open a window.
Fearing that your child will be stolen by a stranger is ludicrous.
Well, almost. I remember one case in Finland where a stranger took a baby who was sleeping in a pram outside.
It was such an uncommon occurrence that it made national news, although the episode took only a few minutes and no one was harmed. Touching someone else's baby who is sleeping out is just a no. (Looking at it to make sure it's well is OK, of course). But some fear about this is understandable. Parents worry about everything, sometimes not very rationally.
Mostly this is about trust within society. Finland is still very homogeneous, people share the same values, and the level of trust among citizens is high.
This is the direct result of the news. The news reports things like child molesters and terrorists when your child is far more likely to be hit by a car or something.
I'm sure theres a name for this kind of thing.
I've always found the following saying a good rule to live by. "Theres no truth in the news and no news in the truth."
I can't say for certain since I don't live there, but a cursory search for baby kidnappings in Sweden pulled up a famous guy and that baby was stolen from a crib. Baby kidnapping isn't an issue for them, otherwise I imagine they would not be leaving their kids outside. It's like if no one steals stuff, you don't have to always keep your door locked.
In Canada, they think all Europeans are the same. :)
I've noticed that England tends to have more walled gardens and restricted access than where I've lived in Sweden. Then again, Sweden's right of public access is also stronger than England's right to roam.
