Europe’s New Fascists

Populism takes an ominous turn

By Niall Ferguson

It can be a mistake to laugh at fascists. Charlie Chaplin mocked Hitler and Mussolini in The Great Dictator. P.G. Wodehouse had fun with his preposterous parody of Oswald Mosley, Roderick Spode. But Nazism turned out to be no joke. Today Chaplin’s film, for all his comic genius, is embarrassing to watch, while Wodehouse lived to regret his complacency about what was brewing in Berlin.

So when a party called “Golden Dawn”—which has something that looks a lot like a swastika as its logo— starts denying aspects of the Holocaust and heaping opprobrium on immigrants, it’s best to keep a straight face. Sure, they’re Greeks, not Germans. Sure, their party leader, Nikolaos G. Michaloliakos, is about as -charismatic as a barrel of rotten olives. But if elections were held tomorrow, these guys could become the third-largest party in the Greek Parliament.

The Greeks are the extreme case. But maybe that’s only because economically they are the extreme case. This year the Greek economy is forecast to contract by 7 percent. Unemployment is at 23 percent and youth unemployment a mind-blowing 54 percent. Under these circumstances, it would be rather remarkable if people were patiently sticking to the mainstream parties of the center-left and center-right.

Populism is the standard political response to financial crisis. In America we have seen two different variants—the right-wing populism of the Tea Party and the left-wing populism of the Occupy movement. But European populism takes more toxic forms.

The Fat Greek Ohio State University

Administrative bloat at Ohio State, where the ratio of full-time non-instructional staff to full-time faculty is more than 6-to-1

By mark perry

The president of Ohio State University, E. Gordon Gee, has come under fire recently for spending $7.7 million to travel, entertain and maintain his 9,600 square foot mansion in recent years, in addition to collecting $8.6 million in salary and benefits since 2007.  Critics point to his excessive spending on $673,000 for artwork, Persian rugs, European antiques, and a $532 show curtain for his mansion.

But perhaps that criticism is based on a basic misunderstanding of President Gee’s job.  Most people probably assume that E. Gordon Gee is a college president in charge of an educational system staffed by full-time faculty who deliver educational services to students at Ohio State. But that’s not really accurate.  He’s actually in charge of a massive, non-instructional higher educational bureaucracy at Ohio State, where the ratio of full-time non-instructional staff to full-time faculty is more than 6-to-1 (see chart above, data here). He’s got more than 1,700 administrators who report to him, and an army of more 11,000 full-time “other professionals” who report to the 1,700 administrators.  With full-time enrollment of 48,000 students and 21,436 non-instructional full-time staff (once you include clerical and secretarial positions, skilled crafts, technical/professional, and service/maintenance) that’s a ratio of almost one full-time non-teaching employee for every two Ohio State students.

And to keep that educational bureaucracy functioning requires massive “resource-generation,” fundraising and taxpayer support to pay more than $1 billion every year in administrative salaries at Ohio State.  So maybe we should give President Gee some slack, and realize that he probably deserves millions of dollars in compensation, entertainment  and travel support because he’s got a big job – he’s got a top-heavy, multi-billion dollar educational bureaucracy to maintain and support.

Why the Euro is Destroying both Europe and Itself

Choosing freely among competing currencies is the best hope for a monetary regime that is both stable and sustainable

by George Selgin 

When the merits of a European Monetary Union were first being debated, many skeptics fell into one of two camps. The first camp consisted of “Keynesians” (for example, Eichengreen and Bayoumi 1997; Salvatore 1997) who, referring to the theory of optimal currencies areas, doubted that Europe constituted such an area, and believed that the proposed monetary union would eventually fall victim to country-specific (“idiosyncratic”) shocks: unemployment and other burdens stemming from such shocks would, these critics argued, eventually force the monetary authority to either abandon its commitment to price-level stability in order to offer relief to adversely-affected members, or cause the members to abandon the union so as to be able to re-align their exchange rates.

The other camp was comprised of “Hayekians” who, drawing upon theories of international currency competition, claimed that monetary unification, by reducing the extent of such competition, would give rise to a relatively high seignorage-maximizing Eurozone inflation rate, and thereby result in a level of actual Eurozone inflation that was bound to disappoint the monetary union’s more inflation-phobic members.[1] It was in light of such reasoning that British Prime Minister John Major made his alternative proposal for a parallel European currency—the so-called “hard ecu”— to supplement rather than supplant the British Pound and other established European currencies.

