Sweden!

See -- and I know this speaks poorly for my taste, in so many ways -- but the thing is, I have a fondness for Ikea. I like the stores, I like the prices, I like the funny names, I like the bins of impulse-buy doodads, and over and above everything else I like the clean, light, simple, happy Swedishness of it all (this is the non-Bergman Sweden, of course).

So anyway. I have a friend with whom I can still argue politics. He's left-wing and I'm right -- wing, that is -- but I at least learn a lot from these discussions (they're not always debates). On rare occasions, though, I can make an anti-welfare state point that gives him pause, as of course he does for me re:anti-capitalism. In his pauses, however, he's gotten into a habit of quickly filling them with a one-word comeback: "Sweden". After that, we usually just change the subject.

But, I finally have something like a response:

From Hit & Run, via Instapundit