Think-Tank Thoughts

I was reading an article in a major Swedish newspaper the other day. The author was affiliated with a conservative christian think-tank. That made me think. If think-tanks are designed to be places where people can evolve and formulate their ideas in new and exciting ways: how can they be sure that they end up with an end result that is in keeping with their ideological label? Put differently: (for instance) how can a liberal think-tank promise (beforehand) that their sollution to the question is in fact a liberal one?

That's when it hit me: Isn't that exactly what has happened with liberalism in general, and Swedish political liberalism in particular? People have been asked to find liberal sollutions to questions. Then, when the answer comes back from the think-tank it's automatically ideology-approved because of its origin from "within" the own circles. Never mind that the answer has nothing to do with liberalism in a classical sense of the word.

This is typical for the Liberal People's Party in Sweden (Folkpartiet Liberalerna). They have a political program that is extremely difficult to relate to liberalism. During the election-campaign in Sweden I asked many people working for LPP to clarify the connection between their party stance today and liberalism as ideology. All of them failed miserably.

Surely there must be a think-tank out there that is to blame.