Full Disclosure: They must only count English. I did use a French cuss word once.
Explaining Algerian rioting in France: A large number of foreign workers were imported from the former colonies, especially Algeria, to do all sorts of menial work. Paris apparently does not have pooper scooper laws, every day the Algerians were out on the street with large sweep brooms cleaning up Fido’s mess. The French treated the Algerians as lower than the merde de chien they were paid to sweep up.Paris is Burning
Last Monday a storm came through. Sustained hurricane force winds in Northeast Illinois!? I suppose the usual suspects will allege global warming or cooling as a cause though common sense meteorology would say just an extreme local variation, no matter the long term pattern. As I drove home from work the closer I got the more and more trees and branches were on the ground - and power lines. When I got home, aside from lesser problems like a flying branch wrecking the fence gate, the electricity was out, it did not come back until Friday evening.
One thing I learned to appreciate during this is the common stoplight. One thinks of them just as a safety feature so many cars can get through an intersection safely. However when the light is out you go to stop sign rules. Every one gets through safely, but it takes forever. Even if one catches a red light at the beginning of the cycle one get through the intersection much faster than one gets through on stop sign rules. One intersection regularly had back up of over a mile in three directions.
While sitting in that four lane parking lot waiting my turn I mused that this is a good example of an equality of results. It takes every one about the same amount of time to get to the light and through the intersection. Stop lights are a great source of inequality, some cars get to the intersection with a green light and zip though at 60 miles an hour. Some catch the beginning of the red light cycle and sit there for a few minutes waiting for the green. This is so unequal, yes everyone gets through much faster with the stop light, but shouldn’t radical equality be a goal, it commonly espoused for economics and politics, why not traffic control?
While equality is certainly important in some areas, i.e. everyone should be equal before the law. Everyone should have and equal opportunity to seek education and employment of their choice. But when an equality of results is promised how do you get them?
The items that have been driving the growth of western and now world economies for the past few hundred years are the concentration of capital, free trade, and technological development. But all of these produce uneven results. While even those on the lower end do better than they would otherwise the discrepancy between the top and bottom is larger than before this development. The only way to equalize the results in to put such major impediments in the place of concentrating capital, free trade and technological development that these discrepancies cannot exist which means every one gets poorer and poorer. But it is closer to equal results!
That wait for my turn to go through the intersection was way to long.
Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the “right” to education, the “right” to health care, the “right” to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.
There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences P.J. O’Rourke Remarks at a May 6, 1993 gala dinner celebrating the opening of the Cato Institute’s new headquarters in Washington. HT: Pragmatic Euphony
Wise comments but I have a quibble.
Freedom is the right, not, to do as you damn well please, (baring things like murder and theft that hurt others ) but the right to do what is right, and to speak the truth. In practice this may not make much difference. A government that does not have ability to keep one from doing as they damn well please, does not have the ability to keep one from doing right or speaking the truth. A government that has the ability to keep one from doing as they damn well please, has the ability to one from doing right or speaking the truth
Of course sometime people are mistaken and even dishonest when claim to do right or speak the truth, but if we limit there right then we have limited everyone else’s right. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, there will be consequences, which can be heavy for the mistaken or dishonest,
Empowerment, lets one do wrong and say falsehoods without consequences. Entitlements place one at the disposal of the entitler, one must do and say as directed to keep the entitlement right wrong or indifferent. Dependency is slavery, not freedom.
But first and foremost - freedom means being able to do what is right. With the duty to accept the consequences for ones actions.
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events,
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness . That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they re accustomed
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We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare,
That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States;
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And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
