I think you’re both wrong.

There is no single narrative to the rise of dictators in various countries. The one unifying mechanism is that the First World War and the failure of democratic governments to protect their peoples from mass slaughter and economic collapse drove most European countries to dictatorship.

As for the rest, Germany and Italy were two young countries in search a unifying ideology, Spain was a Communist-infested backwater, and Russia would have avoided revolution if Stolypin had lived, Germany went from monarchy to republic after the First World War (ALWAYS the worst path), Italy was pissed off because it thought it deserved a shower of colonies for its effort with the Allies, China – let’s not go there, Japan – ditto, Ireland – I’m not touching that with a bargepole, Portugal – backwater monarchy to republic again, Poland and the rest – newly-created countries, just like Malta (so we were told) are always impressionable.

If I had to give a one-sentence judgement it would be on the wisdom of a monarchy over anything else. It’s not as if we haven’t the example of France, Germany and Russia.

I do not agree Daphne. Let me tell you why point by point.

Historian David Sharp, for example, considers Cromwell a regicidal dictator. Sharp is not the only one.

Scandinavia did not have dictators not because of religion but because of the Jantelagen.

You are mixing up Catholicism with Gallicanism. This is probably due to the fact that you know the history of Britain not of Europe. But the last Stuart King wanted to imitate the absolutism of the French King … and since the last Stuart King was Catholic, there’s this mixing up of both principles. But the last Stuart King wanted to impose Gallicanism as a model of State-building.

Indeed, Catholicism militates against dictators, as it always militated against the Holy Roman Emperor. Inside the Church itself there were always profound tensions between the Pope and the Bishops.

Basically, Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy cover all of Europe and Russia … except for the Protestant countries … i.e., the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Britain and parts of Germany. Then again, the Low Countries and Britain did not allow dictators not because of religion per se, but because of mercantilism, which saw religion as a useless and profitless quarrel. The Protestant parts of Germany did not proclaim dictators – but they embraced militarism. Prussia dominated Germany for the simple reason that its powerful army and its successful militarisation of society led to victory over the seemingly invincible Swedes. With regard to the Swedes and the other Scandinavians, I repeat that Jantelagen, which is embedded in their culture and has nothing to do with Protestantism, does not allow them to cultivate personality cults and therefore dictators. On the other hand, the Scandinavians pay a high social price for Jantelagen.

Of course, you are quoting the Bible, and yes cupiditas has been translated as money. But, as you know, cupiditas is “greed”. It is not money per se which is the radix malorum, but the want for more and more money – i.e., capitalism.

That fear and self-preservation is the root of all evil is a Hobbesian interpretation of society, and – in a perversely positive way – one which is in tune with Smith.

But, I cannot agree with you that greed is NOT the root of (much or all) evil. If Subject A were not greedy, Subject B would not feel fear and the desire for self-preservation. Therefore the sentiments in Subject B are a direct consequence of the greed shown by Subject A. The root is therefore greed. Whether it is for money or for land or women or cattle or what have you is immaterial. It is the WANT, the GREED, which matters.

It’s all about eating – the Grande Bouffe.

Splendid exposé, Bubu, but I put it to you that the survivalist mentality is a very recent import in Malta’s history. Early 20th century, I’d say. Coinciding with the Italian Irredentist rabble-rousing. Nevertheless, it flourished. Independence changed nothing, and today it’s worse than ever. We went from the Mintoffianist Salvatur, to the Nationalist gvern li jhenn, back to Joseph’s foqra bl-SUV and if you distil the essence of each, they’re essentially all perpetuating the “population on the edge of extinction” myth.

The Europeans are incapable of starting anything more than an “alternative” gig for world peace. Real revolutions required bloodshed, and your own and the enemy’s dead.

Our brothers in Syria and North Africa have shown us how to do revolution in the 21st century. And it turns out it requires the old tried and tested, messy and bloody methods. Not Facebook and Twitter.

What workers all over the world, whether educated or not, are going through is fuelling and fomenting discord. Money is overriding all values.

I wonder if it will be the French again who will start it.

I do get let down when I see educated people still following their heart and voting Labour. However I am very confident that truth will sink in slowly in the educated lot, even if they have voted Labour for all their lives.

Labour’s failure to rule the country and create jobs will show them the light, a couple of them at least.

Most importantly, more educated PN supporters will make them better speakers, give them better arguing tools, and make them more capable of showing what’s right. That’s what I have chosen to do. I show the truth to as many people as I can.

At work, with your friends and family, don’t fear to say what you think, what you KNOW. Some people are too stupid to learn a thing, that’s true. But most are not stupid; they are just not seeing things right, that’s why it’s important for us, the educated PN supporters to speak out.

