Tragic Distinction

Bloomberg reports today that Zimbabwe has achieved a tragic distinction, it has the world's lowest life expectancy. An average Zimbabwean can hope to live to the ripe ole' age of...sit down...36. Of course, Bloomberg throws in AIDS statistics to make you think that it is that simple, just AIDS. What it doesn't tell you is that Robert Mugabe's brand of murderous, racist, totalitarian nationalism has quite literally destroyed what was once a relatively thriving economy. No one would have ever mistaken Zimbabwe's economy for a tiger, but it was at one time the world's largest exporter of leaf tobacco and had a robust agricultural sector. Obviously, one robust sector means others too, profitable farmers need fertilizer and tractors and financing, etc and so forth. But all that is gone now and Zimbabwe's people are ponderously impoverished and dying at an age that for some in free societies is an age to begin having children.

Also on Bloomberg this morning I read about all these numb-nut French 18-yr olds running around in cahots with the unions and communists trying to destroy capitalism in France, and I just shake my head. It is amazing the blindness of the young. Free societies, specifically politically free societies that allow citizens to pursue free enterprise, have delivered the promise of living an astonishing 70+ years. Repressed socieities that crush capitalism and free enterprise, like Zimbabwe, offer much less. Do French 18-yr. olds really look to the future and want their lives to be shorter (and more likely less pleasant) or do they want them to be longer? Do they really devalue the human experience that much as to want less of it?