Sri Lanka, Feb. 4 -- What's the nation's general direction? It's as good a question as any to ask on our Independence Day. Does copying befit a nation? It befits a troop of monkeys, not humans. Of course life itself is a certain degree of copying. As children we imitate parents, uncles, elders. Then we model ourselves after role models, so called.

Without at least this amount of borrowing from others' experiences, we don't exist. It's existential, learning from people how you'd do things as you get on in life. But woe unto those who have based their lives on copying.

Woe unto those who don't have a single original idea because they have ceded control of everything to others, making themselves little more than cyphers. They have ceded th...