The dangers of sabre-rattling in Syria

The spread of the Syrian war to Turkey shows how lethal the internationalisation of conflicts can be

by Patrick Hayes 

Last week, the Syrian conflict entered a worrying new phase. Turkey engaged in cross-border fire with Syrian forces in retaliation for what appeared to be wayward Syrian army shells which killed five in the Turkish border town of Akcakale. This means an actual NATO member, and the nation with the most military clout in the region, is now being drawn into an increasingly messy civil war in Syria.

The UN Security Council president, Gert Rosenthal, ‘condemned in the strongest terms’ Syria’s shelling of Akcakale, and the ruling Assad regime in Syria has since apologised, stating it will not happen again. Even the head of the military council of the rebel forces in Syria, the Free Syrian Army, has not tried to exploit the situation, merely claiming that the shelling was likely a ‘grave mistake’. ‘It wasn’t intentional’, he was reported as saying, ‘[the Assad regime] didn’t want this’.

Yet last Thursday, Turkey’s parliament authorised further cross-border military action against Syria. Turkey has now exchanged fire for five consecutive days. Many on the international stage were similarly angry at the actions of Syrian forces. Rosenthal went as far as to demand, on behalf of the UN Security Council, that the ‘Syrian government… fully respect[s] the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbours’. This was a claim echoed in a statement by US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

‘Tolerance is the basis of all our freedoms’

In a free society, everyone, especially those we consider repugnant, must have the liberty to express their ideas

by Frank Furedi 

About three years ago, I was giving a lecture in Amsterdam. In the course of the lecture, I told the audience that if you believed in freedom, if you believed in freedom of speech, it meant that you should be able to say whatever you wanted and society did not have the right to censor the content of whatever it is you wanted to say.

An example I gave was the way that in many parts of Europe, Holocaust denial is deemed to be a crime. Even though a lot of my family perished in the Holocaust, I still feel it was totally wrong to suppress an idea bureaucratically. It is far better that it be debated, argued over and ultimately discredited. And at that point this guy gets up, puts up his hand, and says: ‘I’m really glad you said that Professor Furedi. I’m a Muslim and I too think it’s wrong that a Holocaust should be denied. The only thing I think should be censored is when someone like the prophet Muhammad is criticised or questioned. That should not be allowed.’

A week later, I was in Berlin on the same lecture tour, and a Jewish person got up to say almost the opposite: that it was perfectly okay to criticise the prophet Muhammad, but it was totally immoral that the Holocaust should be denied. And that’s really when I decided to write my book on the issue of tolerance. It became very clear to me that in many parts of Europe, tolerance basically meant tolerating the ideas that you agree with, but at the same time being intolerant of the ideas you disagree with. I thought it was important to explain why it is that European societies find it so difficult genuinely to be tolerant.

The World's Largest Money-Laundering Machine

The Federal Reserve

The Fed policy's first-order effect is to issue hundreds of billions in "free money" to banks; the second-order effect is to destroy the rule of law in the U.S.

by Charles Hugh Smith

Let's start with a few questions about the proper role of the Central State and Central Bank: why should they bail out private banks?The answer boils down to something like this: "If the private banks absorbed the losses that are rightly theirs in a capitalist system, they would implode. Since the State and Central Bank have enabled these private banks to infiltrate and dominate the nation's financial system, that system is now hostage to these private 'too big to fail' banks."

In other words, "capitalism" in America now means socializing losses and privatizing profits generated by State and Central Bank intervention. Imagine for a moment the "beauty" of this system for owners of private banks: in a truly socialized banking system, the taxpayers would absorb any losses, but the State would also benefit from any future bank-sector profits. In the U.S. system, the losses are socialized but the people draw no benefit; the profits flow to the top 1/10th of 1% private financiers.

This is the perfection of State-financier crony capitalism.

Let's next ask why the Central State and Central Bank should subsidize and bail out the mortgage industry, a major component of private banking. Once again we find losses are neatly distributed to the citizenry while the profits all flow to private hands. Given that 98% of all mortgages are backed or guaranteed by Federal agencies (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, FHA, VA, FmHA, etc.), the mortgage market is already completely socialized: the taxpayers are on the hook for any and all losses, but the profits from originating and servicing the loans are all private.

