Democracy Being a Free Good Endangers its Existence

By Con George-Kotzabasis 

Breathing democratic freedom is neither easy nor free; it entails both rights and obligations and most importantly knowledge of current fundamental issues. But in most democracies their constituents tend to uphold and demand more their rights than their obligations, and more deplorably, a sizable number of them exercise their rights in a state of ignorance. This imbalance, however, between rights and obligations, as well as lack of knowledge of the real issues, puts in jeopardy the functioning of a politically just and economically productive democracy, and indeed endangers its existence as a form of government.

Moreover, it makes its voters who are uninformed of the points at issue captive to populist slogans and to that everlasting traducer of democracy, identified by Aristotle, demagogy, that appeals to the hopes and fears of the electors and by propagandistic lies and false promises opens the doors of power to demagogues. This is exemplified by two recent political events in our times: Alexis Tsipras and his party of Syriza winning the elections in Greece on a wave of populism and unprecedented lies and false promises in the political history of the country, and of the plebiscite of the UK, whose two leaders of Brexit, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, with a farrago of lies and dire fictions were able to hoodwink a major part of the populace to vote for the exit of Britain from the European Union. On a smaller scale this also has happened in the Australian elections, when the Labor Party by its scare campaign that the Liberal Coalition would privatize Medicare, succeeded in convincing a large part of the electorate of this fictitious threat with the result of Liberals losing so many seats that brought the country on the edge of a hang parliament.

How can one remedy the weaknesses of democracy and protect its constituents from becoming victims to populism and to demagogy with catastrophic results to the well-being of society and to its continued economic prosperity? Some people believe that the answer lies in bringing cultural and ethical changes among the people that would make them immune to this toxic virus of populist-demagogy; and thus leading gradually to the cashiering and inexorable dismissal of all demagogic and populist leaders from the domain of politics. The difficulty and danger of such a solution however is that cultural change is a slow process and during its gestation and vicissitudes in a long run may in the meantime unhinge democracy from its door of freedom, by the actions of feckless, inept, and irresponsible politicians, and incarcerate it within the dungeon of dictatorship. A safer and faster solution would be to enact radical changes to the electoral voting system by suspending in certain circumstances temporarily parts of the electorate from voting.

On what principle could one suggest such an unequal voting system that would discriminate so deliberately between social groups in the ambience of democracy, and which group would be the unequal part in the democratic process? The guiding principle of the first part of the question must explicitly aim to the continued viability and stability of a democratic system, in the context of which, the economic well-being of society depends and guarantees the further expansion of wealth that renders to the people a wide choice where to employ their talents and skills that would push their living standard onto higher plateaus and make their lives congenial to their desires. The second part, i.e., the social group that would be unequally treated, would be identified as that part that depends on welfare for its living and as a ‘debtor’ client of the government easily succumbs to populist slogans and rabble rousing; also, due to its low educational level and lack of interest in important matters, it deprives it from having adequate knowledge of the issues involved and hence is completely unqualified to make a sober judgment on these issues. It is mainly this social group that brings to power demagogues and millenarian ideologues that imperil the stability of the polity and its economic system. And, indeed, ironically pits this same social group into absolute poverty, and in turn destabilizes democracy itself, as it has happened with the political rise of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela; where its people after a contrived false prosperity are presently hunting dogs and cats to feed themselves. The same has happened with the Marxist Alexis Tsipras in Greece, where the pauperization of many of its ordinary people is exacerbated every day and has reached unprecedented high levels under his totally inept, ideologically barren and irresponsible government.

The enactment of this radical legislation would specifically suspend from the right to vote any person who had been on social welfare or unemployed for more than a year, and only with his/her ceasing on being on welfare or unemployed his/her right to vote would be restored. Such legislation would not only strengthen and secure the viability of democracy and the prosperity of its economic system, but would also deprive populist demagogues and political parties of a constituency upon whose existence they depend. Moreover, it would substantially reduce the spending of the welfare state and make it less precarious to the fiscal policy of the state and hence to the well-being of the country. This radical enactment takes a leaf from the cradle of democracy in classical Greece, Athenian democracy. The latter disenfranchised and suspended from voting citizens who had failed to pay a debt to the polis. Likewise, in a modern democracy people who were in debt for their living to the government, that is on welfare, would be suspended from casting a vote.

