Posted on 11/21/2007 10:07:25 AM PST by WesternCulture
Half of Swedes think their politicians have low moral standards, a new survey indicates. Journalists and company executives also have a bad reputation.
In the survey, conducted by researchers at Gothenburg University, 48 percent of those asked said that politicians' morals were poor or very poor. Only 14 percent responded that morality among the country's elected representatives was of a high or very high level.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt's Moderate Party got a lower score than when the same survey was carried out last year. The party has been dogged by a number of scandals involving politicians using black market labour, and Reinfeldt's closest aide Ulrica Schenström was forced to quit over a drinking session with a journalist, which opponents claimed was inappropriate.
The score for the Social Democrats was up slightly on lat year.
While journalists and businesspeople came out badly, researchers were viewed as having high moral standards.
The annual survey was conducted by Sören Holmberg of the SOM Institute at Gothenburg University and Lennart Weibull, professor of communications at the university.
The 750 people quizzed in the survey were also asked to rate the morals of Swedes in general. 34 percent said the country's moral standards were high or very high, with 14 percent saying their fellow countrymen had low or very low morals.
More than half of those asked said they thought morals had deteriorated over the past 10-15 years.
"The fact that [the results] were so clear this year could be seen as a bit worrying. If we all believe that other people's morals are deteriorating it can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy," said Holmberg.
There are a lot of great things about Sweden, but I would never deny the fact that even if we Swedes are honest in business situations etc, many of us display plenty of hypocritical behavior in our attitudes and relations to foreigners and international politics.
Two examples of this hypocrisy:
1. In countries like Denmark, France the UK, a large portion of the natives have had enough of the problems certain Muslim immigrants cause and they’re not afraid to say so in public. In Sweden, the sentiment among ordinary people is the exactly the same, but in contrast to other European countries in the same situation, Swedes are never honest about their true opinions about Muslims (and other foreigners) when sober.
2. During the Vietnam War, Sweden constantly condemned the actions of the US and its allies, while simultaneously exporting tons of weapons, predominantly recoilless rifles (Bofors ‘Carl Gustaf’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_Carl_Gustaf ) to the evil, Western ‘agressors’.
The leading person behind these perpetual attacks on the US was the former Social Democratic PM Olof Palme. Palme was later murdered by an unknown assassin in 1986 and because of this fate, which 99% of the Swedes do not feel he deserved, it’s more or less impossible to launch a critical analysis of what Palme really did and what values he actually represented even today.
It ain’t just Swedish politicians ... low moral standards is a requisite for office anywhere as best as I can tell.
Goeran Eurenius is outraged by this claim.
Swedish politician moonlights as a porn star
http://archive.salon.com/travel/planet/2000/03/22/sweden/index.html
- True, but sometimes I feel like people have the politicians they deserve.
Often the leaders of different nations mirror the negative as well as the positive aspects of that country as a whole, in a given historical context.
For instance, Churchill represented a nation who finally came to the conclusion that war between the Free World and the Axis was inevitable and was prepared to fight.
However, nations are often divided and sometimes the 51% who are sane dominate the 49% who refuse to see the truth and vice versa.
Göran was later forced to leave Vänsterpartiet (officially a ‘former’ Communist party). The reason was that the Feminists in charge of the party thought of pornography as an expression of ‘Sexist values’ running contrary to the core beliefs of their organization.
I don’t know how they view gay porn.
almost as low as Bill Clinton’s or William Jefferson’s???
“Half of Swedes think their politicians have low moral standards, a new survey indicates.”....Gee, I wonder where they got that idea...(the Clinton years in this country maybe?)....
“almost as low as Bill Clinton’s or William Jefferson’s???”
- Possibly, Bill Clinton is still very popular in Sweden and he seemed to like it here a lot last time he was here, which was two months ago or something (among other places, he visited my home city, Gothenburg, in order to promote his book - hundreds of people were lining up to have their copy signed).
Ted Kennedy
And Swedish apples have worms, too.
In other news:
Bears Sh*t in the Woods
Pigs Can’t Fly
As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man. Bill Clinton disgraced the USA, as much as he could years ago.
re: Olof Palme
Wow, I didn’t know his assassination had never been solved!?! I remember when it happened, but then never read any follow-up in the years since. Was it definitely believed to be a political assassination and not any garden variety type of murder? I guess if someone comes up to a PM and shoots him dead it can be assumed to be political, but did they have any suspect groups or nation, etc. that might have been behind it? What motive??? Did he piss off the KGB?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Olof_Palme_place_of_death.jpg
What a surprise.
“Was it definitely believed to be a political assassination?”
- There’s still a wide range of theories and speculations.
Not all of them focus on the fact that Olof Palme was PM of Sweden. One theory suggests that the assassin actually was out to kill a certain man who owned a nearby club and mistook Palme for that person (among other things because of the darkness).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
