Monday, February 09, 2004

The Law In 1850, Frédéric Bastiat wrote: The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish! If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it. We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life. But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course. Life, faculties, production property leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Each of us has a natural right and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend - even by force - his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right - its reason for existing, its lawfulness - is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force - for the same reason - cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces? If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all. (02/09/04) That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen In 1849, Frédéric Bastiat wrote: In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause - it is seen. The others unfold in succession - they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference - the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, - at the risk of a small present evil. In fact, it is the same in the science of health, arts, and in that of morals. It often happens, that the sweeter the first fruit of a habit is, the more bitter are the consequences. Take, for example, debauchery, idleness, prodigality. When, therefore, a man absorbed in the effect which is seen has not yet learned to discern those which are not seen, he gives way to fatal habits, not only by inclination, but by calculation.This explains the fatally grievous condition of mankind. Ignorance surrounds its cradle: then its actions are determined by their first consequences, the only ones which, in its first stage, it can see. It is only in the long run that it learns to take account of the others. It has to learn this lesson from two very different masters - experience and foresight. Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we have burned ourselves. For this rough teacher, I should like, if possible, to substitute a more gentle one. I mean Foresight. For this purpose I shall examine the consequences of certain economical phenomena, by placing in opposition to each other those which are seen, and those which are not seen. (02/09/04) State of the Union The Atlantic Monthly -- At any given moment the state of any nation—and especially the state of any stable industrial democracy, where a measure of political calm and social order can generally be taken for granted—is determined largely by the state of its economy. Wars, relative military strength, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, demographic changes, social trends, election outcomes, even the results of international sporting competitions, can all contribute significantly to a country's perception of its own well-being. At times, certainly, one or more of these factors can outweigh the economy in affecting the collective sense of how the country is faring. But as any presidential candidate will tell you, for the average American citizen the most basic measure of national well-being amounts one way or another to economics. Is my income higher or lower than it was last year? Is my job more or less secure? Across the spectrum of class or income well-being is measured to a considerable degree by the question "Can I afford ... ?" Can I afford to put the kids through college? Buy a house? Put my mother in a nursing home? Pay for day care? Put food on the table? Buy a vacation home? But as important as the economy is in determining the state of the union, it is also a problematic measure, because the "real" state of the economy does not match our collective perception of it. That is, although one could in theory deduce America's exact sense of its economic well-being at any given moment by extrapolating from each citizen's income and expenses a kind of aggregate national answer to the question "Can I afford to ... ?," that would provide only an indirect and backward-looking measure of the economy's real strength. The true condition of the economy is best seen not as a snapshot of individuals' circumstances but as the movement of deeper forces through time; economists look back for measures of what has already happened, and then use various logical assumptions to project what will happen in the future. Obviously, the state of the economy is a somewhat relative thing; how we judge it depends greatly on what we use as a basis for comparison. Compared with 2001, for instance, last year was in some respects a good one for the economy. Compared with 1999, however, it was in many ways disappointing. And in fact the economy of 2003 was by several measures comparable to the economy of 1997. Does this mean the economy has regressed? Or that it has returned to its natural level after a period of aberration? And what, if anything, can these historical comparisons tell us about the coming years? (02/09/04) Better Treatment for Strokes BBC Health -- Scientists have developed a 'corkscrew' which can capture and remove blood clots in the brains of stroke patients. Doctors from the University of California were able to reverse the disabling effects of a stroke in patients using the device. It is inserted via an artery in the groin and guided through the body to the brain, where it 'remembers' to form into a corkscrew around the clot. The device is then removed, taking the clot with it and unblocking the artery. The researchers studied patients who had suffered ischemic stroke. These are caused by a blood clot that blocks the blood supply to the brain and are the most common kind of strokes. Doctors can give patients clot-busting drugs to dissolve the blockage - but these are only effective if they are given within three hours of a stroke. The corkscrew device - or Concentric Merci Retrieval System - is made from nickel and titanium. This alloy has the ability to 'remember' to form a particular shape at certain temperatures. It is fed into the artery in the groin, and up to the brain, inside a catheter. Once it is released inside the blocked artery, the body's temperature prompts the metal to form into the corkscrew shape. The blood clot is then "captured", and the device can be withdrawn from the artery. As the clot is removed, a tiny balloon attached to the catheter is briefly inflated, stopping the blood flow so the clots can be safely removed. Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles tested the device on 114 patients who had been severely affected by a stroke. They were able to restore blood flow through the artery in 61 patients. Of these, 23 were left with no lasting effects from the stroke, or with relatively minor disabilities, such as difficulties with writing. (02/09/04) Spirit Gets to Work! BBC Science -- US space agency Nasa says Spirit, one of its unmanned rover vehicles on Mars, has drilled into a rock, the first time this has been done by a robot vehicle. It took nearly three hours to drill the 2.7mm (0.1 inch) hole. The agency hopes it will provide clues about the geological past of Mars. The drilling is a boost for the Nasa mission - Spirit malfunctioned shortly after it landed last month but resumed its investigations on Friday. Its sister vehicle, Opportunity, is on the opposite side of the planet and has been sending pictures back of the terrain. Preliminary evidence suggests Mars was once warmer and wetter. Nasa scientists hailed the drilling of the hole, which is 45.5mm in diameter, as a significant achievement. "I didn't think that it would cut this deep," Steve Gorevan, the scientist in charge of rock abrasion tools on the rovers, told the AFP news agency. "In fact, when we saw virtually a complete circle, I was thrilled beyond anything I could have ever dreamed." The rock, known as Adirondack, is believed to be made of basalt. ... Nasa scientists want to know if the outcrop is composed of sedimentary rock, possibly laid down through the action of water or wind, or volcanic rock made up from ash fall. (02/09/04) Remember the Cloud Forests? BBC Nature -- Pressures are mounting on one of the Earth's rarest and most distinctive types of forest, scientists have found. The alert comes from the UK-based World Conservation Monitoring Centre, now a part of the UN Environment Programme. It says the threats to the world's cloud forests, which shelter thousands of rare species and provide water for millions of people, are increasing. The centre says the extent of the cloud forests is about one-fifth smaller than scientists had previously believed. The forests are found in tropical mountains, and at some point virtually every day they are enveloped in cloud. They sometimes grow as low as 500m (1,650 feet) in coastal regions, but are typically found at 2-3,000m (6,550-9,850 feet). ... The report says: "The ability of cloud forests to strip and retain moisture from cloud and fogs is key to abundant, clean and predictable water supplies in many areas, especially during dry seasons. "The cloud forests of La Tigra National Park in Honduras provide over 40% of the water for the 850,000 people living in the capital, Tegucigalpa. Apart from their utility, cloud forests are home to many species found nowehere else on Earth, including the mountain gorilla of Africa, the spectacled bear, and the resplendent quetzal, Guatemala's national symbol. The report says wild relatives of key food crops often grow in the forests, making them important gene pools. Threats include farming, poaching, fires, logging, road-building and the introduction of alien species. But the authors think climate change could be the biggest danger. (02/09/02) 5:25:20 AM

© TrustMark 2004 Timothy Wilken. Last update: 3/1/2004; 7:31:23 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.