Meanwhile, 1 out of 6 FHA insured loans are are delinquent, and everyone who cares to examine the ledger knows the taxpayers will soon be bailing out FHA just as they did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

One Europe, Many Tribes

As Sicily is to Italy, so Greece is to the euro region as a whole

By Peter Coy 

Italy, unified in 1870, is newer than Nevada. Spain was split down the middle by a civil war as recently as the 1930s. And reunited Germany, dating back only to 1990, is younger than two of the Jonas Brothers. Just a reminder that, for all their claims to antiquity, many of the nations of Europe have been nations for only the briefest of times. For most of history they were rivalrous territories, kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and city-states. They were bound by language and culture—and riven by tribalism.

As Europe’s financial crisis drags on, the tribes have returned with a vengeance. It’s not just Greece vs. Germany. Today it’s Sicily vs. Lombardy, Berlin vs. Bavaria, Andalusia vs. Catalonia. Keep this in mind as optimists point to the successes of the campaign for “more Europe,” such as the European Central Bank’s agreement on Sept. 6 to support the bonds of hard-pressed countries that comply with deficit reduction agreements. Europe is boiling over with regional grievances. Money is the issue—who gives it and who gets it. The 1999 launch of the euro has forced an unwanted intimacy on Europeans in flagrant disregard for Robert Frost’s poetic dictum: “Good fences make good neighbors.” And the euro entices separatists to strike out on their own, figuring even small nations can survive if they share a currency. (Malta, a euro-zone nation, has fewer people than Dublin or Dresden.)

Defining Conservative Down

Today's parites are neither Jeffersonians nor Hamiltonians, but social democrats

By PAUL GOTTFRIED

In what for me illustrates the use of confusing labels, George Will recently complainedabout attacks of “cognitive dissonance” in trying to understand our political terms. Although Americans identify overwhelmingly as “conservatives,” many of them vote differently from the way they describe themselves. They lean theoretically toward Thomas Jefferson, who advocated very limited government, but vote like Hamiltonians, that is, like disciples of Alexander Hamilton, our first secretary of the Treasury, who favored a strong federal state. Will quotes his favorite “conservative” senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who noted a dramatic disconnect between how Americans think and how they vote. According to Moynihan, who usually gave his vote to the left despite his undeserved reputation as a man of the right, Americans are happy to violate their “conservative civil religion” as soon as they enter a voting booth.

Will’s observations about political labels are highly questionable. He stretches the term “conservative” so far that it means whatever he (and presumably the “conservative” press) wants it to mean. Judging by polls, the majority of Americans stand well to the left on social issues of where the American left and even the European far left used to be positioned. European Communist Parties well into the post-World War II era were strikingly traditional about gender roles, immigration, and gay rights — certainly in comparison to where most American voters currently stand. Our corporate income tax rates are the highest in developed world, and the percentage of our population that does not pay federal income tax seems to be higher than what one finds in most “progressive” European countries. And lest I forget, those who were ranting at the GOP convention about our duty to spread human rights globally did not sound even vaguely “conservative.” They seemed to be imitating the zealots of the French Revolution who sought to carry their “Rights of Man” at bayonet point to the entire human race. No one has ever explained to me how this radical revolutionary foreign policy is in any sense conservative.

Europe’s Richer Regions Want Out

Some taboo questions are coming out again

By STEVEN ERLANGER

CATALONIA may be the catalyst for a renewed wave of separatism in the European Union, with Scotland and Flanders not far behind. The great paradox of the European Union, which is built on the concept of shared sovereignty, is that it lowers the stakes for regions to push for independence.

While a post-national European Union may be emerging out of the euro zone crisis, with a drive for more fiscal union and more centralized control over national budgets and banks, the crisis has accelerated calls for independence from member countries’ richer regions, angry at having to finance poorer neighbors.

Artur Mas, the Catalan president, recently shook Spain and the markets with a call for early regional elections and promised a referendum on independence from Spain, although Madrid considers it illegal. Scotland is planning an independence referendum for the autumn of 2014. The Flemish in Flanders have achieved nearly total autonomy, both administrative and linguistic, but still resent what they consider to be the holdover hegemony of the French-speakers of Wallonia and the Brussels elite, emotions that will be on display in provincial and communal elections Oct. 14.

There are countless things that hold unhappy countries, like marriages, together — shared history, shared wars, shared children, shared enemies. But the economic crisis in the European Union is also highlighting old grievances.

Venetian Protesters Demand Independence From Rome

Polls Show 70% Favor Independence

By Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Its not just regions in Spain that are sick of centralized government. Take a look at Italy where Venetian protesters demand independence from Rome. The rally, which was organized by the separatist Indipendenza Veneta party, drew large numbers of energetic protesters.

