I don’t know if anyone in America noticed but Greece had an election over the weekend. The big winners were the Syriza Party which had 36.3% of the vote. The new Prime Minister is Alexis Tsipras. In a democratically held election Greece voted in a radical left leader who is only 40 years old.

The party that aligned itself with the Syriza Party is the far right wing, Independent Greek Party.

Greece elected, my friends, a person who some would call a Communist who formed a coalition with the far right.
Greece has had a populist uprising as the Greek people seek a way out of debt hell.

This is happening in the country where Democracy was founded.

These are amazing developments. This happens when you have a badly managed economy in a country followed by austerity. Greed is the handmaiden of austerity and the natural reaction to the pain that the Greek people have been undergoing is to seek extreme measures to try to resolve a bad situation.

Each extreme on the political spectrum promises their followers better times. The danger is what you might have to give up in return for the power that the extremes of the left and the right may wind up giving you. For communism and fascism in the past, their resulting policies have meant less freedom and more control of the people. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. Let us hope for the sake of the happiness of the people of Greece that better times are ahead.

Can communism work in spite of the tendency that a cult of the personality and the aggrandizement of personal power often occurs in that type of governmental system? Will we see an improved version of communism in these challenging times? Can the Greek Independent Party co-exist with the political party that now holds the majority of seats in the Greek legislature? Will Greek communism be different? I hope I hear from the people of Greece on their thoughts on what has just taken place.

What is happening to Greece and the people’s revolt against austerity should be a warning to those who are in power in Europe. These events should especially be a warning to the wealthiest among those who continue to support austerity. There will be no place to hide for those who would enslave people to economic servitude. The people of Greece seek a better life and the basic wants that we all have, a good job, where you can provide enough for your family to where they do not want for food nor shelter. May Europe have the wisdom to moderate and possibly forgive some of  the Greek debt so that the people of Greece may have a life worth living.