Because Scandinavian social democracy makes people so kind and peaceful

Bruce Bawer relates the story of what it is like to be Jewish in Norway:

Today’s issue of the Norwegian newspaper Vårt Land (Our Country) includes an article by Line Madsen Simenstad about Anja Savosnick, a 23-year-old Oslo college student who’s routinely harassed in public for being Jewish. People have said to her: “Burn in Auschwitz!” She’s constantly tempted to lie about her background: “Always, when I’m at a party or out on the town,” she says, “I have uncomfortable experiences when it comes out that I’m Jewish.”

Although Muslim anti-Semitism is a widespread phenomenon in Oslo, as in other European cities, Savosnick says that most of the anti-Semitism she’s experienced has been directed at her by ethnic Norwegians. No surprise there: a college student in Oslo is less likely to have social contact with Muslims who learned in mosques that Jew-hatred is part and parcel of Islamic belief than with ethnic Norwegian fellow students who’ve learned since childhood – from teachers, professors, media commentators, and distinguished Norwegian authors alike – that Jew-hatred is the only civilized option for an educated, right-thinking Scandinavian.

Savosnick says that when people find out she’s Jewish, they “began to hold me responsible for Israel’s actions.” Her reaction: “I don’t understand why I, as a Norwegian Jew, must take responsibility for Israel’s actions.” Given what Norwegian college students (even Jewish ones) have been told all their lives about Israel, it’s no surprise that absolutely nothing in Savosnick’s comments, as reported by Simenstad, so much as hints at the possibility that any of Israel’s actions might actually be defensible.

One of the most persistent arguments for social democracy has been:  "OK, it retards economic growth, and it leads to massive bureaucracy and dependency, and it is financially unsustainable, but it eliminates the ancient hatreds between race and class so that we all are finally equal - look at Scandinavia".  Well read the evidence from one of the richest, most comfortable and most thoroughly 'socialized' nations in the world - Norway.

Social democracy doesn't work.  It doesn't change people, it can't make them better, thus it fails on its own terms.  The only force on this earth that can truly transform you or me and replace hate with love is redeeming faith in God.  All of the claims of the statists (and the marketeers, and for that matter, the televangelists) are ultimately false - they are false Gods.  Only Jesus who is the Christ can redeem our fallen, broken natures.  And our world.