IF WE accept life as struggle, and history as the continuing struggle for freedom, we realize the necessity of revolution, and for that, the imperative of a militant creed.
I believe, therefore, in the necessity of Revolution as an instrument of individual and social change, and that its end is the advancement of human freedom.
I believe that only a reactionary resistance to radical change will make a Jacobin, or armed revolution, inevitable, but that in a democratic society, revolution is of necessity, constitutional, peaceful and legal.
I believe that while we have utilized the presidential powers to dismantle the violent revolution and its communist apparatus, we must not fail our people; we must replace the violent revolution with the authentic revolution – liberal, constitutional and peaceful.
I believe in democracy as the continuing revolution; that any other revolution is unjustified if it cannot meet the democratic criterion.
I believe that even if a society should be corrupted by an unjust economic or social system, this can be redressed by the people, directly or indirectly, for democracy has the powers of self-rejuvenation and self-correction.
I believe that in this troubled present, revolution is a fact, not merely a potential threat, and that if we value our sacred rights, our cherished freedoms, we must wrest the revolutionary leadership from those who would, in the end turn the democratic revolution into a totalitarian regime.
I believe that in our precarious democracy, which tends towards an oligarchy because of the power of the wealthy few over the impoverished many, there remains a bright hope for a radical and sweeping change without the risk of violence. I do not believe that violent revolution is either necessary or effective in an existing democracy.
I believe that our realization of our common peril, our complete understanding of our national condition, will unite us in a democratic revolution that will strengthen our democratic institutions and offer, finally, our citizens the opportunity of making the most and the best of themselves.
I believe that democracy is the revolution, that it is today’s revolution. This is my fighting faith.
CRAFTED ON September 7, 1971 in his Today’s Revolution: Democracy, that credo served as the foundation of a New Society established a year after by Ferdinand Edralin Marcos. And the rest, as clichéd, is history.
September 21,1972. Martial Law. Never again, so easy to say. But come to think of it, aren’t the above premises as true today as they were 39 long years ago?
Santayana calls out from the grave: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Duly seconded by Hegel: “What experience and history teach is this – that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles.”
And Marx for the closing: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
The postscript though in an Irish saying: “There is no present, there is no future. Only the past happening over and over.”
Dumb as we are, so damned shall we ever be.
