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den 6 september 2012


  Varför det amerikanska valet engagerar

Ni som följer mig vet att jag har svårt att sluta skriva om USA. Igår läste jag en artikel som förklarar mitt intresse bättre än jag själv har kunnat. Så här skriver Janet Daley i brittiska The Telegraph:

Whatever the outcome of the American presidential election, one thing is certain: the fighting of it will be the most significant political event of the decade. Last week’s Republican national convention sharpened what had been until then only a vague, inchoate theme: this campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.

I det amerikanska valet står två tydliga alternativ mot varandra och där debatteras frågor som är nästintill otänkbara här. Men även Sverige är i behov av samma politiska debatt.

What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust.

Och ja, även vi borde föra diskussionen om hur välfärdsstaten begränsar den fria marknaden och därmed grunden för vårt välstånd. Vi ser ekonomier ramla omkull omkring oss men livet går bara vidare.

Mitt Romney had been hinting, in an oblique, undeveloped way, at this line of argument as he moved tentatively toward finding a real message. Then he took the startling step of appointing Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, and the earth moved. If Romney was the embodiment of the spirit of a free market, Ryan was its prophet.

Valet av Paul Ryan som kandidat till vice presidentposten kommer att göra kampanjen tydligare.

Contrary to what many know-nothing British observers seem to think, the message coming out of Tampa was not Tea Party extremism. It was just a reassertion of the basic values of American political culture: self-determination, individual aspiration and genuine community, as opposed to belief in the state as the fount of all social virtue.

Dessa är de två visionerna: Å ena sidan ett samhälle baserat på individens frihet och verklig gemenskap. Å den andra ett samhälle där staten är källan till allt det socialt goda.

Jag vet vilket samhälle jag längtar efter och sörjer att vi inte kan ha denna politiska diskussion i Sverige också.

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