Alexis Tsipras

Source: Shutterstock

But in any case I did not start this article with the intention of revealing my version of the Dawes plan. (Dawes was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his plan to resolve the problem of German war reparations before his plan had had time to fail, which it did soon afterward.) My intention instead was to point out how in our political systems, minorities can pose as, and be taken for, majorities, while the leaders of those minorities comport themselves as if they were endowed with the divine right of kings to rule as they see fit just because they received more votes than anyone else. And this is in turn possible first because the state has now become so preponderant in our lives, and second because those who are duly elected according to the constitution have very little interior sense of personal limitation which might induce either caution or prudence. Their countries become their playthings, at least in their own opinion; blank sheets of paper on which, in the horrible words of Mao Tse-tung, the most beautiful characters may be drawn. The average head of a modern democratic government is more absolute in many ways than a mere Sun King sitting in Versailles.  

I don”€™t suppose that Mr. Tsipras is any worse in this respect than other members of the European political class, except insofar as he is younger, and the young are more inclined to believe their own fantasies than the old. The arrogance of the old is cynical, that of the young intellectual. And personally I had rather be ruled by a Talleyrand than by a professor, especially of economics. 

Mr. Tsipras”€™ speech after his election did not fill me with confidence. First he said that there were no winners or losers. In his very next sentence he then said that the oligarchs had been defeated. These two statements seem to me to be contradictory. How are we to resolve this contradiction? I think in one of three ways. First, it was a slip of the tongue such as we all sometimes make. Second, it was a symptom of lack of intellectual power, an inability to see the contradiction. Or, third, there was a group of people who in Mr. Tsipras”€™ mind could be relegated to the status of nonpersons. I cannot say which of these three it was; but it is possible that in the not-distant future in Greece, and perhaps elsewhere in Europe, the class of nonpersons will expand dramatically. Let us hope that this will not come to pass.