It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out.
Interpretation
The quote discusses the moral complexities of intervening in other nations for the sake of promoting freedom and improving living conditions.
Niall Ferguson's quote raises important questions about the morality of foreign intervention. While it is easy for those in affluent countries to condemn actions that violate another nation's sovereignty, the potential benefits of intervention—such as economic and political freedom, improved standards of living, and increased life expectancy—must also be considered. The quote challenges us to think about the ethics of our stances on international politics and the implications of our privilege.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about international relations during a university lecture.
If the financial system has a defect, it is that it reflects and magnifies what we human beings are like. Money amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong. Booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility.
Civilisation is partly about restraining the male of the species from engaging in the violence of the hunter-gatherer period. But it doesn't take an awful lot to unleash it.
For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps- competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization.
The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.
Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.
Today, the average Korean works a thousand hours more a year than the average German. A thousand. ... That is the end of the Great Divergence.
I would rather be adorned by beauty of character than jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, while character comes from within.
I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.
The thing to do is to concentrate on the seer and not on the seen, not on the objects, but on the Light which reveals them.
No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see... all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable.
To course across more kindly waters now my talent's little vessel lifts her sails, leaving behind herself a sea so cruel; and what I sing will be that second kingdom, in which the human soul is cleansed of sin, becoming worthy of ascent to Heaven.
But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes.
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