Under liberalism, the utterly amazing is utterly predictable

One of the paradoxes of liberal society is that the things about it that are beyond satire—indeed, the things about it that are almost beyond one’s ability to comment on them at all—are also its most logical and consistent expressions. So it is in the present case. As I read the below article, from The Local: Sweden’s News in English, I’m rendered speechless; no analysis, no quips, come to me. So I will simply quote the piece in its entirety:

Army castrates heraldic lion

Protests from female soldiers have led to the Swedish military removing the penis of a heraldic lion depicted on the Nordic Battlegroup’s coat of arms.

The armed forces agreed to emasculate the lion after a group of women from the rapid reaction force lodged a complaint to the European Court of Justice, Goteborgs-Posten reports.

But although the army was eventually happy to make the changes in the interests of gender equality, the artist who designed the insignia was less than pleased.

“A heraldic lion is a powerful and stately figure with its genitalia intact and I cannot approve an edited image,” Vladimir A Sagerlund from the National Archives told Goteborgs-Posten.

Sagerlund blasted the army for making changes to the coat of arms without his permission.

“The army lacks knowledge about heraldry. Once upon a time coats of arms containing lions without genitalia were given to those who betrayed the Crown,” said Sagerlund.

But the castrated lion has already won the day and is now worn on the arms of all soldiers in the battle group’s Swedish battalions.

“We were given the task of making sure the willy disappeared,” Christian Braunstein from the army’s ‘tradition commission’ told Goteborgs-Posten.

“We were forced to cut the lion’s willy off with the aid of a computer,” he added.

The Nordic Battlegroup is one of eighteen such military groups in the European Union. Some 2,000 of its 2,400 soldiers come from Sweden, with the rest coming from Finland, Norway, Ireland and Estonia.

Ok, now that I’ve read the piece twice I do have something to say. A country whose symbols are under the control of a transnational “Court of Justice” is already emasculated, so it is proper that its national and military symbols should be emasculated too. Further, a country that as a matter of choice (not as a matter of dire necessity, as faced by, say, the Israelis in 1948) integrates women with men in its military is already emasculated, so it is proper that its military symbols should be emasculated too.

If the Swedes don’t like emasculated symbols, then the solution is very simple: they need to remove their country from the evil EU, and they need to remove their women from the military.

- end of initial entry -

A reader writes:

It’s like Monty Python, only it’s true!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 13, 2007 01:32 PM | Send