Re:Sweden's 250-year-old Freedom of the Press Act gets UNESC...
by marginalia_nu on Friday May 26, 2023 @09:31AM
(#36083866)
There's still a difference, the Swedish population was allowed enough liberties as to not start chopping off heads. This makes the power balance quite different. It's freedom on the terms of the powers that be, not a freedom that anyone died for, a freedom that can be reasoned about and where compromises can be made.
That's a very interesting theory. Sweden's laws didn't develop in a vacuum, no doubt also being influence by both British and French thinkers, and perhaps also Germans. Bordering Denmark-Norway also had very liberal press laws, and during the 1770's the most liberal in the entire world.
So, you could just as easily say that it is rather because of the liberal laws that major revolutions and oppression of the people were avoided in these countries (while there were certainly disputes in regards to general national hegemony, but then we're taking one nation-state versus another, and not so much the state versus the people).