Why does the WHO’s logo look like it belongs to a secret society run by a Bond villain?

The Michael Jackson of his day, the French playwright and actor Molière, coined the phrase, “You look the very picture of health.”

Molière wrote such works as Don Juan (1665) and The Miser (1668) and single-handedly created modern French comedy. The phrase appears in two of his works: The casanova Don Juan tells his creditor, “You are the very picture of health,” and a matchmaker coos the same at a stodgy old miser.

The phrase is mere manipulative flattery in each case. If someone calls you the very picture of health, they are lying — and I can cite no less an authority than the World Health Organization to prove it.

“Health,” the preamble to their constitution asserts, “is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

Are you in a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being? Me neither. Who do we have to blame for this shortcoming? Should we have been exercising, meditating and schmoozing more?

Nope. It’s the government’s fault! The WHO constitution continues: “The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being.”

Now we’re talking! I should be provided my highest attainable standard. After all, I pay my taxes; I should be taken care of.

The United States is a signatory to this document and a member of the WHO. That means America has agreed that “governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples which can be fulfilled only by the provision of adequate health and social measures.”

The WHO was formed in 1948. It is one of the original UN agencies. So it’s remarkable how long we’ve actually managed to go without overtly public health care. After all, my health is a fundamental right. You owe it to me.

Make me the very picture of health. I’d like to jump a little higher, maybe enough to do a reverse two-handed dunk on a 12-foot hoop. I’d like to be able to remember with perfect recall every book I have ever read. I want more friends on Facebook. Get started. Make it happen. I deserve complete physical, mental, and social well-being.

In Connecticut, while Molière was a teenager still trying to please his father by studying law, our forefathers were actually making law, and history. They crafted the world’s first written constitution, establishing limits on government and declaring the primacy of individual liberty.

A constitution means the government has to obey the rule of law. It predefines the law and must apply it objectively afterwards. There can be no whim. There must be clear definitions.

The government isn’t so wise when creating such definitions for its citizens.

Until last week, in Connecticut, you couldn’t call yourself an interior designer unless you had a $150-a-year state license. A 1983 law said so. It took a strong legal case from the libertarian Institute of Justice to convince a judge to overturn that law.

“Prolonged detention”  — indefinite detention without trial — was bad when President George W. Bush was allowing it, but it’s apparently okay now because Obama and Congress will define it in a new law. It’s all a matter of definition; Bush didn’t define it correctly.

If the government is going to be in the business of health care, health must be defined and care must be defined. If we feel ill, it’d no longer be up to us to go to a doctor or see a homeopath or self-medicate using information on Wikipedia or do nothing. Health care would be what the government says it is, just like it is under the WHO.

If our Connecticut forefathers were here, I know exactly what they would do: withdraw from the WHO and phase out all federal health regulations and redistributions. The pitcher of health can’t be filled with the blood of the taxpayers.