Speaking of Norway

For the past 5 years I've been considering moving away from the US, specifically to a Scandinavian country, preferably Norway.

I first considered it in 2002 when I read somewhere that the UN had rated Norway as the best country with respect to the human development index for the second year in a row. Norway went on to get 1st place for the next 4 years as well, being beaten out by Iceland in 2007.

I did some research back in 2002 and learned all sorts of interesting things about Norway's educational system (though I still always forget that Oslo is the capital) and their political system and their relatively progressive ways. But then I realized that it was going to be bothersome to learn how to speak Norwegian (Nyorsk?), so I sort of dropped the idea.

Recently I've been reconsidering it. At first I thought it was because my quality of life would improve if I moved there because of things like their universal health care, their fantastic worker rights/laws, or their generally slower pace of life, and their progressive educational system. But then I was awakened to the fact that, because I have the means to be quite successful in life (a good education, good sense of thrift, etc), should I choose to live the rest of my life here, me and my family will probably be just fine.

It would seem that moving to Norway would not really improve things for me all that much, simply because I'm currently in the solid middle class, with a small chance of climbing up a half step to upper middle class (barring unforeseen troubles). I'll probably make enough money to live in a decent neighborhood which will have a great free clinic (which won't matter because my insurance will probably be pretty good) and a wonderfully well equipped and well staffed public or private school (which might not matter because I may also be able to afford private school for at least one child if necessary).

I hadn't really given it serious enough thought though. I have a new reason to want to move to Norway now and that's simply because I want to live in a country where the voting public feels at least a bit more like I do about what I consider to be important elements of public policy. I don't want the arguments on public policy to be about whether or not we should allow water-boarding. I want them to be about whether we should put together a task force using our own tax dollars, to go educate the people and politicians of other countries who want to use water-boarding about the horrors and realities of torture tactics like water-boarding.

Currently I feel like I belong to a political minority in the US when it comes to what I want my policy makers to do. Most people here seem to be either unconcerned about immigration, or wanting to lock the borders down. They seem to be either unconcerned with political reform, or unaware with the problems of corporate lobbying. They seem to be either unconcerned about military spending, or comfortable with increasing it. They seem to be either unconcerned about rights of privacy, or willing to forfeit those rights in exchange for a false sense of security. They seem to be unconcerned about basic human rights of our prisoners (both foreign and domestic), or expect that they are getting what's coming to them. They seem to be unconcerned about the world outside of their own state/country, or they feel it should all be subordinate to their own government. And, what hurts me the absolute most: They seem to be simply unconcerned about the quality of public education.

My future kids might get a pretty good education here in the US because I'm likely to be financially well enough off when they will begin school. But that's not good enough for me. I want to live in a country where it doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, or what neighborhood you live in, your kids are going to get the same education as everyone else's. I want all of my children's friends to be cleverer than my child, I want my child's teacher to be cleverer than me. I want my bus driver to know CPR and I want my boss to be able to chat about the fauna of the arctic tundra with me.

But, of course, as I've mentioned in a previous post, I believe that a child's quality of education is critically dependent on the parent's attitudes on education, more so than the quality of the school and its teachers. So fixing all of the public schools in the country is not going to be enough. And there's not quick way to change parent's attitudes about education in this country. So the best way for me to achieve this goal is to move to a country where the majority of the citizens feel the same way I feel about educating our children. Luckily in Norway, the majority of people seem to feel the same way that I do about a lot of things beside education.

And that's really what it's about. When I go vote I want my voice to be heard, and the way that democracy works, it's the voice of the majority that gets heard. We voted for Bush twice in this country and my voice wasn't heard. How many more times will I go to my polling place and then come home to watch my candidate fail? More scary still, when my candidate does win, how many times will it be because she was the lesser of two evils? How many times am I going to have to watch him sign a bill that I disagree with? How many times before I become disillusioned with my political system and my fellow voters?

I realize that this is the kind of blog post that will prevent me from ever holding any kind of serious public office in the future. It looks as if I'm, in essence, promoting a socialist state. But horrible flashbacks of a certain tuesday (and early wednesday) in november 2004 have struck back with a vengeance, and they're shaking my faith. And there's another such tuesday coming up soon.