Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

These are the most important words that somehow marked the world in the middle of 18th and in all 19th centuries, and most probably still mark the thought of the actual world: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They are the slogan of French Revolution, one of the more important facts responsible for putting down the strength from the “Ancien Régime”, absolute monarchy, blocking all sorts of abuse by the king Louis XVI in a very radical way. Then all the interests of the bourgeoisie could largely show up and be respected.

Before the French Revolution, though, The USA Independency Declaration process could already be noticed; like the French Revolution, that one finally avoided the abuses from England could go ahead. Then, Americans broke the link they had with England; principles based on liberty, equality and fraternity were thought to form the new country. In that context, people really thought at that time they could be definitely happy living in a society that could preserve the liberty, which was represented by republicanism, for example. Although liberty and equality were respected, we cannot forget the capitalism was becoming a solid economic doctrine, so it was very important to spread liberty as a value because it is a very basic point in the capitalism.

After a lot of battles, the revolutionaries made it and capitalism could increase. And even after Cold War, capitalism still seems as the absolute economic doctrine, however some countries still try to resist to it with too much difficult. Anyhow, equality never meant, besides the reference to the economy, a real equality between people. Neither capitalism nor the type of socialism the USSR experienced could ever offer the real meaning of equality among people. Also, we deceptively have liberty, but we are not necessarily free either. We live in a fake democracy that we can see a lot of differences between rich and poor men. Actually democracy only means the right of voting, but it is still stupid to a certain degree.

Recently, it has been spoken of what has happened in Honduras, a small independent island located in Caribbean: the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, right now ex-president, had envisioned to bargain, without success, by making up a plebiscite, in order to be able to make a little change in the law to remain in the power during more four years whether re-elected. What was the inception of it? Simply, militaries took his president position and then he had to leave the country. Their act, for sure, shows us how liberty and equality can be affected actually.

Militaries most times just represent the interests from elite, but we should understand the action of Zelaya might reflect his purpose of remaining in the power and will of creating a dictatorship, as a tendency in some unstable countries in Latin America. It is not different in Venezuela, for example as well as is interesting to observe that in these two countries there are extremely poor people, what can reflect the intolerance which exists on their politics.

Obviously, liberty and equality are nearly to utopia and very philosophical. They have been discussed since some centuries ago but the interests of the upper class have always been prevailed. The matter is: we cannot stop fighting and never let others manipulate us. The values of society can change gradually and we should never let our can-do spirit go away.