Land of Moussaka, Moochers and Looters

Who are the Greeks rioting on the streets of Athens?

Some of them are murderers, that we know. Contrary to press reports, “violent riots” did not trap workers in a bank and set it ablaze killing three; violent rioters did. And contrary to assorted Associated Press captions, riot police officers did not spontaneously combust, or attach themselves to Molotov cocktails like limpet mines. Mobs lobbed bombs at them.

The media is in the habit of using the passive voice to palliate crimes perpetrated by a class of criminals they’re rooting for. That’s what they imbibe in Group (by which I mean the newsroom). Back to the Greeks running amok on the streets of Athens: They are first and foremost members of the “non-productive” sector.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Greek “union officials said union-affiliated protesters alone totaled more than 60,000. Others put the number higher still. ‘This rally was double the size of the largest rally that has ever been held in Greece,’ said Spyros Papaspyros, president of Adedy, a civil-service umbrella union. ‘If the government doesn’t listen, there will be more strike action next week.'”Yes, this sector makes a forceful case for its demands, which are that distribution take the place of production, and that the pigs outnumber the productive.

True to form, tens of thousands of members of the oink sector “marched through Athens in the largest and most violent protests since the country’s budget crisis began last fall. Angry youths rampaged through the center of Athens, torching several businesses and vehicles and smashing shop windows. Protesters and police clashed in front of parliament and fought running street battles around the city.”

Their compadres in the US ─ workers whose employment is not contingent on their productivity; whose pay, pension packages, and conditions of employment are a function, not of their worth, but of a negotiated settlement with labor unions ─ have grown in numbers all through the economic downturn.

And why not? The occupants of state-run institutions have all the tools to capture wealth they don’t create. Greek-style deficits and debt have not dented the American federal government’s growth. Gallup’s Job Creation Index has declared the federal government a growth industry.

Indebtedness has done nothing to change the habits of an organization that has a line of credit with the Creator of Money on Mount Olympus: The Federal Reserve Bank. The public sector and its syndicates will collapse a country before they accept “austerity measures” ─ the focus of disaffection among our gritty street fighters is the requirement that they begin to exercise frugality.

Against the better judgment of the people in member EU states, the Eurocrats have committed to rescuing the profligate Greeks. The International Monetary Fund (for which Americans are liable too) will assist. In exchange, the slackers striking out on city-streets and against their compatriots will have to watch their public-sector wages slashed, pensions cut, pay frozen. And, horrors, Greeks will have to live with “liberalized labor laws,” in other words, allow some economic freedoms to the few workers who carry the welfariat.

Anyone beavering in the American competitive, voluntary, productive economy knows that raises have not happened for quite some time; that there’s no such thing as pay for “overtime,” and that when deadlines loom, the Dagny Taggarts and Hank Reardens of the world slog into the night to best the competition.

The defaulting Dionysians, on the other hand, are fueled with the righteousness of the wronged. From the janitor to the journalist, they blame their politicians who, in exchange for power, only gave the demos what they demanded at the time.

In answer to my opening question: Honest men these Greeks are not. For “an honest man,” wrote Ayn Rand in “Atlas Shrugged,” “is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.”

Moochers these Greeks are not, for the moocher “will claim your product by tears” and manipulation.

The rioters on Greece’s streets are the looters, “who take [your product] from you by force.”

The Grecian wilding is a minor event compared to the events that’ll unfold should China quit funding our federal behemoth’s bacchanalia, and the Moody’s credit-rating agency downgrade U.S. Treasuries to junk bond status, befitting a banana republic.

The sound and fury of Andy Stern’s Service Employees International Union, in it millions, will be like Tyrannosaurus (T-Rex) tearing through Jurassic Park.

©2010 By ILANA MERCER
WorldNetDaily.com
April 7