“The situation here is almost explosive, so today we have thousands of people who have gathered in front of the regional government and we’re going to present to them a resolution signed by thousands of participants to have a referendum for independence,” Chairman of the separatist Indipendenza Veneta Party, Lodovico Pizzati, told RT.

“The main reason is economic. We are in a situation worse than a colony because the tax rate in Italy is the highest the world and our services are extremely poor. We have 20 billion euros missing from our regional resources each year and that’s unbearable,” Pizzati said.

And while some question the region’s ability to stand alone, Pizzati says the goal is completely attainable.

“It can more than survive on its own. It will be the second richest country in Europe,” he said.

There Is No God but Politics

As Dostoyevsky said, starting out from limitless freedom, we end up with total despotism

by Theodore Dalrymple (May 2007)

In my youth (in which I include my early adulthood), I read a lot of philosophy. In those days, I picked up books of metaphysics with an excitement that I cannot now recapture, and that completely mystifies me, indeed seems to me faintly ridiculous. I still cannot quite make up my mind, however, whether or not I wasted my time. After all, I was a medical student, not someone training to be an intellectual. I doubt that philosophy made me a better person, let alone a better doctor, but I suppose it is possible that it made me a better writer, which is not the same thing at all.

In those days, the Soviet Union loomed very large in all our imaginations. It was the ruffian on the stair of western civilisation, or a looming presence to the east. And that meant that, for anyone who wanted to understand the world, it appeared necessary to immerse himself in Marxism (actually, it was more important to read the history of the Russian intelligentsia from the time of Nicholas I than to read Marx), since the Soviet Union claimed to be a society founded on Marxist principles.

Marxist writers were not famed for their clarity or elegance of exposition. Indeed, clarity was rather looked down upon by them, for the dialectical nature of the world was inherently hard to understand and therefore to express. For Marxists, clarity was simplification, or worse still vulgarisation. It was the handmaiden of false consciousness that misled the workers into not being revolutionaries.

Ignorance Deadlier Than Radiation in Japan

Fukushima's radiation-related death toll remains at zero

by  Rebecca Terrell

The earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011 continue to claim lives more than a year and a half later. How is this possible? These twin disasters which killed or injured some 25,000 also damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant on Japan's eastern coast, causing a partial meltdown and release of radioactivity. But even according to UN officials, radiation is not the culprit in the ever-rising death toll. The Japanese government numbers subsequent "disaster related deaths" at 700 and rising, and most of those are related to the forced evacuation of roughly 90,000 people in the area of the damaged reactors.

"These people died in a chaotic scramble to escape presumably deadly radiation," opines Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe, in his recent Financial Post editorial. Solomon highlights details of one hospital evacuation during which eight patients died from the stress and exertion of a 12-hour bus ride to an evacuation center where, in the following three weeks, 32 more suffered the same fate from fatigue and lack of proper medical care.

Would their lot have been worse had they remained in close proximity to the leaking power plant? Dr. Jane M. Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, answered that question a few days after workers had contained the leaks and stabilized the reactors. "If you stood at the gate of the plant for 10 hours at the highest dose-rate, you'd get as much radiation as from a full-body spiral CT scan."

Organic Illusions

People love to talk about traditional agriculture, but their willingness to embrace the land is mostly metaphorical

We don’t have enough land and we can’t afford the opportunity costs of a return to a romantic version of agriculture. But we can afford a food system that provides lots of choices.

By Blake Hurst

A recent study by a group of scientists at Stanford University found that the nutritional benefits of organic food have, to say the least, been oversold. Apres moi, le deluge. A furor has erupted.

In our modern-day version of holy wars, we’ve replaced debates about gnosticism and Manichaeism with arguments about the virtues of locally grown versus sustainable versus organic. As with all wars over doctrine, the rhetoric has been fierce.

An online petition organized in opposition to the Stanford study seeks to drum the authors of the study out of the academic community, although one gets the impression that professional defenestration is insufficient. Perhaps people who commit food heresy could be sentenced to spend eternity in a Big Mac–filled purgatory? Stanford University and the authors have been accused of being in bed with food producer Cargill, and all the bishops of the foodie orthodoxy have responded by disagreeing and, in many instances, changing the subject.

The British version of the Food and Drug Administration commissioned a study in 2009 with results strikingly similar to Stanford’s. This is not surprising to most farmers, who have to deal with what is, rather than what someone might wish.

