It’s Christmas time so, if you follow European politics, it’s Greece time. Greece invented the republic as a form of governing communities, and a form of protecting them from their own inherent follies. And now, Greece has reinvented progressive politics (SYRIZA). 
Today, progressive politics stand for denying a bankrupt government the ability to take out huge new loans. In the European Union, they stand for ending the harsh austerity measures that the EU imposed on Greece after its economic collapse, and which have created living impossible on most Greeks:
To use a euphemism perhaps more appropriate for American politics, progressive politics are similar to a friend denying his alcoholic friend the ability to drink spiked eggnog at Christmas time.
I know. It sounds paternalistic. As if you, the alcoholic of the story, cannot make up your own mind. Who needs a carrying mother, father or friend? Not an alcoholic adult.
By asserting the freedom of lack of judgment, and refusing to end neo-liberal rules, Greece and the rest of the world, with very few exceptions, ended up in extreme debt. Or, using a Goethian metaphor, a few banks and less than 1% of 1% of the globe’s population – Mr. Scalia, we did include corporations, too, in this equation, owns the rest of us. Okay. China owns us, we hear. But it is the Chinese banks that do, not the many millions of Chinese farmers, so the metaphor remains.
This brings me to the end of my Christmas carol:
Let’s stop going nowhere.
Let’s choose to go to a better future.
Let’s build that future with us in mind rather than banks and their shareholders.
For the musical version, see Johnny Cash, “Children, go where I send thee”!
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POLITICAL MORES
Children, Let’s All Go with SYRIZA this Christmas!
Right, put the banks out of business and then, where are we going to get the free pens and hard candy?