In his essay on the eurozone crisis Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves claims there is a misunderstanding about the nature of criticism by “populists”:
That I submit is a problem, a serious problem and a threat to Europe we have only begun to realize. When we still talk about new and old members, we still talk nonsense about “populism” in all the wrong ways. Indeed I believe that the “populism” and the “specter of the 30s” that all kinds of pundits unknowledgeably appeal to has nothing to do with the populism we see in Northern Europe. That is not a populism of the dispossessed, the unemployed. It is a populism more akin to what Calvin and Luther appealed to than what the fascists of the 1930s appealed to. It is, like most populism, based on resentment, and resentment at unfairness. But the unfairness is, as it was in the 16th Century, a resentment of those who flaunt their flouting the rules by which others abide. Resentment on the part of those who take commitments seriously regarding those who do not: Is that the “specter of the 30s”?
As Mark Movsesian of the Center of Law and Religion notes, this isn’t merely a divide between Protestants and Catholic worldviews since some fiscally responsible countries that Ilves praises, like Austria and Poland, are historically Catholic. “Still, one can’t help noticing,” says Movsesian, “that the ‘frugal’ countries happen to be mostly northern and historically Protestant, and the ‘profligate’ countries tend to be southern and historically Catholic (or Orthodox).”
(Via: First Things)
