Readings from week 3

After finishing the readings for this week (finally) I would have to say, I enjoyed the Simón Bolívar article the best. I found it very interesting to read and now clearly understand why he was revered in his time and is still today. I feel, his thoughts towards rights, laws and Government were exactly what those territories needed and it is understandable how he was able to bring Venezuela and New Granada (at the time) to declare independence from Spain in 1811. Two of his quotes (even though there were more) really stuck with me after reading several European and Spanish influenced ideals. In my opinion these quotes show Bolívar's realist ideals of equality, non-religiously, and that he was truely a person for the benefit of the people. ¡Viva, El Libertador!

“If the principal of political equality is generally recognized, so too is the principal of physical and moral inequality. Nature makes men unequal, in intelligence, temperament, strength, and character. The laws correct this difference because they place the individual in society so that education, industry, the arts, the services, and the virtues can give him a fictitious equality that is properly called political and social. It was an eminently beneficent inspiration to merge all classes into a single state where diversity would increase along with the propagation of the species. By this single step, cruel discord has been eradicated. How much jealousy, how much enmity, how much hatred has thus been avoided!” Pg 39

“The most perfect system of Gov’t is the one that produces the greatest possible happiness, the highest level of social security, and the greatest degree of political stability.” Pg 39

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