We must speak out to all, even the PN supporters. PN supporters who always hear wrong will eventually be fooled, so don’t let them hear one side of the story.

We MUST bring the news to those who don’t search for it. Otherwise democracy will be under threat. The future is in our hands.

Yet this is beyond religion, it’s to extreme. We are rightly discussing fondamentalism

We normally tend to attach this word with the much hated Arab culture and yet in this tiny insular society, for some, if not for many, fondamentalism is gladly appreciated though under a different name. Yes devotion encourages fanatics.

That said a scientist who is also a believer is conscious of some kind of conflict. Fondamentalists aren’t consciences of any contradictions and that’s beyond sanity. You might argue that there are no suicide bombers but people in Malta can go to great lengths to make their point. One such example is the past election

As a result democracy will be incapacitated since a huge mass of our society react like a sect whatever the subject in question.

Sorry to be pessimistic but I really cannot find the right solution for this ‘Maltese paradox’. No matter how many years a good natured political party governs Malta for the benfit of all and for prosperity, at one point in time all is to be undone by a huge section of fanatics within our society.

Will this country be ever set free? Hope I’m wrong but I doubt it.

I think what Min Weber means is religion, or better, God, used to bash others around the head. Fine, and can we please agree Giordano Bruno chose the stake?

Germany, Spain, Italy and to some extent France had one thing in common, regional kingdoms; autonomous, wealthy and in fierce competition with each other.

The ones which flourished were also those which were the most defiant of Rome’s rule. The enormous difference in mentality between Italy’s north and south has been largely placed at Spain’s domination of the south, leading to obscurantist ideology.

Unification in all Europe came about painfully, to this day, tremors abound (kev could tell us a thing or two).

Mussolini was a revolutionary socialist, anarchist even, in Milan, but harnessed his power base in the south, all he did initially, was propagate Crispi.

Franco did the same, both siding with landowners in largely underdeveloped and pre-industrialised regions. Although it has to be said that what the communists did in Spain was utterly horrific. They took iconoclasm to an extreme, murdering thousands.

Hitler did the same in Germany, legends to him facing firing squads during social upheaval crucial, communists outwitted and later outlawed.

What all three managed, given the threat of Marxism, was to be accepted by the elite. Put in a good dose of anti-semitism and its traditional sore point, the banks, and your average industrialist subscribes.

Fascism had by then, acquired status as protector of the faith, be it money, catholicism or maintaining status quo.

Britain had empire and industry which allowed her to increase the wealth to distribute exponentially, supply and demand virtually infinite. The system was both closed and worldwide at the same time. Being an island also helped.

Fascism fed on both a non-existent social justice as well its opposite, physical expansion, to bring it about, after all, if Albion can, why not the continent?

In all cases, Bolshevism was the big motivator of support and opinion.

As for Britain’s dark secrets, well, they sure learnt to keep that away from their shores, managing to keep in check Europe’s numerically largest fascist party in the process. No mean feat, but having an industry geared to expand indefinitely was key.

I totally agree with you. I spent 25 years teaching in the secondary and post-secondary sector and know through experience that it is all too common to see students who are extremely intelligent in academic subjects fail miserably to make a decent and logical argument when the subject is ethical or philosophical.

Their powers of objectivity are almost nonexistent, as is their ability to reason outside of their socio-economic mind-sets. This particular group are hard working and extremely ambitious young people who very often lack any aims or ideals other than their own material and social success.

They are incapable of empathy and hardly ever question anything.

Through the years I have realized that these young people usually originate from both the lowest and the highest rungs of the social ladder. On the other hand, the most objective students equipped with empathy and an enquiring mind, who value ideals and who are capable of three-dimensional perception, very often originate from church Schools, notwithstanding and very often in spite of, their socio – economic background.

This is probably due to the fact that these schools give huge importance to character formation and the education of the whole person; in other words they educate the emotions, train empathy and give values their importance.

Perhaps state schools especially should concentrate more on their ethos and hidden curriculum and take a leaf out of this book rather than producing highly academically qualified and poorly ‘educated’ students, a dime a dozen. This in my opinion, and adding compulsory topics like ethics and logic to the curriculum, is the only remedy to this national epidemic of ignorance.

[Daphne – The main problem is the home, not the school.]

Upbringing is the key word in my view.

If you’ve lived all your life in a family and social circle with a single-minded devotion to a political party/ideal/religion it is extremely difficult to shake it off later in life. Even if intellectually you know that your beliefs do not make sense, emotionally you still cling to them.

The brain is remarkable in its ability to partition off conflicting ideas, somehow accepting them all at the same time. The same thing occurs, for example with scientists who metaphorically speaking have to leave their religious beliefs at the door of their lab, while still piously maintaining a religious supernatural world view outside the lab, notwithstanding the deep contradictions between science and religion.