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Updated: May 7, 2025
Swift, criticising the manners of his day, says "Wise men are often more uneasy at the over-civility of these refiners than they could possibly be in the conversation of peasants and mechanics." But it is not only in these details that the self-defeating action of our arrangements is traceable: it is traceable in the very substance and nature of them.
It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it. The most important job of our Government in this new era is to empower the American people to succeed in the global economy.
Both are being held back from reaching their full potential: Russia by the legacy of communism, economic turmoil, a cruel and self-defeating war in Chechnya; China by the illusion that it can buy stability at the expense of freedom.
For this precaution proved tragically self-defeating, and put its object into the very hands of Thady Quinlan and Joe Smith, when, under cover of the wild, wet night, they forced the feeble lock, and made a clean sweep of all portable property that lay within easy reach. The shawl formed the most valuable prize.
This was all the tiger needed. Slashing and biting, braving the peril of its roaring jaws, he tore away at the vital streams of his foe until they spilled recklessly, and the raging heart that drove them was betrayed in a self-defeating carnage of red. The bear lurched forward, dying.
May we not, on the contrary, suspect that his too keen sense of rectitude, and too elevated standard of conduct, would make life intolerable or even impossible? And however admirable the result might be, considered individually, would it not be self-defeating in so far as society and posterity are concerned?
The school is blamed also for pursuing pleasure, on the ground that the direct pursuit of pleasure is self-defeating. But Epicurus never makes that mistake. He says that pleasure, or 'sweetness of life', is the good; but he never counsels the direct pursuit of it. Quite the reverse.
In the light of this report, there are two things I believe we should keep constantly in mind. The first is that each of our great river valleys should be considered as a whole. Piecemeal operations within each lesser drainage area can be self-defeating or, at the very least, needlessly expensive.
Romanticizing the sun that burnt her face and could end up giving her skin cancer was better than the self-defeating flames of hate that might have been a force inside her consuming what could have been her. This silly, and barely believed myth gave grace to her infrequent social interactions and regulated her sleep patterns.
This time will not be long in coming, for our tariff-system has already begun to be discussed, and in the light of our present knowledge discussion means its doom. Born of crass ignorance and self-defeating greed, it cannot bear the light.
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