Alan: Whether the United States ends up with an improved version of Obamacare" -- or some other type of truly Universal Healthcare -- any future system will be based on "the greatest good for the greatest number" and that universal system will be in light of any-Social-Contract-worthy-of-the-name better than pay-to-play individualism. Will it be perfect. No. Nothing ever is. The name of the game is "Progress, Not Perfection."
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton
More Merton Quotes
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