Lessons for Greece

Illegal migrants have made some neighbourhoods in Greek cities dangerous places to be.

Meanwhile, Papandreou calls himself and his party “socialist” but his Greek and foreign allies are millionaires. In this as well as other deceptions, Papandreou mirrors Obama: saying and doing different things.

But the worst thing about Papandreou is that his government is building a future that is almost hostile to Greece: undermining education, democracy, the territorial integrity of the country, and national defence.

Americans and Greeks are unlikely to get rid of corrupt politicians any time soon. Their only effective antidote to the corporate class is democracy, the more, the better.

Greece has several parties but, like America, only two of those parties take turns in governing the country. This is unacceptable.

With the exception of the tiny Ecological party, Greek parties peddle foreign ideas and interests. They are a legacy of the French, British and Russian parties foreigners imposed on Greece after the country’s Independence in 1828. The post-World War II division of Greece into communist and capitalist has further intensified foreign influence in Greek politics.

Greeks need to look after their national interests: invigorate tourism with the country’s glorious classical heritage; teach Greek students ancient Greek and Latin in both elementary and high school; spread public libraries all over the country; put people to work by having them do at home most of the things they need, including the manufacture of ships, cars, and weapons; rebuild the universities to high standards of excellence; revitalise the countryside with small family agriculture; abolish monasteries; tax the church and the rich and strengthen national defence.

The Greeks no longer need political parties with their toxic baggage. They need only look back at their history and borrow their ancestors’ direct democracy for lessons on governing their country.

As for America, the monopoly of the two parties and the imperial presidency fighting perpetual petroleum wars is a recipe for disaster. They have been emasculating democracy and replacing it with a corporate-government-academic agency - what president Dwight Eisenhower called the industrial-military complex - that resembles an incipient police state without the storm troopers.

America needs an adequate defence force but not hundreds of military bases all over the world, mercenary armies, a gulag archipelago of secret prisons and torture, and a defence budget that is larger than that of the military budget for the rest of the world combined. This is where systematic corruption and danger come from. America must abandon its empire and return to its democratic traditions. Empire and democracy don’t mix.

Unless Americans move their country back to democratic armed forces and democratic and just economy, the imperial presidency and corporations, including “too large to fail” banks, will take a hold of the country for good.

Unfortunately, the victory of Republicans in the midterm elections brings the country another step closer to tyranny. Both Obama and the Democrats must fight this danger openly by embracing democracy: end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; break corporate power; start manufacturing most things at home; and put the unemployed to work.