The Thoughts of David Hume

Commerce and liberty; liberty and refinement; refinement and the progress of the human spirit were all interrelated.

“It is impossible for the arts and sciences to arise, at first, among any people unless that people enjoy the blessing of a free government.”

Liberty was a fine thing, but it required a counterbalancing principle—something to remind us that human beings are creatures of their passions and that, left entirely to themselves, they become their passions’ slaves.

“In all governments,” Hume wrote, “there is a perpetual intestine struggle, open or secret, between Authority and Liberty, and neither of them can ever absolutely prevail in the contest.”

Authority that is absolute and uncontrolled ends by destroying society itself;

Source: How the Scots invented the Modern World: the true story of how western Europe's poorest nation created our world & everything in it (2001) by Arthur Herman.

Declaration of Independence from ObamaCare

When America declared its independence from King George III 1/3 was for independence, 1/3 was against, and 1/3 didn’t care either way. I wonder if that three-way split describes peoples opinions about ObamaCare.

Bill O’Reilly said the republicans need to come up with an alternative to ObamaCare and not just criticize it. How about this crazy idea: Why not buy your health insurance like every other insurance? It solves the portability issue, and drops down costs by increasing competition (someone will sooner or later create a website where you can comparison shop for health insurance like you do when buy car insurance). You can even have tax breaks and keep health saving accounts (HSAs) if you want. ObamaCare puts limits on those HSAs. Oh, yea if you wish to pay for your own health insurance out of your own pocket that’s fine. After all health insurance is a service. The Left calls it a right—thus socialized medicine is created like Frankenstein’s monster. ObamaCare calls paying-out-of-pocket a “free rider.” I call that your right. It’s your money after all.

Right now your job pays for your health insurance. But why should they? It is really their responsibility? That’s a cost to them. Why not make them pay for car insurance and life insurance too? All ObamaCare does is take it out of the hands of businesses and put it in the hands of the gov’t—total power play. I say put it directly in the hands of the private citizens. Let them decide how much health insurance they want. But then again the Left will say gov’t can decide better than the private citizen.