CALDEIRÃO DE BOLSA

Throughout history, no tyrant ever rose to power except on the claim of representing “the common good.´´ Napoleon “served the common good´´ of France. Hitler is “serving the common good´´ of Germany. Horrors which no man would dare consider for his own selfish sake are perpetrated with a clear conscience by “altruists´´ who justify themselves by-the common good.

No tyrant has ever lasted long by force of arms alone. Men have been enslaved primarily by spiritual weapons. And the greatest of these is the collectivist doctrine that the supremacy of the state over the individual constitutes the common good. No dictator could rise if men held as a sacred faith the conviction that they have inalienable rights of which they cannot be deprived for any cause whatsoever, by any man whatsoever, neither by evildoer nor supposed benefactor.

This is the basic tenet of individualism, as opposed to collectivism. Individualism holds that man is an independent entity with an inalienable right to the pursuit of his own happiness in a society where men deal with one another as equals.(…)

We must learn to reject as total evil the conception that the common good is served by the abolition of individual rights. General happiness cannot be created out of general suffering and self-immolation. The only happy society is one of happy individuals. One cannot have a healthy forest made up of rotten trees.

The power of society must always be limited by the basic, inalienable rights of the individual.

The right of liberty means man’s right to individual action, individual choice, individual initiative and individual property. Without the right to private property no independent action is possible.

The right to the pursuit of happiness means man’s right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own, private, personal happiness and to work for its achievement. Each individual is the sole and final judge in this choice. A man’s happiness cannot be prescribed to him by another man or by any number of other men.

Survey: Denmark 'happiest' country in the worldStory Highlights
Group's survey factors in economic growth, democracy, social tolerance

Top 10 include seven European nations, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Canada

U.S. ranked No. 16; Zimbabwe, Moldova, Armenia ranked at bottom

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Denmark is the happiest country in the world while politically unstable Zimbabwe ranks at the bottom, according to a U.S. government-funded study released this week.

The United States -- the world's richest nation -- ranked 16th among 97 countries in the World Values Survey.

The survey, paid for the U.S. National Science Foundation, found that happiness coincided with greater economic growth, democracy, and social tolerance.

By that measure, Denmark tops the list. Rounding out the top 10 are: Puerto Rico, Colombia, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada and Austria.

"I strongly suspect there is a strong correlation between peace and happiness," said Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. "There is also a correlation between democracy and peace. Democracies are less likely to fight each other than non-democracies."

Almost all the countries at the bottom of the list struggle with legacies of authoritarian rule and widespread poverty, the survey found.

Zimbabwe, with its soaring inflation and continuing political crisis, ranks 97th. The other countries at the bottom -- Moldova and Armenia -- also have long histories of repressive government