Belongs To Its Bureaucracy

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com The question of whether Turkey should be added to the European Union is rapidly being replaced by the question of whether Greece should remain inside it. The meltdown of government finances in the great stewpot of public debt has made the country an ungovernable shambles, even by its own demanding standards. Yet while Greece is a special case -- every country is a special case, and every one has its ungovernable-shambles aspect, as visitors to every country have observed-- it is also a typical, democratic country in the sense that its freely elected governments have gradually assembled a universe of financial entitlements which its taxpayers can no longer keep up with. For deep historical reasons, Greece may have moved farther and faster into crisis, but that crisis will be the same everywhere. It is a country that belongs to its bureaucracy, created by elected governments who now can't face that bureaucracy down.