DISQUS

Will Wilkinson: More Danish Freedom

  • conchis · 9 months ago
    Original source here: http://www.henleyglobal.com/citizenship/visa-re.... The US is beaten out by Finland, Ireland and Portugal as well.
  • david · 9 months ago
    Why is Malaysia so high?
  • T Man · 9 months ago
    Although I’m not one of those militaristic kinds of guy, I gotta say Danes don’t speak German thanks to the USA. I really don’t know how to include that in your freedom-calculation but it’s easy to be a peace-loving world-traveling Dane when some other country will come to your rescue and pick up the defense bill. I wonder how many countries in that list Danes would be able to visit if they had to buy more guns and develop an atomic bomb.
  • T2 · 9 months ago
    ...and from a bunch of wars in the 17th century, the Danes are pretty lucky they are not speaking Swedish, what's your point?

    You're arguing that Denmark's occupation during the Second World War should be incorporated somehow into this list? Wouldn't Russia's role in WWII move it to the top of the list, then? Hitler's desire was for there to only be a few empires that ruled the world, Italian, Japanese, but also American and British after they were defeated and replaced with Fascist-friendly regimes. As the amount of countries would be greatly reduced, this would shrink everybody's number.
  • WJ · 9 months ago
    I'm curious, since it is 157 to 155, which two countries do Americans need a visa that the Danes don't (assuming perfect overlap)?
  • PJ · 9 months ago
    Brazil is one.

    (Brazil doesn't require a visa for Swedish tourists either. And Sweden and the US both got 155, so there's at least one country that allow Americans but not Swedes, not sure if that country would require Visas from Danes though So there probably isn't a perfect overlap. )
  • Carsten · 9 months ago
    And the interesting part is that Brazil have a policy of reciprocal visas. Because they are annoyed the US requies visas for Brazilians they do so for Americans. If the US wants to get to the top of the list, some paranoid homeland security legislation has to change. Somehow I doubt it will.

    A Dane
  • Someone · 7 months ago
    Hi, WJ,

    The two countries for which Danes need no visa are Niger and Vietnam. They don't need a visa for Brazil either, but they need a visa for Mongolia and Equatorial Guinea (ProjectVisa.com says only US citizens can travel visa-free to this African country), so it is not a perfect overlap.
  • John Thacker · 9 months ago
    And Canada is only 154, so presumably Will's praise for Canada must now be reversed and it'd be nice if Canadians were as free as Americans. (What countries have an agreement with the USA but not Canada, I wonder.)

    Seriously, this isn't a huge difference, though of course I'd prefer to be freer.

    Would be interesting to see the reverse list; from how many countries does a country allow visa-free entry. Tourist-friendly countries like Thailand would lead, I think.
  • odograph · 9 months ago
    T Man, why do you think there are so many Danish words in your English?
  • webgrrl · 9 months ago
    Weren't the Angles Danes? I mean, don't we have to be honest and say English is just bad Danish corrupted by French with a frosting of Greek to look more educated?
  • Daniel · 9 months ago
    webgrrl:

    I assume your joking around. This is going to sound so pedantic.

    Personally I would call English a marvellously thick Dano-Anglo-Celtic decorated with rich burgundy drapings of Latin French, peppered with, yes, Greek, and more foreign borrowings than any other language.

    Or, you know, a corrupted, bad, language trying to look more educated. Either way. ;-)
  • bob · 9 months ago
    "Although I’m not one of those militaristic kinds of guy,"

    no, you're not. you're just one of those idiotistic kinds of guys.
  • todd · 9 months ago
    no reason to turn this blog into a linguistics forum, but english is a germanic language, which comes from middle english, which comes from old english, which comes from a proto-german language group. english, qualitatively, is most closely related to dutch among modern languages. the vocabulary of the romance languages (latin, french, et al....) came hundreds of years after old english was established, mostly after 1066.

    danish, like all scandinavian languages is also a germanic language.
  • T Man · 9 months ago
    I'm just trying to follow Will's argument to its logical conclusion. If the US were to become more like Denmark and spend a little bit over 1% of GDP on defense, it seems to me that the global freedom to travel would be much limited.
  • Carsten · 9 months ago
    T Man,

    The Cold war ended in 1989.

    Im a Dane. Do you have any idea which country in the world has suffered most casualties per capita in Afghanistan. You get one guess. Now go to Helmand and shut up.
  • Carsten · 9 months ago
    And the idea that the globe has free travel because of US military spending occurs to me as weird, or at least about 20 years outdated.

    When will Americans ever understand that it is not the size of your gun, but the moral persuasion of your ideas which matter?
  • mrputter · 9 months ago
    > What countries have an agreement with the USA but not Canada, I wonder.

    Well, the Federated States of Micronesia, for one.
    http://www.fsmembassydc.org/visa.htm
  • mrputter · 9 months ago
    > the Federated States of

    Bah. Nevermind, I totally misunderstood that page.
  • Cordelia · 9 months ago
    T Man - Get your history right! The second world war in Europe was fought primarily by the UK and USSR. The US got in when half the war was already over. Not to save innocent Danes, but because it was upset that it's harbour in Hawaii had been attacked... Nobody in Denmark considers the US to be its saviour. Apart from that particular decade, relations between Germany and Denmark are great.
    Danes already speak good German as a second language..

    I am neither Danish, nor German, just a European who got taught the facts rather than the glofiied pro-US version of history!
  • Joe R. · 9 months ago
    I'm less bothered by the fact that I need a visa for a few countries (which usually involves an application and a fee) than I am by the fact there are certain countries that I cannot visit at all. Near-total bans seem to be an American specialty.
  • goabroad · 8 months ago
    very informative post, thanks for sharing
  • Someone · 7 months ago
    Hi, WJ,

    The two countries for which Danes need no visa are Niger and Vietnam. Swedes don't need a visa for Vietnam either.

    But, US citizens can travel visa-free to Mongolia and, according to ProjectVisa.com, they are the only foreigners who can travel visa-free to Equatorial Guinea.

    Like US citizens, Germans (I am one) can travel visa-free to 155 countries, including Brazil, for which US citizens need a visa.