The Positive Power of Crisis

Only in crisis do human beings actually change anything

By Charles Hugh-Smith

If there is any demarcation with profound implications going forward, it isn't the line between the 1% and the 99% or the line dividing the Status Quo into two safely complicit ideological camps: it is the divide between those who squarely face the burden of knowing the present is unsustainable and those who flee into the comforts of denial. Those who accept the burden of knowing are part of the solution, those who cling to denial are part of the problem.

Those who accept the burden of knowing do not necessarily have answers, but they are alert to alternatives and potential solutions. Those in denial can only hope that reality can be buried for a while longer.

Thus we have pronouncements that "the euro is irreversible," that progress is being made, and so on. Nothing has been fixed, but those clinging to denial are comforted that crisis has been pushed forward once again.

Pushing problems under the rug doesn't solve them; they only get worse. This is the positive power of crisis: only in crisis do human beings actually change.

Why Intellectuals Like Genocide

It is not very difficult to see what role the intelligentsia would have in constructing the new society: a very powerful, indeed directing one

by Theodore Dalrymple 

Seemingly arcane historical disputes can often cast a powerful light on the state of our collective soul. It is for that reason that I like to read books on obscure subjects: they are often more illuminating than books that at first sight are more immediately relevant to our current situation. For, as Emily Dickinson put it, success in indirection lies.

In 2002, the Australian free-lance historian and journalist, Keith Windschuttle, published a book that created a controversy that has still not died down. Entitled ‘The Fabrication of Aboriginal History,’ it sets out to destroy the idea that there had been a genocide of Tasmanian aborigines carried out by the early European settlers of the island.

For about the previous quarter century, it was more or less an historical orthodoxy that there had been such a genocide. Robert Hughes accepted the idea in his best-selling history of early Australia, The Fatal Shore. I accepted it myself, because when I first visited Australia in 1982 I read several books on the subject by professors of history at reputable universities, and rather naively supposed that their work must have been founded on painstaking and honest research, and that they had not misrepresented their original sources.

Windschuttle argued in his book that they had fabricated much of their evidence, and that, contrary to what they claimed, there had been no deliberate policy on the part of the colonial authorities or the local population either to extirpate or kill very large numbers of aborigines. He showed that the historians’ reading of the obscure source materials was either misleading or mendacious.

South African Tells of Genocide in Communist-dominated South Africa

By the time the world and media acknowledge the atrocities it may be too late

by  Christian Gomez

On Tuesday, October 2, 2012, the Fox Valley Conservative Forum, which meets regularly for a luncheon on Tuesdays in Appleton, Wisconsin, hosted a talk by South African Sonia Hruska (pictured). Hruska, who now lives in the United States, discussed the ongoing genocide against white people in her country under the largely communist-controlled ANC government of Jacob Zuma. 

Born in Victoria, South Africa, to a nontraditional Afrikaner family, with a right-wing father and a left-wing mother, Hruska would go on to work in politics as a consultant in the presidential administration of Nelson Mandela from 1994 to 2001. “I was the coordinator between the different spheres of government, civil society and state organizations, to actually implement the new government policies,” Hruska said.

As an early supporter of Mandela and the dream of a rainbow South Africa, Hruska truly believed in establishing a country where, regardless of the color of one’s skin or ethnicity, one could live in harmony and equality. Unfortunately, as she described, the opposite came true.

“After about six years,” Hruska said, “I realized something serious is wrong; the communist elements are taking over, it’s not what we were promised.” She explained the change that followed:

Whites were getting excluded through affirmative action and black economic empowerment. And at the same time, the Chinese got black status; so the whites were excluded and the Chinese were included under affirmative action as black. We now find that a white is not allowed to enter, for instance, into management, but a Chinese person may buy a mine or buy shares in a mine, and the same [is true] with banks.

As a business owner, I can get 25 years in jail time if I do employ a white person, for instance. It is totally ridiculous; you cannot have imagined that affirmative action could have gone so far.

Eric Hobsbawm, Eugene Genovese, and the End of History

By killing a few million human beings today, they were preparing for the future happiness of billions

By Lee Harris

Grand historical narratives have been repeatedly abused by those true believers who convince themselves that a few million lives are a small price to pay to get to the End of History a little quicker.

When a man dies at a ripe old age, the sins of his youth are normally forgiven him, assuming there is anyone around who remembers them. Or, at the very least, these sins are not loudly trumpeted forth nor dwelled on at painful length in his obituaries.