Needless to say, such a radical proposal, to occur in the ambit of the 'spoils' of the welfare state that has spoiled at least two generations of people by our carefree and stand at ease democracy, will not be easy to implement as it will rouse all the wrath and opposition of the ‘progressive’ bien pensants and the ‘good fellows’ of the dole. It will require extraordinarily strong and sagacious political leadership that will unite parliamentary opposition parties into a gigantic wave that relentlessly will sweep away this ‘progressivist’ praetorian guard of the human rights, without responsibilities, of the dole takers, and throw this defiance of the sanctimonious goody-goodies into the dust bin of history.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now

Syriza: Merrymaking While in Opposition Follymaking While in Government

America celebrates The Fourth of July as the day of independence of a great nation; Greece remembers The Fifth of July as the day of ignominy and gross stupidity of an abject nation, fallen from its former illustrious and glorious history, that voted “No” in the referendum and thus opened the door to the exit of Greece from the European Union and its entrance to the drachma.

By Con George-Kotzabasis—July 07, 2015

On last Sunday’s Referendum on The Fifth of July, sixty-one percent of politically and economically illiterate, not to say ignorant, Greeks, voted a “proud” and “dignified” “No” to the EuroGroup’s proposals, thus putting a noose around the neck of the nation, and celebrated this victory by dancing frenetically and entranced in Syntagma Square Zorba dances as if by putting a noose around someone’s neck was a festive occasion. And they did this in the background of closed banks, pensioners mass queuing to get a small part of their pensions, depositors unable to get a preferential amount of cash from their accounts, businesses unable to make transit payments on the exchange of goods and services, tourism, the major export of Greece, decimated by tourist cancellations. All this therefore leading to a free fall of the economy with the prospect of leading the latter to a catastrophic end with innumerable business enterprises closing, the present level of unemployment rising from 1.5 million to three-to-four million, engendering shortages of food and medicines, and with the ghost of the returning drachma--and thus absolute poverty of the country--looming over the head of Greece. Not since the launching of the Sicilian Expedition in 415 B.C. by the fatal decision of the Athenian General Assembly, that according to the great historian Thucydides was the stupidest decision ever taken and which was the cause of the ignominious and irretrievably annihilating defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, has a democracy, as has been shown in last Sunday’s referendum, taken such a ludicrously irrational and fatuous decision on such a crucial question as whether the country should stay within the European Union or not.

Syriza while in Opposition in a crescendo of populism, ‘caressing’ promises, and purported macho stand against the Troika whose Memorandum of austerity, which according to the emotional fulminations of Syriza was humiliating and offending the pride and dignity of Greeks and leading to no end to the economic crisis, promised to the Greek people that by negotiating implacably and strongly with its European partners it would extract an economically better and dignified deal from the latter that would lead the country out of the crisis.

Of course all this merrymaking of Syriza was vacuous and wishful thinking, topped by a mountain of shameful lies, and never had a chance of being realized; it was never grounded on pragmatism and was bound to crash, like a house of cards, at the first touch with reality. The Greek people, however, irate and disgusted with the austerity measures of the Samaras government, but oblivious of the fact that these necessary measures were pulling the country out of the crisis, as stated by serious economic analysts world-wide, ratings institutions such as Standard & Poor’s, and Moody’s, as well as top-of-the-branch European politicians, were enraptured with the demagogy of Alexis Tsipras and became prone and willing to take a ride on the carousel of merrymaking provided by Syriza, that made by a magic wand hard things easy. Hence, on the 25th of January they elected the hardline left of Syriza in government.

