May 10th, 2012

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If you want to kill the welfare state, you just need to let its proponents do the job for you.

That’s got to be the conclusion after years of unsuccessful efforts to do just that by the right, the press and those whose opinions people listen to. They – and the rest of us who have repeatedly put in our two cents’ worth from the sidelines – have failed miserably. We’ve got nothing to show for our efforts, but a lot of hot air and really bad karma.

The only way to put an end to the welfare state and the utter misery it causes is to entrust it to its leading proponents. Criticising it seems counterproductive. In the span of just 50 years, Danes have gone from being a hard-working people blessed with a low tax rate and strong sense of personal responsibility to the world’s most heavily taxed, the biggest complainers, and a people who will only listen to the truth if they want to believe it.

Those of us who feel the welfare state’s disappearance would benefit us all should all should shut our mouths. The only thing that works is when useful idiots like Özlem Cekic (Socialistisk Folkeparti) open their mouths and start going on about welfare moms like the now infamous ‘Carina’, who was found to be not so hard up after all, because when they do, it only serves to open the eyes of average Danes to just how grotesque the welfare state is and the kind if culture, society and economy it breeds. 

Cekic is good for the cause. Very good. Unparalleled, I’d even say. But, Copenhagen’s ‘kindergarten mayor’ Anne Vang (Socialdemokraterne) will do in a pinch.

Vang is charming, and that’s an important characteristic – maybe the most important characteristic in our mass media democracy. Not even 30 and as naïve as a teenager, yet pretending to so hard to be grown up that it’s sickening. 

Despite her faults, Vang, as deputy mayor for children, is allowed to make decisions affecting the lives of Copenhagen’s children and their parents. As tough as that is to take, though, we need to learn to love Vang – even those of us living outside Copenhagen – because people like her are experts at running the welfare state into the ground.

How, you ask?

Well, let’s start at the beginning – at nursery schools. A nursery school is a nursery school, most will say. But, it isn’t quite that simple. According to Vang, there are ‘well-to-do nursery schools’ and there are “underprivileged nursery schools”. At the former, you have the children of what used to be known as ‘the middle class’. Their parents generally spend time interacting with them intellectually and emotionally in order to give them the best start in life they could possibly get. Today, though, these types of families are viewed by the left as rich pigs who are only good for their tax contributions. 

These children, or their parents, rather, shouldn’t show up at school thinking they are somebody. No, they should apologise for providing reasonably good homes for their children. And that’s why deputy mayor Vang wants to take funds away from their nursery schools and give them to underprivileged ones. 

I know that for most, especially those living outside Copenhagen, this isn’t very important. But, this is where it all begins. Vang’s proposal is just part of a larger “redistribution” being considered by the so-called government. Resistance to her proposal is just one battle in the great war against the welfare state. 

Firstly, funding and resources are taken away from the ‘well-to-do’ nursery schools. Next in line are the ‘well-to-do’ kindergartens, elementary schools and high schools. The underprivileged will become slaves to tolerance, and they will be told to demand even more from their masters. Next in line for this ‘redistribution’ will be universities and colleges. Schools with the largest numbers of underprivileged students will get more money, of course, at the expense of those with fewer. 

Once school funding has been redistributed, it’ll be time to look at hospitals. Public hospitals in well-to-do areas (private hospitals will have been outlawed) will have their funding ‘redistributed’ elsewhere. As long as the welfare state’s existential question is ‘to be or not to be underprivileged’, places like Frederiksberg will lose out at the expense of areas like Herlev and Hvidovre.

Believe me, ‘redistribution’ at the nursery school level is just the start. The welfare state is being divided up into a first-class section for the underprivileged, and a last-class section for the rich – all the way from nursery school to grave.

In order to understand how this works, you need to realise that the ‘underprivileged’ will normally be immigrants or their descendants, but they could also be whites who have chosen to live in the wrong place. Proponents of multiculturalism like Vang favour reverse discrimination, but like-minded people living in other parts of the country might have to settle for whites. 

But while the true cost of immigration from non-Western countries continues to be hidden, the welfare state’s universalist ideals will be undermined as its benefits become reserved for those suffering from the right condition or living in the right area. Before long, the public sector will be reduced to turning people into victims.

It goes without saying that people will turn their backs on this parody of a welfare state in droves.

Things have to get worse before they can get better. Those who oppose social democracy in word and in deed should wish the left good luck. They are our only hope. Only they can sink the welfare state.

The author is a historian, author and columnist.

Originally published by Jyllands-Posten newspaper.