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”?

Read more on Reformational Populism and the Eurozone Crisis…

Over at National Review Online, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg recaps President Obama’s State of the Union address:

There is always something surreal about a Chicago politician talking about “fairness” and “playing by the rules.” There is something even more bizarre about a president talking about the need to expand energy production after his administration has generally undermined significant progress in facilitating energy development for three years in the middle of a recession. And who would describe Detroit as “on the way back”? A stroll down the ghost town otherwise known as downtown Detroit — which is teetering on the edge of being put into administration — would suggest the opposite. It’s not often that I agree with very much said by the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd, but this State of the Union speech illustrated that the lady was dead right in describing the Obama presidency as a bubble within a bubble.

Read more on Samuel Gregg: Obama SOTU full of ‘hot air, populism, contradictory promises’…

My recent Acton commentary, Latin America: After the Left, has been republished in a number of Latin American newspapers. For the benefit of our Spanish speaking friends, Acton is publishing the translation of the article that appeared today in the Paraguayan daily, ABC Color. The translation and distribution to Latin American papers was handled by Carlos Ball at AIPEnet.com. Commentary in Spanish follows:

Fracasos de la izquierda latinoamericana

por Samuel Gregg

La izquierda confronta grandes problemas en América Latina. La reciente elección de Sebastián Piñera como primer presidente chileno de centro-derecha en varias décadas se debió a la incapacidad demostrada por la coalición de centro izquierda que gobierna en Chile desde 1990. Y en toda América Latina se nota el desmoronamiento de la izquierda que por mucho tiempo sostuvo las riendas del poder.

Los futuros historiadores probablemente determinarán que esta transformación comenzó con la negativa del Congreso de Honduras, de su Corte Suprema, del Defensor del Pueblo, del Tribunal Supremo Electoral, de los dos principales partidos políticos y de los obispos católicos a que el ex presidente Manuel Zelaya violara el orden constitucional, al estilo chavista. Read more on Acton Commentary: Fracasos de la izquierda latinoamericana…

This week’s Acton commentary:

The left is in trouble in Latin America. Sebastián Piñera’s recent election as Chile’s first elected center-right president in decades owes much to the inability of the center-left coalition that governed Chile after 1990 to rejuvenate itself. Yet across Latin America there is, as the Washington Post’s Jackson Diel perceptively observes, a sense that the left’s decade of dominance is unraveling.

Future historians may trace the beginning of this decline to the refusal of Honduras’s Congress, Supreme Court, Administrative Law Tribunal, independent Human Rights Ombudsman, Supreme Electoral Tribunal, two main political parties, and Catholic bishops to allow ex-President Manuel Zelaya to subvert Honduras’s constitutional order “from within” Chávista-style in 2009.

In truth, however, the populist-left is wilting because their economic policies are collapsing. The most prominent example is Venezuela. Hugo Chávez’s regime was recently forced to devalue the currency, thereby undermining the purchasing power of ordinary Venezuelans’ bolivars in an already recessionary inflation-riddled economy. He is also rationing basic commodities such as electricity. Read more on Latin America: After the Left…

In “The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism,” Arthur C. Brooks argues in the Wall Street Journal that the “major cultural schism” in America today divides those who support capitalism and, on the other side, those who favor socialism. He makes a strong case for the moral foundations of free enterprise and entrepreneurship and points to the recent “tea parties” as evidence that Americans still favor the market economy. Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute, says Americans are revolting against “absurdities” like the bailout of General Motors that will be financed with ballooning budget deficits and trillions in new federal debt. He writes:

Read more on Arthur C. Brooks: Time For An ‘Ethical Populism’…

Via The New Editor, a restatement of a basic economic rule that we all need to remember as government in America swings back to the left. Clive Crook, in the course of reviewing Robin Williams’ Man of the Year, notes the potential unintended consequences if an anti-business mood overtakes our representatives:

Read more on A Fallacious – And Damaging – Premise…