Once in power Syriza revealed the inner lineaments of its nature and politics. It was a mixture of political immaturity, administrative incompetence, and hardline leftist ideology. A dangerous cocktail for anyone to hold in one’s hand at any time, especially when one steers among rocks the ship of state. This was illustrated by its two major players, Alexis Tsipras, and Yanis Varoufakis, respectively as prime and finance minister, who both of them, unlike God Who dares not to play dice, to paraphrase Einstein, gambled the fortune of the country in one throw of the dice and lost, as events showed down the track. But the hoodwinked politically innocent people along with the nipple-fed intellectuals aka “useful idiots,” to quote Lenin, still continued to throng as guests the merry party of Syriza in government and still believed the fairy tales of these two political spivs, Tsipras and Varoufakis, that by the strong stand of the Greek negotiators they would force their European counterparts to give in and provide Greece the tailor made program that was sewed up by these two spivs. The Europeans, of course, in their professionalism, would never accept the economically irrational and hare-brained demands of the Greek finance minister Varoufakis. Instead, they compelled the government, on the 20th of February, to sign and pledge itself to the implementation of the second Memorandum extant but which the government shilly shallied and refused to implement thus losing all trust and credibility in the eyes of the Europeans.

This is why the result of the Referendum has no impact in the thinking of the leaders of the European Union as they have lost all trust and have no confidence in the Tsipras government. On the contrary, as already seems likely, they will impose the most severe measures in the third coming Memorandum as an ironclad condition of Greece remaining in the Eurozone. Thus the trumpeted argument of the Tsipras government and its ministers that a “No” vote in the referendum would be a strong negotiating weapon, proved to be a paper sword in the hands of Tsipras, as is currently shown in his negotiations with his counterparts in the European Union.

The comedy of the rise of Syriza by the Aristophanean basket into the clouds of an ideal government is rapidly turning into an Aeschylean tragedy. The same audience that will joyfully be clapping the Aristophanean comedy will sorrowfully wailing and crying when it will be staged as an Aeschylean tragedy. Pride riding high always precedes the inevitable falling.

I rest on my oars: your turn now

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The Breaking up of European Union a Blessing in Disguise

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The legal order rests on a decision not on a norm…The exception could not be subsumed under legal concepts and all order was based on the sovereign’s decision. Norms only applied in a normal situation. Carl Schmitt

The ancient Greeks had an aphorism: uthen kakon amiyes kalon, there is nothing bad without some good in it. The possible breaking up of the European Union (EU), its Balkanization, in the aftermath of its ominous economic crisis and the questionable future existence of its common currency, the euro, may be a blessing in disguise: it might bring in its wake the ‘defeat’ of its implacable internal enemy who in the form of a Trojan horse is threatening Europe not only with suicide bombers but also, most portentously, with Islamization.

The economic historian Niall Ferguson cogently argues that “the sovereign debt crisis that is unfolding…is a fiscal crisis of the western world.” Banks and financial institutions are exposed to the sovereign-debt of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain and to a cascade of government deficits, 14.3 per cent of GDP in Ireland, 12.6 per cent in the UK, 11.2 per cent in Spain, and 9.4 per cent in Portugal, respectively. And all this ill-advised government spending in the past is punching the euro against the ropes. Moreover, concern about the solvency of European nations could lead to an implosion of the euro. And the EU indebtedness could be similar to the sub prime mortgage crisis of the U.S. that almost led to the financial collapse of the latter. Also, the two speed economies on the belt ways of Europe have contracted employment in Greece and Spain while increasing it in France and Germany. European governments therefore are seeking different solutions to this problematic economic crisis that is gravely threatening the downgrading of their peoples standard of living and their general well being.

Germany, the powerhouse of the EU, is seeking a “deeper political and economic integration,” in its enamored quest to build a European super state. But Great Britain—which never abandoned its own national currency, the pound sterling—will vehemently oppose the transfer of any new fiscal powers to the inamorata of Germany, the EU headquarters in Brussels. That alone could trigger a severe split within the EU encouraging other countries to revert to national currencies than give up even more sovereignty to the Brussels bureaucracy. In Italy, Berlusconi’s anti-European coalition partners are considering a contingency plan to pull out of the Euro zone and re-establish their own currency, the lira. “Nor would it be a real solution for the EU to amend its basic treaties to create a permanent stabilization mechanism for sovereign-debt crisis. It would be a self-fulfilling prophesy, virtually guaranteeing that it will be used repeatedly,” to quote John Bolton, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. The economic imbalances within Europe have become too great, particularly regarding productivity differences. In order to correct them, including the scourge of over-indebtedness, some countries would need to devalue their own currencies.

