Why the Happiest Coutries are Happy?

Since 1981 and every year, the National Science Foundation polls the feelings of happiness and unhappiness from the people of several countries. This year, the averages pointed to the 5 happiest countries in the world being Denmark, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Iceland and Northern Ireland. The 5 most unhappy: Zimbabwe, Armenia, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine.

In a list of 98 countries, the United States occupied the 16th place, a very reasonable performance for a nation in war, and Brazil, in 30th place, below Nigeria but way above richer nations such as Germany, China and France.

Ronald Inglehart, political scientist of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research who directed the poll, has reached a conclusion that should be printed in bumper stickers and placed in the foreheads of every bureaucrat and socialist:

"The results clearly show that the happiest societies are those that allow people the freedom to choose how to live their lives."

Puerto Rico and Colombia are not rich nations by any stretch, but their people are happy because their governments know how to protect them against the violence and chaos without that dubious protection against themselves, which is the main excuse for all the abuses of the bureaucratic authority today.

Another revelation from the research is that economic liberty is important, but it is not the most essential liberty as so many economic liberals imagine. Every normal human being is willing to suffer a degree of government interference in the economy, even if one is decidedly against it, as long as the government does not interfere in his private life - not forcing one to educate his children in a certain manner, not deciding what one should eat or not eat and, most of all, not putting one in prison for the crime of opinion.

When some soi-disant anti-socialists, in the pursuit of preserving economic freedom, negotiate with statism and make concessions in the moral and cultural grounds, they are contributing to make capitalism into a regime of unhappy prosperity and making the socialist cultural critique a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the latest decades, in no other country has economic freedom increased as it did in China. But in the happiness ranking, the Chinese are in 54th place. The economicism is the infant disease of the liberalism.

The presence of Colombia in the third place is something that should make all of the liberals think. That is, if they did not have visceral fear of that painful activity.

How can a country in a war of several decades against terrorist organizations be happy? They can because war was the cause for national unity, creating in the Colombians that feeling of solidarity and trust that makes everyone feel strong in the midst of danger.

Ninety seven percent of Colombians hate the FARC, about eighty percent of them trust the president who has been directing with strong hands, from victory to victory, in war against that band of criminals and the gigantic diplomatic and advertising scheme built to give them support.

Under the leadership of Álvaro Uribe, Colombia has proved that it is a country capable of facing all of their enemies, internal and external - from the narco-traffickers hidden in the jungle to the Pelosis and Kennedys who give them protection in the highest circles of power. The Colombians fear no one. How could they not be happy?

This excerpt has been summarized from an article of philosopher Olavo de Carvalho.