Welcome to the Politics Page of FreeSweden.net in which we look at the political system in Sweden as it relates to homeschooling and the family.
We at FreeSweden.net stand for libertarianism. This we understand as follows:
"Libertarianism is the advocacy of individual rights, especially freedom of thought and action. Philosopher Roderick T. Long defines libertarianism as any political position that advocates a radical redistribution of power [either 'total or merely substantial'] from the coercive state to voluntary associations of free individuals', whether 'voluntary association' takes the form of the free market or of communal co-operatives'. David Boaz, libertarian writer and vice-president of the Cato Institute, writes that, 'Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses to long as he respects the equal rights of others' and that, 'Libertarians defend each person's right to life, liberty, and property - rights that people have naturally, before governments are created'" (Wikipedia, Libertarianism).
We therefore believe also that it is the right of parents to choose to home educate their children apart from the state system according to their personal philosophical and/or religious views as is guaranteed by both European Union (EU) Law and the United Nations Convention on Human rights to which Sweden is bound as a member-state and as a signiatory, respectively. We take the view, therefore, that the political decision by the Swedish Government to ban the human right to homeschool in 2010 was illegal, and that the 2009 state-kidnapping of a homeschooled boy, Domenic Johansson, and the 2010 arrest of his father, is criminal and demonstrates to the world the totalitarian roots of the contemporary Swedish state. We therefore demand the immediate release from custody of father and son.
We represent no Swedish political party nationally or locally though this may change in the future if one or more political parties come out in defence of homeschooling as part of their political platforms.
As political activists for homeschooling we also have to clearly state that we are pacifists - we do not believe in violence of any kind. Neither do we represent any kind of extremism. This author is a centrist in an authentic libertarian political spectrum.
As the author of this page, I was involved (though never a member) in the British Conservative Party for many years and latterly, before I moved to Scandinavia, the short-lived Social Democratic Party (SDP) before it merged with the British Liberal Party to form the Liberal-Democratic Party. For 22 years I kept completely out of politics until the attack on homeschooling liberty began in 2009 culminating in the infamous Education Act of 2010 that banned homeschooling altogether. Realising that this represented a fundamental challenge to my personal liberty and the further destruction of authentic democracy in Sweden, I therefore became a homeschooling activist in 2009 by writing and publishing a book, The Warren Report on Homeschooling in Sweden:
In 2010 I got involved in politics again, this time becoming a member of the libertarian United Kingdom Independence Party in the absence of any truly libertarian party in Sweden willing to defend the family and homeschoolers - the Christian Democrats defend the former but not the latter (except for a handful of individuals). To date, as there is no political party in Sweden with the guts (yet) to defend my natural right to homeschool, I shall remain uninvolved in Swedish party politics. Once our liberties are secured I have every intention of quitting the political arena as soon as I can. Like most ordinary people, I just want to be left alone to live in peace without state meddling.
In many ways, modern day Sweden is like the United States of the 1950's. The USA was not yet then a proper liberal democracy, embroiled as it was in the anti-communist witch-hunt known as MacCarthyism that targeted (and destroyed) many innocent people, and was very suspicious of anything smacking of socialism because of the rising tensions of the Cold War. Modern day Sweden is the exact reverse in many ways, suspicious as it is of anything remotely flavoured with conservatism or Christianity. I am hoping that Sweden may yet become a genuine liberal democracy as it learns to shed the lead boots of totalitarian social engineering and to trust the people to decide what they want for themselves without having to brainwash them through the straightjacket of total control of the educational system and media or to compell them through its own Gestapo, the Social Services (see, for instance, the story of Domenic Johansson).
You are now invited to get stuck into this Page and to find out why I believe that the Swedish political system is, in fact, a kind of "fascism in slow motion" in desperate need of radical reform. What Sweden needs now is open, direct democracy and a new Constitution, not to defend the rights of the Government (which the present Constitution does), but to defend the fundamental rights of the ordinary citizen (which the present Constitution absolutely does not).
