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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Sorry, liberals, Scandinavian countries aren't utopias |
| 2015-01-13 |
| h/t Instapundit Want proof that the liberal social-democratic society works? Look to Denmark, the country that routinely leads the world in happiness surveys. In the American liberal compass, the needle is always pointing to places like Denmark. Everything they most fervently hope for here has already happened there. So: Why does no one seem particularly interested in visiting Denmark? ("Honey, on our European trip, I want to see Tuscany, Paris, Berlin and . . . Jutland!") Visitors say Danes are joyless to be around. Denmark suffers from high rates of alcoholism. In its use of antidepressants it ranks fourth in the world. (Its fellow Nordics the Icelanders are in front by a wide margin.) Some 5% of Danish men have had sex with an animal. Let's look a little closer, asks Michael Booth, a Brit who has lived in Denmark for many years, in his new book, "The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia" Those sky-high happiness surveys, it turns out, are mostly bunk. Asking people "Are you happy?" means different things in different cultures. In Japan, for instance, answering "yes" seems like boasting, Booth points out. Whereas in Denmark, it’s considered "shameful to be unhappy," newspaper editor Anne Knudsen says in the book. Moreover, there is a group of people that believes the Danes are lying when they say they're the happiest people on the planet. This group is known as "Danes." |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #11 Watch Wilbur wants to kill himself (the movie) to see why this is happening. What kind of animals? Young goats? |
| Posted by: Alpha2c 2015-01-13 22:24 |
| #10 "Sexists, they didn't even survey women for that question!" -Rolling Stone |
| Posted by: Charles 2015-01-13 19:12 |
| #9 5% of Danish men have had sex with an animal. WHAT, only 5%. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2015-01-13 18:27 |
| #8 #5 I mean. But #6 is good too. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2015-01-13 12:10 |
| #7 ^^^^^^^^^^ Snark of the day. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2015-01-13 12:09 |
| #6 Frank, I was wondering if their Muslim population had reached 5%. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2015-01-13 11:59 |
| #5 Some 5% of Danish men have had sex with an animal Lena Dunham is very popular there |
| Posted by: Frank G 2015-01-13 10:30 |
| #4 Beyond fantastic myth and fantasy, the physiological response to sleep deprivation and skewed circadian rhythms due to the high latitude and 20+ hours of daylight has quite a bit to do with the depression and alcoholism. Not so much how they voted. In our case however,... |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2015-01-13 10:06 |
| #3 ed in T, that wasn't a Twilight Zone, that was a DNC documentary. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2015-01-13 08:47 |
| #2 Well, even then being made up of 99% white and Lutheran* cultural stock, may also account for some of the 'luster'. So, how about adopting that as a baseline? /rhet question * you pay for your sins, there is no dispensation for your actions. Contrast that with other theologies and philosophies that you can get out of your venial and mortal corruption by acts of contrition. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2015-01-13 08:38 |
| #1 "We do not allow unhappiness here!" (There was a Twilight Zone about this...) |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2015-01-13 07:29 |