But such solution is not available for countries that substituted their own currency with the euro; therefore these countries will be overcast by the bleak clouds of economic austerity imposed by the savants of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the only feasible solution to drag these countries out of their economic woes. But as we have seen in Greece, Ireland, and Spain these clouds will bring a torrent fraught with danger, demonstrations that will not only exacerbate the economic crisis but will also foster political instability that could seriously fracture the democratic structure of these countries and bring to the political proscenium of Europe ‘uber-nationalist’ authoritarian governments. And paradoxically, the democratic ethos of the demonstrators that led them to the streets to defend their living standards and freedom from the embrace of the gaunt figure of austerity could give birth to the unwanted child of authoritarian government. European cosmopolitanism or rather multiculturalism will be forcefully replaced with virulent nationalism, since this is the corollary, and indeed the unconscious desire, of the mass demonstrations and the unseen force that could change dramatically the political landscape of Europe.

The first incipient signs of such change on the political configuration of Europe are already becoming visible. In France, President Sarkozy is forcefully expelling the gypsies and is calling Muslim prayers “in the street unacceptable,” following his predecessor Chirac who banned the burka from public places; while support for Marine Le Pen of the National Front has risen to 33 per cent in recent weeks reflecting a trend all over Europe of anti-migrant sentiments and economic fears. In Germany, Chancellor Merkel has called multiculturalism kaput, and politicians of the right are calling for a stop to migration particularly from Muslim countries. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi is sharing power with the anti-migrant Northern League. And in the Netherlands, anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders popularity is sky rocketing and whichever parties end up in government will have no choice but to adapt their policies to those of Wilders or risk losing voters.


The Danger of Europe’s Islamization

All the above indicates that the European masses under the economic pressure of the fiscal crisis are circling the wagons not only to defend their standard of living but also their national heritage from the incursions of intransigent Muslim migrants to change the culture and mores of their countries. And it is not the first time in history that an economic calamity has given birth to extreme nationalism. What is unique in the present situation in Europe is that it is actually threatened both economically and nationally by a twin menace of austerity and sharia law. So there is no need of contriving an imaginary enemy, a scapegoat, as the Nazis did with the Jews. Thus, the economic doldrums have a great potential to give rise to the drum beats of belligerence against European Muslims who will be seen more and more as the internal implacable enemy, especially when its holy warriors in the wild chase of the seventy-two virgins will continue their serial murdering activity of detonating bombs in the cities of the Western ‘infidel’ world.

That this Muslim inundation of Europe is empirically-grounded and not fictional is exemplified by the demographics of individual countries of the European continent. In Germany, Britain, Greece, and Switzerland 5 per cent of their population are Muslim; in Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and in Sweden, is 10 per cent; in Denmark, Luxemburg, Norway, Serbia, Slovenia, and Spain, is 4 per cent; and in Italy, 2 per cent. With a Muslim birthrate that is almost thrice as large as that of indigenous Europeans and with a total number of Muslims in the European Union in 2007 of 16 million, it is estimated that by 2015 this number will double.

This is the ‘unassimilated bomb’ that harebrained and un- imaginative politicians by their past immigration policies have planted under the foundations of European culture and civilization that cannot and will not be defused presently by conventional political nostrums contrived by ordinary politicians. (Only Enoch Powel, the British politician par excellence, had the insight to cast his eloquent thunderbolts many years ago against governments that had espoused these totally wrong policies of immigration and would predict Cassandra like, as he did in his “rivers of blood” speech in 1968, the consequences of these fallacious policies.) The call is for extraordinary nationalist politicians of the caliber of Bismarck and Cavour to tap this coming nationalist fervor of Europeans and unite it against the internal Muslim foe.

There are no easy solutions to the problem as most European Muslims are citizens of the countries they are living in. It cannot be solved, because of the economic crisis, by monetary blandishments, i.e., by paying Muslim families a sum of money to return permanently to the countries of their origin. Nor can it be solved by legislative measures of expulsion under the present respective Democratic constitutions of European countries since Muslims are citizens of the latter and Democratic nations cannot expel their own citizens. It can be partially resolved by a stringent legislative enactment that applies to the social security payments of families; by restricting child endowment remittances up to the limit of four children and hence bring the birthrate of Muslims to that of indigenous Europeans. Families or ‘apparently’ single mothers who break that limit will lose their right to claim remuneration for children above that number. I say ‘apparently’, guardedly, because many Muslim men who are polygamous are using fraudulently the ‘single mother’ as a technique to enlarge their social security payments. Such enactment will be a levy on polygamy and will affect mainly Muslims who use a religious precept to ‘pickpocket’ the pockets of taxpayers. Thus, European governments by putting a hefty ‘price tag’ on cum while not resolving the problem they might lessen it.


