The Greek Government is breaking out in violence and disaster.
The tragedy of a nation that pays people to do nothing is paying dearly for conning the citizenry with the empty notion that sloth suffices.
Retiring at 45, receive pensions for the remainder of one's day, cheating on taxes, bribing bureaucrats — financial fraud pushed to the extreme has doomed this Mediterranean nation.
How many more bailouts are the other Eurozone countries willing to subsidize? The looming correction in Greece must occur, no matter what the consequences. There is no prolonging this agony.
I cannot think of a more ironic trope than the following printed in a recent article in the LA Times:
"It is unfair for a country that gave birth to European civilization to go bankrupt and to be left alone in isolation."
To think that the Hellenes of today are the descendants of the philosophers and epic men of war of yesteryear is laughable. Pericles inducted Athens into a Golden Age of Prosperity. Sparta commanded immense respect for the war machine that threatened member city states throughout the Aegean and helped fend off the invading Persians at Thermopoli. The Greeks of today have chosen sloth, slovenliness, and short-term solutions.
Socrates eventually drank the Hemlock. Oedipus eventually took his own life. Antigone buried his brothers, and Creon eventually executed her ethical disobedience for familial obeisance. If the Greeks of today wish to retain a kinship with the artisans and politicians of antiquity, they must invoke the arete (virtue) of the past and own up to the harmartia (fatal flaw) of their profligate ways.