Once in a while I will subject myself to my favorite "Reality-Based" television show, Pat Robertson's The 700 Club. Tonight they had a report about Sweden, which you can read and view here.

Sweden has long been a target of the right if for no other reason than that it has often been held up by liberals as an example of a country in which socialism thrives under a healthy democracy. The combination of political openness and a government intent on caring for its citizens shows you why the right would want to discredit this experiment in governance in any way possible.

This report is startlingly unclear in exactly what it is criticizing in terms of policy, but remarkably clear in its application of stereotypes and xenophobia in order to advance a destructive agenda. Embedded in this article are digs which cast Europeans as anti-American out of ignorance:

First off, most Europeans don't know that they're poorer than Americans are. Their media, which is largely anti-capitalist, and people like Michael Moore, tell them that the quality of life in America is awful.

In fact, there are so many European misconceptions about America that it took a book to hold them all...

Gersemanna says these days, German politicians refer to "the American way" with a sneer. But compared to Europe, the American way looks pretty good.

Stupid:

If all this sounds like a recipe for disaster, congratulations for grasping some basic economic principles that most Swedes, and in fact, most Europeans, still haven't figured out.

In fact? Really?

Lazy:

All Swedish workers get a minimum of five weeks of vacation every year. Not enough, apparently, because, as we mentioned, the average worker also takes one sick day a week, often to work a second job, because taxes take at least half of their first income.

Sweden's welfare state has even managed to turn alcoholism into a career option, since government policy effectively pays people to stay home, drunk.

Really? A drinking subsidy? That IS shocking, yet I am very interested!

And, finally, much poorer than they believe or even feel:

"Economically productive behavior is very difficult to pursue," agrees Erixon.

But it's a similar situation across most of Europe, which continues to fall farther and farther behind the United States.

A study by the Swedish free market think tank Timbro found that the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy now have a lower per capita Gross Domestic Product than all but four U.S. states.

So you might think that would make Europeans want to change their economies to be more like ours, and you would be wrong.

These are all claims that go unfurnished with adequate evidence in the article. While the macroeconomic indicators are probably accurate, the real message of this piece is conveyed in code through the snide tone. The snide tone is a rhetorical device that seeks to stake out "common sense" as conservative territory.

Do not fall for this kind of a trap when you argue with a conservative. They want you to defend Sweden. Forget Sweden, although I am sure there is plenty that is worth defending. For instance, Sweden is ahead of the United States in e-business and internet integration, meaning they are nerdier than we are, not drunker. It also has lower corporate taxes than the United States, about which this conservative think tank grumbles. And while I need to see updated numbers, this article tells us that looking at the highest rates of income taxes is completely misleading if we do not take into account the deductions allowed by various taxation systems. The article concludes that individual taxation rates are not as grossly disproportionate as conservatives would have you believe.

Liberals need to reorient any economic debate around a discussion of priorities and obligations in order to fight back. A good government prioritizes the wellbeing of its citizens, prioritizes education and overall quality of life. Good government encourages innovation and demands accountable business practices so that consumers are not cheated out of hard-earned money by crony capitalism.

There is a simple fact at play here: Sweden saw expansive growth in the 1950s and 1960s and it has since run into problems. It still has a very high quality of life, even if it does not have the highest incomes in the world. If it is not sustainable, then it needs to be reformed. But conservatives want more. They want to discredit the very priorities of liberal governments, which is why this piece contained so much smugness about the values and ethnicity of the subjects and surprisingly little in the way of evidence on the policy. This piece serves to make fun of liberal priorities and liberal values, which if you will watch right wing media strategies over time, you will find more often than "reality-based" arguments.

The answer back to this is simple. No system has yet been found that is automatically sustainable. No economy is free of cycles. All economic organizations require maintenance, vigilance and reconsideration. Sweden will have to deal with new realities created by its system just as a pure libertarian economy would produce an undesirable rich/poor gap and unsustainable, expensive and corrupt monopolies.

But liberals demand that government is concerned about the well being of its citizens as whole people who go to work and have a home life, who fail and succeed, who are creative and technical, etc., and not simply as economic animals who only wish to consume and accumulate ever bigger piles of stuff. This leads us to support policies that enrich lives, not just line pockets. Sweden has the right idea; it is just time for a healthy auditing.

Robertson's agenda is primarily to discredit the idea that people should even matter to the government. He is wrong.