It is difficult for me to understand what goes through the mind of the anti-austerity protestors who have been throwing a fit in parts of Europe and the U.S. Don’t they feel at least a little ashamed demanding other people’s money? Any self-respecting adult has to see nothing but childishness and immaturity in their antics, and I assume they are fairly young. So I don’t know what to make of Stéphane Hessel, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor and courageous former member of the French Resistance, whose 13-page pamphlet called “Indignez-vous!” has inspired many of the protestors in Greece, France and Spain. Writing in National Review, Dalrymple calls him “the Descartes of indignation”:
I’m indignant, therefore I’m right… He wants the young of Europe to be indignant at, among other things, the gap between the rich and poor countries, which, he says (precisely at the time when economic growth in most of the rich countries is far exceeded by that of much of Africa), has never been greater. Hessel virtually suggests indignation as a career…
It is a career that many young protestors seem to be pursuing nowadays:
…what drove them onto the streets was the realization that the whole system of subsidized employment was coming to an end just as they were joining the labor market. They were demonstrating for a continuation of the subsidies that would allow them to rob their children as they themselves had been robbed by their parents and grandparents.
Read it here (purchase required)
Over the years I’ve tried and tried to point out the underlying, and overlying, lunacy of the (un)economy. But most people have an ‘inner Ed Balls’ and ‘inner gangster’s Moll’ etc etc