Somewhere buried in my Facebook timeline is a comment I made about a post, which gave accolades to this present administration as being one of the best the country has ever had. I said something like why do we compare against our own? We should compare with the best of the world across time. And of course, that would burst the bubble, so to speak, of any one who would like to trumpet the outgoing administration to boost the dismal rating of its anointed. Yet, this myopia appears to be prevalent not only with the present but also with the past leadership. I'm not even thinking about the globalization slogan of "Think global, act local." I'm just thinking exemplars. We should not limit ourselves to the Filipino personalities of the past of which the best appears to have vanished with the Propaganda Movement. Yet, those guys did not even experience running a country. They just wanted independence. They have romanticized it so much, that the great apostle of their efforts, Manuel L. Quezon, who headed the Philippine Commonwealth, had preferred, over a government run like heaven by foreigners, a government run like hell by Filipinos. By that standard alone, we can say that Quezon's vision was a smashing success. NVM Gonzalez said there is genius in the Filipino race, but we have to teach these geniuses as they are nurtured and educated today, that there are a lot of idiots among us too. We have to teach them to look to Lincoln for wise leadership, Churchill for courage and resolve, Gandhi for purity of will and method, and many others. They should have monuments here too, because they also remind us about freedom, and the extent of the human capacity to do what is right. And if we measure this administration against just the three I mentioned above, I would not even say a word. We shouldn't be that stupid to say that we had it good.
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