not that happy

• Being rather leftwing and thus often disagreeing with what's happening in Switzerland, I would never have imagined to be forced one day to defend my country: But now I am made to do so by many of the comments I have read here. Of course there is a lot of justified criticism about Switzerland – its in fact dubious asylum laws, the campains run by the People's Party, the tax haven problems – but that does not give the right to anyone of accusing every Swiss citizen of being racist or of simply insulting us, as it is done ad nauseam in this forum, simply as that is nothing else than classical racism – taking a cliché and attributing it to a whole population – which, by the way, in the case of Switzerland works even less, us not being an ethnical unity, thus having even fewer common mentality features than e.g. the French or the Italian people, where identity, defined by a common language or history, is more or less congruent to the nation itself – something we with our four languages, our 20% immigrants, our different landscapes and the many cultural and political influences from whole Europe throughout history unfortunately don't have. I myself experience a Switzerland offering to everyone opportunities in terms of education – I don't know whether my parents would have been able to afford a private school, which in many countries is necessary in order to obtain a sufficient education – and a guaranteed high-level medical treatment etc., a Switzerland where still 70% don't share the People's Party's opinions, where most people can speak foreign languages, where institutions like the Red Cross have been invented, where James Joyce and Hermann Hesse have felt at home. And do you really think running an institution like the ETH is a common occupation of dumb, cowardish and greedy cow herders or how ever we have been called by you?

  Eumaios 29 May 2009, 08:31 - Report

Switzerland sucks