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421 Ouresteemed colleague at La Libertad has replied to the response we made to him, saying that he had as his objective to stimulate this debate over the basics of the new interpretation that the Supreme Court of Justice has given to Article 5, basics we have left intact.We will, of course, give an explication: If it is a matter of discussing the reasons the Supreme Court might have had for its new interpretation, which are found in the explanatory part of the ruling with which we concerned ourselves in our Bulletin of the twenty-second of last month, we believe we have said enough to support our disagreement without, until now, having been attacked directly by La Libertad or by any other periodical we know. Consequently, we did not believe nor do we believe it opportune to linger over what we have since then expressed; however, we needed to follow our colleague on the ground he himself had chosen, which, strictly speaking, produces the same result. The question La Libertad has raised is much more important than the one that might have been maintained in the strictly constitutionalist sphere. The discussion of Article 5 comes to be a secondary matter in the face of the critical meaning our colleague develops and that has as its objective the Constitution of ’57 itself and even the institutions that govern us. It would be useless, for that reason, to linger over simple details when the debate must rise to a higher sphere into which we will go with enthusiasm, although always having to collide with the narrow limits to which our pen is constrained to confine itself. La Libertad begins by giving us a description of that old liberal school, whose mission, it declares, is worn out; that school is the one that believes . . . but our colleague should excuse us for quoting the following passage from an excellent article by M. E. Caro, inserted in the Revue de 3 Bulletin of El Monitor, September 3, 1878 Original title: “Boletín del Monitor,” 3 de septiembre de 1878. Source: El Monitor Republicano , September 3, 1878. 422 : joSé maría viGil deux Mondes of November 1, 1875,1 in which, between parentheses, La Libertad can find a profound examination of the scientific theories of that new school called to replace, as it is claimed, the old liberalism, and of which it appears to have constituted itself champion. Well, then: “Radical democracy,” says Mr. Caro, is essentially rationalist; it is that in its origin, in its history, in its principles; it is an application of pure reason; it goes out from the absolute and returns to it; it rests on the a priori of certain ideas that do not come from experience, of certain axioms whose character and origin it would deny in vain. It is truly the child of Rousseau; it was born with the Social Contract. Still today we see it accept, without discussion, the terms in which Jean-Jacques has set forth the problem: “Find a type of association that depends on and protects with all general strength the person and wealth of every member, and for which each one, joining together, does not obey, nonetheless , anything but himself and remains as free as before.” If there is a problem of social geometry, this is certainly it. With Rousseau, this school establishes that sovereignty resides in the general will and laws are nothing but the authentic acts of this will. With it is established in principle that the will of all people is infallible, that no portion of it can be delegated or alienated or subjected to another sovereign. With him, it believes in the equivalency of all the members of the city, of their equal right to participate in the expression of the general will. It believes, finally, like him, in the original goodness of man, which cannot desire more than the general good, except in situations in which its reason goes astray from lack of knowledge or prejudices, which it is necessary to combat at all costs and uproot at whatever price from the Republic. With the fundamental principles known on which rests the old liberalism , declared quite dead and buried by La Libertad, let us see what 1. Elme-Marie Caro (1826–87), a popular and fashionable philosophy professor, and later a member of the French Academy, was concerned with defending Christianity against modern positivism. Caro saw the rage and despair in which the French Commune ended as...

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