Another Public Suicide in Greece

Not by hemlock, but rather hemmed in by the lock of public profligacy meeting economic scarcity, an old pensioner in the most volatile state in Europe took his own life. In a scenic that would rival the off-stage demise of Antigone or the self-inflicted blindness of Oedipus, this elderly state employee took his own life, in protect of a state who refused to honor its commitment to care for him until his natural demise, who blind to any other salvation but the state, ended his life wilfully to perserve his last shred of "dignity", shooting himself in public over indebtedness.

Another victim of popular democracy, Dimitris Christoulas shot himself in Syntagma Square, overwhelmed by his in ability to pay his way on the state's payroll, his desperation a symbol of the stigma which has afflicted the entire Aegean nation. Worse than the Persians wrestled and bested attempts to conquer the Greeks, the Birthplace of Popular Government and Western Civilization may now becomes its first though hardly final resting place.

The conservative newspaper, Eleftheros Typos, offered one of the most liberal of eulogies for this self-inflicted pensioner: "a martyr for Greece."

Like Socrates the wisest man in Greece, Mr. Christoulas unwisely chose to stay and rely on a state which has become the enemy of individual liberty. Whereas in ancient times direct democracy punished the quizzical dissent of one philosopher, modern Greece has flirted with Communism, has promised everything from cradle to grave, delivers less and less, and lingers on economic collapse. Worse than the Plagues during Pericles' Golden Age or the Civil War of Oligarchs and Democrats, Athens has become the setting for a grave and engraved tragedy, one whose grooves threaten to shatter the economic and political cohesion of the entire European Union.

Mr. Christoulas, hardly a martyr, is merely a witness of the foolish profligacy that awaits every public bondholder in a nation that maintains no bond beyond bankrupted paternalism.

Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, still attempting to play "Papa to the Demos (the people)", has now offered with one hand a plea to help the least fortunate of Greeks, which is growing to encompass every Hellene, while still with the other hand begging for another handout from Germany, the last core financial strength of the Euro currency.

If nothing else, this very public suicide is a small harbinger that awaits the far greater self-imposed impost awaiting the Greek nation if citizen and state do not rethink their role and relationship to one another.