For Westerners to denounce their own cultural inheritance became a provocative, embarrassing, and ill-conceived political ritual in the late twentieth century. A case in point is the Swedish social democrat Mona Sahlin.

A Western counterpart of anocratic movements from the Third World, e.g. the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico, Sahlin’s democratic party has ruled Sweden for nearly a century on end. Without any substantial interference from the center-right opposition, it has had ample time to create a modern myth, which goes by the name “Folkhemmet” (i.e. the “People’s Home”), and effectively appropriates the state apparatus, educational institutions, and public news media. In addition, state subsidies have provided a reliable means of managing trends in cultural life. Instilling the tripartite idea of (a) social justice, (b) redistribution, and (c) social democratic government in the citizens, the party has achieved an ideological dominance comparable to that of the communist parties before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The former Prime Minister Olof Palme, if any single person, symbolized the arrogance of power; he took government for granted and loathed his political adversaries.

A rising star in the social democratic party, Sahlin accepted her first appointment as a minister in 1990. A series of scandals, however, suggesting a fearless person with an insatiable appetite for power and privilege, compelled her to leave office in 1995. She had not entirely run out of luck yet, though. In 1997, she was nominated as chairperson of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. It must have looked as if she were born for that position, a person so perfectly void of judgment and fidelity. Then she became minister again in 1998. Finally, as the crowning glory of her career, she became party leader in 2007. Having nothing to show for it, given the traditional party expectation of infinite government, she resigned as leader in 2011.

A champion of the socialist cause, Sahlin would be expected, if only for ceremonial purposes, to show interest in the living conditions and expectations of ordinary workers. However, she left the impression of a shallow........

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