Sweden reining in men?

It's an economic axiom that if a government wants less of something, it should tax it. Thus it's tempting to think that the "man tax" proposed by a group of far-left Swedish parliamentarians is an attempt to exterminate the male population of that Scandinavian country.

The purported objective of the "man tax," explained Reuters, is "to cover the social cost of violence against women"--which advocates of the levy insist is the collective responsibility of men, rather than the particular responsibility of individual offenders.

"It must be obvious to all of us that society has a huge problem with male violence against women and that it has a cost," asserted Gudrun Schyman, a former leader of Sweden's Left Party, in a radio interview. "We must have a discussion where men understand they as a group have a responsibility."

Swedes already pay the highest taxes in the European Union. For several decades, Sweden's socialist social engineers have done their level best to demolish the patriarchal family, creating in its stead a thoroughly feminized womb-to-tomb social welfare state. But this isn't enough, according to Schyman and her comrades. In a 2002 speech, Schyman insisted that sex discrimination in Sweden follows "the same pattern" as that practiced by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. This despite the fact that a cursory review of Sweden's emancipated social mores would confirm that the nation's women are in no peril of being compelled to swaddle themselves in burkhas.