NO OFFENSE TO ERIC ALTERMAN, but Sweden has not been a “beacon of light” to the world. It collaborated with the Nazis in World War Two, and despite its moralistic posturing in the postWar era was not especially admirable then, either.

Nor, being poorer than Mississippi, but with more crime than America, are they much of a model domestically.

If Sweden is a role model to the United States in anything, it’s how to get good PR despite bad facts. But the way to do that is no secret — just be leftist, which journalists tend to love. Just ask Fidel Castro, who gets astonishingly good press considering that he runs a murderous dictatorship that keeps his people in poverty while he lives in splendor unmatched by any Victorian robber-baron industrialist.

UPDATE: Jason McCullough says that the study is biased against the Swedes. That’s odd, since it was a Swedish study, and I don’t find his argument on the merits persuasive. But read his analysis and decide for yourself.