We Are Not Norway

The same liberals who demand and celebrate diversity cannot grasp how it makes their social homogenization agenda impossible.

Liberal policy makers have long regarded Scandinavian policies as a model. If a welfare state can work there, they have long argued, it can work here. But the Scandinavian countries have homogeneous populations with high levels of trust, conscientiousness and social connectedness. It is not a coincidence that in the two states with the highest levels of the social connectedness Mr. Putnam described, North Dakota and Minnesota, most people are of Scandinavian or German descent. But policies that work well in Scandinavia or Minnesota and North Dakota won't necessarily work well in a wider United States, where a much larger proportion of people are socially disconnected.