The Necessity of Hard Policies to Prevent Europe’s Islamization

It must be obvious to all governments with welfare services by now, especially Europe’s, that Muslim migrants who comprise a major part of the unemployed of their countries and are economically and socially dependent on welfare payments deliberately employ child bearing as a means to increase the amount of money they receive from the public treasury. Thus child bearing has become for them a ‘surrogate’ for real employment and an income by other means. In such a situation government policies that seek to get people off welfare dependency are bound to fail since the incentive of finding employment and increasing their income has become inutile as already the ‘lucrative production’ of babies has already fulfilled this goal of higher income for the unemployed Muslims. Hence, the first generation of Muslim migrants have accomplished by Allah’s will to live in relative comfort in comparison to their original domicile not by the sweat of labor but by the sweat of the seraglio. No wonder that Muslims feel superior as a result of their religion toward kafirs since they were able to transfigure the European infidels into milking cows, whose hard work and taxes keep many Muslims off the production lines and ‘on’ their kept Muslimas.

European governments perforce have to put an end to this ‘stipend of Allah’ for libidinous and profligate procreation that is given to Muslims, which not only disincentivizes them from finding employment, but also holds them back from assimilating into their new habitat and to European mores. Governments therefore have to place the Muslim birthrate onto a Procrustean bed and cut it to the size and contemporary norm of Europe’s native population. Moreover they have to suspend permanently all government grants for the building and maintenance of Mosques and Islamic schools unless the latter have a clear and absolute secular curriculum for their pupils. They also have to make illegal forced marriages and make it a criminal act for parents who carry it out and hence thwart this imported primitive and barbaric practice of honor killing in civilized Europe. Also, they have to banish the wearing of the burka and the hijab in all public places which not only discriminate between the chastity of European and Muslim women, as the symbolic value of wearing them is that Muslim women are purportedly sexually purer than indigenous European women, but which also could be used as a cover by suicide bombers in their murderous attacks on European cities. Lastly, and this doesn’t exclude other measures, Muslims who are citizens of European nations would forfeit their citizenship if they hold dual citizenship or if they were involved even lightly, either in deed or ideologically, in promoting and funding jihad against the ‘infidels’, and which in effect in both cases would make them liable for deportation.

The above harsh measures will make a lot of Muslims most unhappy to continue living in European countries since they will feel rejected and unwelcome by the majority of the respective populations of those countries, and by being no longer able to practice some of their reverent traditions and ideological beliefs, these two factors might induce some of them to repatriate back to their own countries. However, the implementation of these harsh policies will entail a radical transformation of the ‘praxiology’ of European governments and a new ‘virtu’, to use Machiavelli’s term, for their politicians. In such critical conditions of jus vitae ac necis, a verdict on life and death for Europe, politicians in power will have to govern by the rules of Carl Schmitt’s “state of exception.” They will have to rule by decision based on the desires of the majority of the electorate that will be explicitly expressed through a plebiscite. It will thus be government by plebiscite and rule by decree exercised by authoritarian regimes. In such an emergency state inevitably certain venerable democratic principles will be suspended, as it happened in the American Civil War when President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. And as Carl Schmitt impeccably argued, “Every norm presupposes a normal situation, and no norm can be entirely valid in an abnormal situation.” And for internal peace the state “is compelled in critical situations to decide also upon the domestic enemy.” These most wise quotes encapsulate the tragic events that issued from the disintegration of the Weimar Republic when its mediocre and timorous politicians refused to take the harsh measures that could have saved it. And it would be most imprudent for contemporary European politicians who face a formidable, duplicitous, faceless internal and external enemy not to become wise by the dangers suffered by others, to paraphrase Niccolo Machiavelli.

Thus the denouement of the economic crisis in the European Union threatening it with dismemberment may give rise to a savior who will salvage it from its ultimate catastrophe, the Islamization of Europe.

I rest on my oars: your turn now