Have Filipinos earned the right to be free?

I believe in a human being's "inalienable right" to freedom. Every human deserves to be free -- that is, as an initial state. As the song goes, we are all born free. But from then on the evaluation begins. Indeed, one needs to be free to be be subject to this "evaluation", otherwise there is no basis for it.

For example, there was no basis for evaluating Filipinos' fitness to be free under the dictatorship of former President Ferdinand Marcos. That is because there was no opportunity to observe what Filipinos would make of said freedom. Now, 25 years since Filipinos "became free" in 1986 we have the benefit of that 25 years of hindsight to evaluate what Pinoys would do with their freedom.

And so now we can ask the question:

Have we earned the right to be "free"?

Believe it or not, freedom can be lost. We were free before Magellan discovered our sad islands. But because we lacked the ability to defend our freedom, we lost it and became a Spanish colony named after a Spanish Inquisition king. Then we again won "Independence" in 1898 and, in theory, "freedom" as an outcome. But just like in the 16th Century, we lacked the chops to keep it. And so we had again to content ourselves with being ruled by a foreign power. Then there was 1946, yay!, then 1972, boo hoo, then 1986, yay! -- and then a subsequent 25 years of imperceptible degeneration to what we are as a nation today.

The Truth about Filipinos' lack of savviness with regard to making freedom work for her is a poignant one -- not much different from the poignancy surrounding a lottery winner who ends up in the poor house a few months after collecting his winnings.

A fool and his money are soon parted.