A wise Englishman once remarked that when politicians do as little as possible, they tend to do good. Martin Regnen always says that he fears intelligent leaders, because they tend to want to change everything, even if it only makes things worse. Maybe this explains why a lot of intelligent people are liberals, but would benefit the most from being conservative?

Swedish election is coming up and every party is promising job opportunities, better schools and better health care. Eventually every social democratic state transforms into a version of Sweden: people want to be nannied into narcotic safety, and leaders love to hand out the drugs. Welfare becomes an addiction. If you're used to giving away 30 or so percent of your income and expect "free" hand outs in return, you'll want more of it, all the time. Despite what socialists say about capitalism, we know for sure that social democracy breeds generations of egoists: "We paid our taxes, now we demand you give us everything we want!"

Social democratic elections always push paternalism, regardless of who ends up winning. It's not that we don't need a more flexible labor market, that public schools don't need to raise the standard, that health care isn't running out of funding, or that we don't need to reduce organized crime. It's just that our leaders are incapable of doing it all that well. If they deregulated the labor market, lowered the taxes for employees, pushed more people into private schools and made it harder to pass public education tests, cut down on health care bureaucracy and strengthened laws and civic society, we would improve fast.

Instead we expect the election to be a time when leaders promise us to save us from ourselves. "I will be in charge of your safety," says a conservative party poster close to where I live. It is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the political culture of our society. You're not supposed to be in charge of my safety--that's my business. Your job is to make sure I can run my own life. To expect something else would be financially unwise and morally reprehensible. I don't like morons as leaders, but Martin and other democracy-critics may have a point: if you think you're so smart you can make all decisions for me, you need to be dethroned and put on a real job instead. Paternalism is slow death.