Blackmoor Vituperative

I used to idolize the Swiss. Their traditions of neutrality and universal firearm ownership seemed, to me, to mirror a spirit which the USA used to cherish and to which I wished it would return. Then I got a job where I worked with the Swiss on a regular basis, and the scales fell away from my eyes. The Swiss certainly do have traditions which the USA would do well to emulate, but this does not mean that the Swiss are an enlightened people somehow better and wiser than Americans. I can tell you firsthand that they are not: they are simply people, as irrational and as myopic as any other.

Here is a pretty good example: the Swiss held a referendum upholding restrictions on Swiss citizenship. Being born in Switzerland, or even being the child of those born in Switzerland, is no guarantee of citizenship. The underlying premise here is so primitive that it belongs in a Jean M. Auel book. Héctor Abad Faciolince has some insightful comments regarding this sad state of affairs:

As no one chooses where to be born, one’s birthplace is a pure accident and therefore neither a fault nor a merit. In this sense one’s nationality ought to have no importance, since the soil does not imprint one’s character. Just as astrology is an idiocy (or, as bad, a society game) supposedly based on serious methods of proof, rather like a sort of “geology” which determines who we “are” according to where we entered the world, it has very little real basis.

(From Nationality irrationality and the Swiss referendum)