Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios y Blanco (1783-1830) was one amazing person. Known to us simply as Simon Bolivar, he was the foremost South American patriot. As a politician and military leader he helped free Bolivia, Columbia (which includes what is now Panama), Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela from Spanish rule. Cliff notes on his life are here. He said some things worth pondering:
"A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability."
"Among the popular and representative systems of government I do not approve of the federal system: it is too perfect; and it requires virtues and political talents much superior to our own."
"The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty."
"We have been ruled more by deceit than by force, and we have been degraded more by vice than by superstition. Slavery is the daughter of darkness: an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction. Ambition and intrigue abuses the credulity and experience of men lacking all political, economic, and civic knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice. If a people, perverted by their training, succeed in achieving their liberty, they will soon lose it, for it would be of no avail to endeavor to explain to them that happiness consists in the practice of virtue; that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of tyrants, because, as the laws are more inflexible, every one should submit to their beneficent austerity; that proper morals, and not force, are the bases of law; and that to practice justice is to practice liberty."
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