People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
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Comte de Volney
When time and labor had developed riches, cupidity restrained by the laws, became more artful, but not less active. Under the mask of union and civil peace, it fomented in the bosom of every state an intestine war, in which the citizens, divided into contending corps of orders, classes, families, unremittingly struggled to appropriate to themselves, under the name of supreme power, the ability to plunder every thing, and render every thing subservient to the dictates of their passions; and this spirit of encroachment, disguised under all possible forms, but always the same in its object and motives, has never ceased to torment the nations.
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Libre from Cuba?
Some Cubans will soon be free to escape the Cuban dictatorship.
The Cuban government recently announced it would end exit visa requirements by mid-January. After which, Cubans wanting to go abroad will simply need a passport and a visa from the country they’re headed to.
Some of them, at least.
Cuba won’t simply let its people go. Emigration will remain a privilege — one more often accorded now, but still a privilege — not a right. A privilege the government may revoke at will by invoking, for example, “national security” to stop dissidents who might cause trouble abroad. Skilled professionals may be kept to “preserve the human capital created by the Revolution” — you know, on the “You Didn’t Build That” principle.
For a government (whether a dictatorship or a prelude to one) to treat rights as mere provisional gifts is nothing new. The Weimar constitution of 1919 held the rights of the individual to be “inviolable” — unless a law were passed to violate them. (Article 114.) The German’s home was “an asylum and inviolable” — unless a law were passed to violate it. (115.) Freedom of speech, freedom of movement, etc., were all guaranteed — except when the state deemed otherwise.
Yes, Cuba’s loosening of emigration rules will be a boon for those Cubans free to leave under the new rules. But the situation resembles that of a prison in which everybody is wrongly incarcerated, from which half the inmates are one day graciously released. Well, great, except . . . shouldn’t they all be released?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The practice of medicine historically straddled between being a business profession and a charitable endeavor. When government took it over — nearly in one big gulp, in Great Britain— that uneasy mix mutated, leaving us with the occasional bout of stark horror.
A British woman suffering from cystic fibrosis has been denied a new wonder drug that the manufacturer has agreed to provide for free, while the National Health Service gets around to approving it. But NHS says no.
Her family say she will die soon without it, yet managers at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham say it would be unethical to provide the drug under the deal, only for it to be withdrawn later.
The drug, Kalydeco also known as ivacaftor, costs £182,000 per patient per year, and works for five per cent of people with CF who have a certain defective gene, around 270 people in England.
It corrects a malfunctioning protein which causes the characteristic build-up of fluid and mucus in the lungs that causes devastating damage.
A long shot, apparently. But is that any reason to deny a charitable offer?
These kinds of deals get offered and accepted in America all the time.
But then, when a private insurance company here decides not to cover some drug or treatment, that’s an excuse to excoriate American capitalism — while forgetting about all the characteristically American workarounds. But in “single-payer” Britain we see the state acting as a proverbial “death panel.” The outcry against socialism should be just as loud, if not louder.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Comte de Volney
Yes, creative man, receive my homage! Thou hast measured the span of the heavens, calculated the volume of the stars, arrested the lightning in its clouds, subdued seas and storms, subjected all the elements. Ah! how are so many sublime energies allied to so many errors?
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Munch on This
Self-righteousness is not new. But it hasn’t gone out of style, either — at least regarding moralistic dieters.
There’s even a study on it. In an article by Diane Mapes in Today’s Health, we learn “that organic food may just make people act a bit like jerks.”
Mapes focuses on the work of psychologist Kendall Eskine, who “noticed a lot of organic foods are marketed with moral terminology, like Honest Tea, and wondered if you exposed people to organic food, if it would make them pat themselves on the back for their moral and environmental choices. I wondered if they would be more altruistic or not.”
To find out, Eskine and his team divided 60 people into three groups. One group was shown pictures of clearly labeled organic food, like apples and spinach. Another group was shown comfort foods such as brownies and cookies. And a third group — the controls — were shown non-organic, non-comfort foods like rice, mustard and oatmeal. After viewing the pictures, each person was then asked to read a series of vignettes describing moral transgressions.
The results? Those merely exposed to organic foods judged moral transgressors more harshly, and, when it came to helping strangers, “the organic people also proved to be more selfish, volunteering” much less time than the control and comfort food groups offered.
According to the oft-cited “happiness paradox,” the more you fixate on happiness the less happy you become. With moral smugness, the more you fixate on the rightness of your choices, the less moral you become.
A general principle? A one-shot study that will gain no reproducible results?
In either case, it may be worth keeping an eye on . . . ourselves.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Comte de Volney
Politics is like the human body, beautiful when viewed from the outside, but if you open it up and look inside, it’s disgusting.
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Grover Cleveland
Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.
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Townhall: Over the Cliff?
Sometimes it seems that politicians have set up for us a Looming Financial Doom.
Why would they do that? And how do we avoid it?
Expanding on the subject of Friday’s Common Sense, I try to tackle both questions in this weekend’s Townhall column, “Over the Cliff.”
The column takes a few long quotations from The Washington Post article, and one short quotation from the actual study. Also linked in the column is a Common Sense from some time back, about public employees gaming the public employee pension system. It’s worth noting that the chief problem with the system is that it is badly rigged. But the gaming doesn’t help.
I use the phrase “cordon off” — it is interesting to remember that “cordon” basically means “rope off,” but that “cordon” doesn’t mean “rope.”
For a previous discussion of the metaphor of the “fiscal cliff,” see “Cliff Notes.”
The “tax the rich” mantra “wastes our time and diverts our attention” from real fixes for the fiscal solution. Here’s why: