The Greek people are the victims of an experiment. And let us not confuse Greeks, the people like us, and the institutions of government that are in Greece but are tiers in the EU governmental hierarchy.
Not all people are opponents of the EU nor of the way the EU governs Europe. Such people will say that the Greeks are to blame for all their woes. For some people it simply would not do if blame was seen to lay with the EU, the institutions of the Euro and the foreign banks who made speculative loans. These people say that they all conducted themselves with perfect virtue and should suffer no loss - and that the people must pay. And so television screens all over Europe have shows vilifying the swarthy, lazy, greedy Greek.
Alright, the average Greek may have borrowed too much, retired too early and defended himself too enthusiastically against the taxation of a kleptocratic state. But all his sin was not to have the power to doubt every word he was told by his politicians, his newspapers and his television. What people of what nation could have done that? Not even the British. If a man, even if he is a fool, believes a lie, is he as guilty as the liar? All Greeks did was to live the way they were told was the way to live.
The Greeks are victims of an experiment. The European Union always claims that it has kept the peace in Europe since the second world war, although it never kept much peace in Greece then. The EU claims that it brought civilised democracy to the post-Soviet east of Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall as if those countries would be savage without the guiding wisdom of Brussels - and yet after the fall of dictators in Greece, membership of the EU has brought little virtue to the governing elite of Greece. Rather, Brussels has kept in place a compliant regime and connived in scandalous dishonesty to fit Greece into the Euro. Good sense was discarded for the vanity of the Euro.
In as much as all people are responsible for who they allow to govern them, all Greeks are culpable. As are all Europeans. But did the Greek people ask to join the Euro in a referendum? Then they are innocent as all Europeans are innocent.
The Greeks must take some small responsibility for their woes. But we have been taught to love our neighbour. We have been taught to love our neighbour always and not to love him apart from when he makes a mistake or when he is in need. If a man loses his job, his savings, his ability to choose how his country is run, everything as a result of this euro-crisis and that does not make him our neighbour, then what would?
Greeks are hurting. They have been the first to suffer the severe pain of the Euro construct. Their pain is that of those first into battle - should those of us still safe for the moment mock their wounds? Because the hardship, then suspension of democratic rule and national independence are coming to us soon. Look at Greece and you see Ireland. Look and see your own future.
So should we pay to the ECB and their laundry boys at the IMF? If you asked a Eurosceptic to pay for the freedom of another country then he is glad to pay just as a true patriot will fight for the freedom of another's country. But we are not being asked to pay for the freedom of Greece but for the lasting austerity, hardship and what is almost slavery of Greece. We are not being asked to make gifts to a neighbour who has suffered misfortune but to save banks from the folly of their greed and the Euro madness of their ambition. We are not being asked to do anything that will lead to the happiness of Greeks but to save the Euro from collapse. If Roger Helmer is remembered for anything it should be his "They are trying to save the cancer and not the patient". There has been no better description of the efforts to perpetuate precisely what afflicts Europe.
EU politicians join together to tell Greece how to vote in her second election. But this was in the way of bullies. Cameron is no Palmerston, but a British Prime Minister should send a message to the Greek people that however they vote we are friends. Communist politics in Greece made some kind of sense when the USSR could subsidise such decisions but not now. However the protest is absolutely necessary. Now Greece has a hard path through protest and instability before a sensible way out of this can be trodden. Our Government must tell Greeks that if they must leave the Euro, then we will stand by you. In any case, it will be for the best.
No, we will not pay for your top civil servants to retire at 50 nor to turn you into a nation of beggars. Greeks will work hard and fight like demons (as Churchill observed) for freedom. So we are prepared to do what we can to help regain freedom, responsibility and a serious route to regained prosperity. Because that is how the Eurosceptic shows true European solidarity.
We are all Greeks. When Percy Bysshe Shelly wrote this he meant that so much of what is beautiful in our civilisation today had its origin in Greece. Today we see that a horror that could engulf all of Europe is planted in Greece. The banners we see in London and the blog we read that say "we are all Greek" ask us to join in solidarity against this horror.
Comment: A small but important point: The USSR never subsidised Greek 'communism'. Greek 'communism', which is better described as anarchism, developed organically in response to the Nazi invasion. Ordinary Greeks organised themselves spontaneously at a local level because they were living under pathocracy, not because of some desire for ideological association with Soviet 'communism'. They did what they had to do to survive. Then the British invaded the country before the end of the Second World War and reinstated the local Nazis, under whose totalitarian rule Greeks lived until 1974. What is emerging in response to the economic war against Greece today is the same development of local, organic and cohesive networks. So the pathocracy turns up the heat in an effort to "prevent this domino from falling", which is really code-speak for preventing genuinely socialist networks and ideas from spreading beyond Greek borders.