Stefan Torssell is a Swede who has written a defence of patriotic love. I'm a little reliant on Google translate in what follows (and it's an abridged version of his column), but the gist of his argument is clear enough.
The good news from Sweden is that the Sweden Democrats are strong enough to have won 20 seats in the parliament. Below is a photo of the leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, at a community event in his hometown.
I particularly liked Torssell's analogy between the love of a person and the love of a country:
It is he who loves who is happy...
And then comes the question: can someone love their country? I believe they can and actually remember the moment when my love grew...I went on the folk high school excursion. We lay in the grass and talked.
All around me were red cottages along a country road. Large arable fields spread out. Sweden was a beautiful country with good values...The language, culture and traditions created a national community that made us develop into a good society.
Just as insights about oneself are a prerequisite for being able to love another human being, a love of country presupposes that you know your country's places, fauna, traditions and culture. I grew up in my language, in my country, in my nature and our traditions.
It is essential for me to be able to love my country. But it is not enough. Love of Sweden contains love in two ways: it is a feeling, and it is an active choice.
It may seem pathetic to write about the love of a country. Some may perceive it as pompous in our time when the denial of their own national culture has become a competition. My experience of Sweden recalls the love of a person. They want to stay in that person's proximity, giving up a part of himself and is sympathetically tuned to that person.
There are those who do not love Sweden. One member of the cultural Left who often persecutes the Sweden Democrats (the patriotic party) is Martin Aagard. I heard him on the radio a while ago. He explained that he did not feel anything for his native Sweden.
I think the idea is not foreign to the cultural left that one can hate their own nation, or at least feel indifference. From that state can be born a destructiveness. It is not just the Left that can have this negativity to their own country. Even right circles I believe can make such choices.
Increasingly now I hear people express themselves negatively about Sweden, not only Mona Sahlin and Reinfeldt. Sweden has no culture. Swedish culture is borrowing from other more developed cultures. Swedish culture is barbarism.
The Swedish Democrats expressing kindness to Sweden is described as xenophobic. Many are forced to be cautious. They try to adapt to the zeitgeist to malign everything that is Swedish. They are to be regretted.
I've written about this before in terms of love, but it bears repeating. Faithfulness and truth are necessary in a relationship. The worst thing we can do to ourselves is to lie to someone we care about. Anyone who wants to lose a friend or a loved one should lie immediately to the man. The lie starts a mental process of decomposition and soon the friendship or love lost.
The powerful want EU countries to grow together into a federation with a single currency and a uniform law of free movement of capital. Multiculturalism has a purpose. It breaks down a country's uniqueness and national institutions.
That the Sweden Democrats are disliked by people with power and influence, I interpret as a sign that they are lying to us and about us.
But there is another question. Can even the love of a country end? I think so.
The Sweden I discovered long ago is no more. Fragmentation in the nation is extensive. Much happens that is detestable. I have a strong feeling that many want to destroy Sweden in order to get something else.
My country feels strange when terrorists with Swedish citizenship are captured in an Arab country or when Swedes who committed a gang rape are reported to have spoken an incomprehensible language. I do not regard them as Swedes and I doubt very strongly that they do themselves.
Obviously, it is not the negative consequences of multiculturalism the establishment want. They want Sweden to become something else. What is happening now they consider a passing phase. Because they just want to discuss what is good with multiculturalism and only with those who think alike. I and the majority of the population have never been asked.
They are ruining Sweden. The whole project seems to now move toward a tragedy. We'll see which side wins. We who are sympathetic to Sweden or those who want to impose multiculturalism?
The good news from Sweden is that the Sweden Democrats are strong enough to have won 20 seats in the parliament. Below is a photo of the leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, at a community event in his hometown.
I particularly liked Torssell's analogy between the love of a person and the love of a country:
My experience of Sweden recalls the love of a person. They want to stay in that person's proximity, giving up a part of himself and is sympathetically tuned to that person.
