Sweden

Inclusion and aggression
Published 080 AM

DEBATE • Everyone should join. This was the Social Democrats' slogan before the election in 2006. Personally, I think it sounds like a threat: "Everyone has to join - whether they want to or not." Although the slogan is rarely heard these days, the collectivist idea lives on on the left, today often linked to the concept of "inclusion."

Everyone wants to be included. The problem is that not everyone wants to be included in the same community. Personally, for example, I want to keep more than just arm's length distance from various socialist, feminist, Islamist and environmental fanatic groups. However, these do not seem to realize that they should also want to keep an arm's length distance from me, since I am as far from them as they are from me. Perhaps this is because the zeal for inclusion is just rhetoric. When it is said that everyone should be included, it does not mean that Sweden Democrats, libertarians, conservatives, men, whites, heterosexuals, and Christians should also be included. It is understood that only the good and righteous should join. Inclusion can be very exclusive, reserved for the worthy.

But the rhetoric of inclusion is often vicious. The tone is accusatory. It's a lack of inclusion, and it's someone's fault. Usually a rich white man who doesn't pay enough in taxes or who advocates curtailing the human right to blow up stairwells. In this way, the rhetoric of inclusion is used as an excuse in the debate. Everyone should join, and the hell with whoever comes with difficult questions!

Personally, I think that the zeal for inclusion actually increases intolerance. Everyone must join the fight against those who do not want everyone to join. If we are all going to join the same group, that also applies to those who don't want to join. The question then becomes why do they say no to this warm and good community? Because they're evil, of course. They are traitors. Betrayer. Sure, we humans can be mean to our enemies, but we reserve our most burning hatred for traitors.

The main problem with inclusion is that people want different things. Often these things are at odds with each other. This is where one of the great blessings of freedom usually comes to the rescue. Freedom may not allow us to resolve the great questions of what ought to be done, but to avoid them. Freedom allows different individuals and groups to do what they want. That way, everyone can be happy, or at least unhappy in their own way. But if everyone is to be included in the same group, it won't work. If everyone joins the same group, only some can get what they want, and this will be the politically powerful. Inclusion is at odds with freedom. Freedom requires that people be allowed to go their own way – that is, to exclude themselves.

The desire for community and inclusion is one of humanity's strongest. We are pack animals. From this desire for community grows both the best and the worst in us. There is friendship, family, love, cooperation. But the desire for community is so strong that we are tempted to fulfill it with violence. Either by fighting alleged enemies, or cracking down on those we consider parasitizing the community. We cannot avoid the question of who is in the group and thus worthy of our love, and who is an enemy or traitor. When we choose who to include, it is difficult to avoid also choosing those to exclude. Love is the companion of hate. If we make the mistake of including "everyone", we soon discover that we have ended up in the company of people we don't like, or who don't like us.

A free and well-functioning society follows a simple principle: you do what you want, and I do what I want. Live and let live. Not everyone should be included, as we are traveling towards different goals.

Jakob Sjölander