All resentment is sin, and while all sin is abominable, resentment is among the worst sins. This resentment, like all others, should be given no quarter. But when the occasion of a resentment is real injustice, the first step to removing the resentment is removing the injustice. Not least because those who aren’t actively opposed to the injustice have no credible standing to oppose the resentment.

The issue I see lurking behind all these observations is that the desire for a more ennobling culture on the “southern” model cannot be pursued without giving a small class of exceptional people arbitrary power over others. This is problematic enough, but if things could stay there forever it might work. However, inevitably, this small class of exceptional people attracts the power-hungry and the indolent who wish to live at the expense of others. Either the elite class must forcibly repel these hangers-on, which I think it can only do by repealing its commitments to juridic equality and re-establishing formal aristorcracy; or else the result is the snowball effect we see unfolding its way towards disaster before our eyes.

Less aspirational cultures do face their own challenges. How do we maintain a robust social consensus on what is right and wrong? How do we prevent social systems from defaulting to the lowest (i.e. most materialistic) common denominator?

But it seems to me that no middle path is possible. You do really have to make a choice about whether you’re going to give people stewardship over their own lives or not.

Aristotle praised mixed constitutions, but he also knew that every “mixed” constitution is really, at bottom, one thing or the other. Leaving his discussion of monarchy aside (for reasons I can’t get into) the bulk of the Politics is about showing why aristocratic/oligarchic regimes should strive to leaven themselves with some republican/democratic elements, and vice versa. There is no hint of a suggestion that a regime truly transcending the distinction is possible.

Cultures, like individuals, must make their choices. The “Europe project” is falling apart because Europe is internally divided over which path to choose.