The death of Eric Hobsbawm at the age of 95 has proven an exception to this rule. The very day after Hobsbawm’s death was announced, the formidable English polymath A. N. Wilson wrote a stunningly savage attack on the man who was often regarded as the preeminent British Marxist historian of our time. “Hobsbawm,” A. N. Wilson writes, “will sink without trace. His books will not be read in the future. They are little better than [Communist] propaganda, and, in spite of the slavish language in the obituaries, are badly written.” This departure from the normal etiquette in dealing with the demise of a much lauded public intellectual deserves a bit of explanation.

Creation Engine

Autodesk Wants to Help Anyone, Anywhere, Make Anything

This Nike shoe was modeled in professional Autodesk software

BY BOB PARKS

Carl Bass is president and CEO of Autodesk, a publicly traded software company worth $7 billion. But he’s also an amateur woodworker, and he takes his hobby seriously. Last fall, for example, when searching for just the right wood to take back to his workshop, Bass and two fellow enthusiasts—his CTO, Jeff Kowalski, and a Berkeley, California-based carpenter named Gene Agress—flew to Portland, Oregon, to meet with one of the world’s most secretive dealers in rare timber. The dealer picked up the three men in an Audi SUV, then sped into the countryside, mentioning along the way that the vehicle was, in fact, bullet-resistant.

Inside an enormous climate-controlled metal building in the Oregon outback, the three browsed an astounding array of wood: rare finds like bird’s-eye maple, curly redwood, and 20-foot lengths of ebony. Speakers blasted jazz and classical music at the lumber, because the dealer believed it would make the wood resonate better when used in fine musical instruments. (The wood seller had some offbeat ideas, including a deep suspicion of the government—hence, perhaps, the armored car.) Bass picked out some striped curly redwood to take home with him. But the dealer was less impressed with his visitors than they were with his wood. After spending the afternoon with them and interrogating them on various subjects, he declined to sell them anything and packed them off in the SUV.

So, over the next four weeks, Bass mounted a campaign to show that he was worthy of the timber. He even sent pictures of boats he’d built professionally, during a year off from college (a period that grew to five years, before he returned to finish his math degree). The seller finally relented, set a fair price, and sent Bass a truckload of the wood he wanted.

Game of Thrones

The Debate of Liars

By Econophile

It was fairly unanimous in the MSM that Romney won the debate. Comments were that he was forceful, engaged, animated, presidential, challenging, and on the offensive. The president seemed lackluster, dull, unresponsive, and tired. All this is true.

Unfortunately they both lied.

I wish to point out that I will vote for Romney and I was pleased that he is perceived to have won the debate. But I thought he won based on theatrical performance rather than content, which, to be honest, is how most of the great unwashed judge candidates.

Neither candidate made much sense. Saying words people want to hear won't make it so.

Look, President Obama is a left-wing liberal (Progressive, socialist, whatever). He is an ideologue and I respect him for at least letting us know what he stands for. I know exactly what to expect from him and I strongly disagree with most of his policies. There are two really good reasons to vote him out, beside the fact that his policies have failed.

The Pains of Memory

Man never learns, at least not from the experience of others

by Theodore Dalrymple (June 2008)

We are enjoined, when we suffer or feel unhappy (which are not necessarily quite the same thing, of course), to consider those who are yet worse off than ourselves. This is supposed to relieve and console us, but it rarely does. The most that it achieves is to make us feel guilty that we are so miserable over comparative trifles when others have so many worse travails than ours; and this in turn makes us feel more wretched than ever. Moreover, there is a curious moral asymmetry at work: while the thought that there are always people worse off than ourselves is supposed to be edifying, the thought that there are always people better off than ourselves is not. Indeed, it is the very reverse, a powerful stimulus to resentment, the longest-lived, most gratifying and most harmful of all emotions.

As children, many of us were told to finish what was on our plate because there were so many hungry people in the world who would have been grateful for what we left. I confess that, at a very early age, I was puzzled by this line of moral reasoning: I did not see how the hungry people of Africa would be helped if I stuffed food I really did not want down my protesting gullet. But a home is not a parliament, and I did, more or less, what I was told.

Youth, it is often said, is a generous age, fully of pity and compassion. I do not agree: I think it is mainly an age of self-pity, when one is inclined to imagine that the problems of growing up are the greatest problems in the world. 1968 in Paris, for example, was all about self-pity, not about making the world a better place. You can see from the photographs that the student rioters were spoilt and narcissistic children, posing carefully for the photographers.