As a Norwegian I don't think Cailian was purposefully misrepresenting us but I think as a foreigner he really doesn't get Scandianvian society.

Like restrictive alcohol policy has nothing to do with Christian conservatism as is sort of implied between the lines here. Cailian is taking an American or British value perspective and trying to force it onto Scandianvian society where things work quite differently.

The restrictive alcohol policy comes from the perspective of leftist social movements who wanted to deal with the destructive effects of drinking on Scandinavian society. We have long had a bing drinking culture which has been very bad for us. We used to be much like Russia. Wives had to get the pay from the husband at the factory gate in the early 1900s before he drank it all up.

My great grandfather was a sailor and a drunk. My grandfathers generation which really was part of the golden age of the working class movement wanted to avoid seeing working class families grow up with that misery.

That movement didn't have problems with you taking a beer now and then. It was hard liquor and binge drinking they wanted to end. Hence I would call this different from a Christian conservative movement which wanted to ban all drinking. The working class wanted more responsible drinking. I don't think thta can be viewed as consevative. To me that is progressive.

A word on the bailouts. In the US they filled up banks with money to secure the wealth of private shareholders. Managers got fat bonuses. In the Nordic countries banks got taken over by government and shareholders lost all their money. I would not call letting the rich loose their money rather than letting them pay each other fat bonuses a conservative policy.

Left and right doesn't work the same all over Europe as in the US. The French nationalization of various companies is not really from a leftist view but right-wing economic nationalism. The French right doesn't really believe in free market economics. Rather they believe in a sort of technocratic nationalist rule.

Cailian is right though that our Monarchy support can be called conservative. But it is worth nothing that Scandianvian monarchies have survived in large part because they are very progressive. The present Norwegian king has championed the rights of minorities, gays and lesbians in speeches. I don't think you will find the British royals doing that in public.

The former king Olav V took the tram with regular people to going skiing in the woods where everybody else were skiing. He didn't go hunting Fox on private property with the aristocracy and rich.

The monarchy survives because they embrace so many typical leftist values.