Zany Days and Cheap Mondays Always Get Me Down
Published February 03, 2006
Quick, when someone mentions Sweden, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Anything at all? For most people, it's meatballs, or maybe the fact that it has one of the goofiest-sounding languages in the world, and that's about it. Which isn't surprising since it's a pretty quiet place where very little of any particular consequence ever happens.
There was a time decades ago when it had a racy reputation for being a place where everyone was blonde, good-looking, and sexually liberated, the place to go if sensuality and hedonistic pleasure-seeking were things upon which you wanted to base a lifestyle. Reference was made to that old reputation in the 1999 movie Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me, when a woman told Powers, "You've had more sex on the job than a Swedish stewardess."
But that's all pretty passé in this day and age given that sexual freedom — or, to put it another way, promiscuity — is rampant throughout the Western world. Still, no one should be surprised to learn that Sweden is the most secular of all European countries, the number of regular church-goers having dwindled to a very small percentage of the population.
It's not small enough for Bjorn Atldax, the designer of a provocative logo for a trendy new punk-rock style of jeans known as Cheap Mondays. The logo depicts a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead, all for the purpose of making young people question Christianity, as if it wasn't already an irrelevancy to most young Swedes anyway.
"It is an active statement against Christianity," Atldax told the Associated Press. "I'm not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion." Atldax believes that Christianity is a 'force of evil" that has sparked wars throughout history and therefore needs to be discouraged.
Of course, if Atldax were to acquire a more substantive knowledge of recent world history than that which can be gleaned from peacenik bumper stickers, he might realize that Christianity has long since outgrown its proselytizing, territory-conquering days. To call Christianity a "force of evil" now is simply nonsense. Looking at the most destructive forces of evil of the past century — Nazism, fascism, communism — and the tens of millions who were slaughtered in their name, one can't help but notice a pronounced dearth of Christian-influenced warmongering.
Despite its indifference, and sometimes outright hostility, towards Christianity, Sweden is one of the most often cited countries as a great place to go by Americans who are dissatisfied with their own country in some way or who swear they'll bail out of the U.S. if ____ (insert Republican name here) is elected president. In fact, if I had a nickel for every time I'd heard some left-leaning American sing the praises of that snowbound Shangri-la, I'd be . . .
- Zany Days and Cheap Mondays Always Get Me Down
- Published: February 03, 2006
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Culture
- Filed Under: Culture: Society, Culture: Religion
- Writer: Greg Strange
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- Greg Strange's personal site
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Now if you wanted to be really iconoclastic, here in America, you could point out that Nazism, fascism, and communism, the three movements you correctly identify as killing ten of millions in the 20th century;
they are all three the deformed offshoots of the democratic revolutionary fervor that swept Europe, beginning in France in the late 1700's.
You could also point out that in a country, such as the US, with a history relatively free of fanatical religious persecutions and wars, enlightenment based democratic revolution grew more and more benign, and more and more secular.
On the other hand, in countries that did have a history of religious persecution (like Russia's pogroms) or bitterly fought religious wars (France, and especially Germany), democracy either became violently zealous, or a weak democracy gave way to barbarism unlike any seen before.
The lesson might be that democratic reform works best when coupled with a benign, but slightly bemused, view of organized religion.
The author is correct. I have lived in parts of the world where Muslims 'live' together with non-Muslims and it is not pretty. They have a goal and purpose. Western youth are too worried about the latest styles and drugs and do not know what is waiting for them in the next 20-30 years.
When christianity have come to the point where we in many cases "turns the other cheek" if we're being attacked, then how can we ever defeat a culture that in their religious texts state that they should "kill the infidels, wherever you find them".
We simply do not get it. And that will be the downfall of our western civilization, unless we stand up for our rights and privileges. I have as yet to see a muslim demonstration with tens of thousands condemning the killins done by terrorist groups. But for cartoons and anything else that might be against their interests, no matter what it, is is always comdemned with threats of killings, beheadings and suicide bombs. We need to get our act together and stand united and tell them that we will not stand for it.
Sweden is so weak, politicians always say that we can not hate muslims. But it has nothing to do with hate, it has to do with that I and the majority in sweden dont want to bow down to islam. The media always reports only the pilitically correct, not what people here in sweden really thinks.
I hope the eyes will be opened of our politicians.
Sweden is so weak, politicians always say that we can not hate muslims. But it has nothing to do with hate, it has to do with that I and the majority in sweden dont want to bow down to islam. The media always reports only the pilitically correct, not what people here in sweden really thinks.
I hope the eyes will be opened of our politicians.
KURT - PLEASE CONTACT ME AT:
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Maria
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I'd have to agree knocking Christianity in Sweden is about as iconoclastic, in the broader definition, as gay bashing would be in the Dobson household. Any reasonably moderate sounding person, even one who wastes time and energy worrying about things like the spread of promiscuity, or Muslims 'outbreeding' the West and forcing us into submission (that won't even happen in Israel, I imagine Europe's safe) would have to agree.