What does Finland do right?

[ingemann]

Denmark is generally more continental and thus liberal in certain ways. For example the attitudes to public sex, prostitution and drugs is much more lax in Denmark. With this comes also a somewhat more sexist society, at least such is my impression.

It's how you look at it, Denmark are more conservative in implement gender quotas, rules against prostitution and drugs. We are also more willing to implement immigration restriction. The problem here is state versus public opinion. When we talk with Swedes in private they usual come with opinions about gender and foreigners, which tend to be more extreme than anything we have implemented. Plus we lack the large active extreme right Sweden have.

So our more open/harsher debate are simply seen as a way to let the pus out abscess before it become bigger, rather than letting it fester and become something much uglier and harder to control.

[politicus]

Denmark is generally more continental and thus liberal in certain ways. For example the attitudes to public sex, prostitution and drugs is much more lax in Denmark. With this comes also a somewhat more sexist society, at least such is my impression.

It's how you look at it, Denmark are more conservative in implement gender quotas, rules against prostitution and drugs. We are also more willing to implement immigration restriction. The problem here is state versus public opinion. When we talk with Swedes in private they usual come with opinions about gender and foreigners, which tend to be more extreme than anything we have implemented. Plus we lack the large active extreme right Sweden have.

So our more open/harsher debate are simply seen as a way to let the pus out abscess before it become bigger, rather than letting it fester and become something much uglier and harder to control.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You know it's a idea often adopted by some political analyst that countries whose democracy and political environment function in different ways to their own are not really democracies. I just see it as the Ivory Tower version of xenophobia. Different countries have different needs, and while Finland was forced into their broad consensus based coalition by the fact that USSR was breathing down their neck, don't make them less democratic than UK, where a political party can rule like a absolut king (ands not the the enlighten kind) even with the lack of the majority of voters behind them.

Oh, I don't disagree (I actually laughed while reading it), but it seemed more to fun to note it without comment...

[Lasitten]

Someone argued in a journal article - written not long after the True Finns whateversky breakthrough - that this is so much the case that Finland is not (or at least was not) really a democracy, as such.

I would want to see that article. If it points at the historical 'finlandization' and authoritarian way that president Kekkonen(he wanted the left-front SKDL, which included the communists, in to the cabinet at any price) directed Finland it is kind of true. Traditionally the finnish politics has been about who two of the three biggest parties has been playing with each other in the cabinet while the third party waits for their turn in the opposition - the rise of True Finns obviously broke this game.

[memphis]

When all these comparisons get made, are we accounting for the large number of private schooled children in the US, many of whom don't take all the same standardized tests as the public schoolers?

[HoosierPoliticalJunkie]

You can afford to have curriculums decided at the local level when you're a unfiromly progressive, liberal, intelligent country.

Local control would be a disaster for America. It would mean half the country would learn creationism.

Yeah, a lot of the Nordic model is based on having a homogeneous society with similar beliefs and ideals.  That's just not the fabric of the US and it never will be the fabric of the US. 

I would shudder at Mississippi's science curriculum, but I'd also shudder at all the left-wing activism and support of bozos like Al Sharpton, Rodney King, and the Weather Underground terrorists that might creep its way into California's history curriculum. 

[Sol]

I would shudder at Mississippi's science curriculum, but I'd also shudder at all the left-wing activism and support of bozos like Al Sharpton, Rodney King, and the Weather Underground terrorists that might creep its way into California's history curriculum. 

Such as what, pray tell?

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'd also shudder at all the left-wing activism and support of bozos like Al Sharpton, Rodney King, and the Weather Underground terrorists that might creep its way into California's history curriculum. 

As someone who's currently studying in Friggin' San Francisco... LOL

[Associate Justice PiT]

I'd also shudder at all the left-wing activism and support of bozos like Al Sharpton, Rodney King, and the Weather Underground terrorists that might creep its way into California's history curriculum. 

As someone who's currently studying in Friggin' San Francisco... LOL

     I don't know about you, but living in San Francisco for 18 years, I've met more than a few genuine reactionaries who would not be out of place at an FN rally.