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>An ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction; ambition and intrigue abuses the credulity and inexperience of men lacking all political, economic, or civil knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice. Like a stout blind man who, instigated by the feeling of his strength, walks with the security of the most discerning man, and striking in all the pitfalls can not rectify his steps.
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>Simón Bolívar, The Angostura Address

Reality and illusion, as well as license and liberty/freedom, vengeance/revenge and justice, are all opposite, all different things, and should never be confused. Although opposites are often touched, and the line between them is often diffuse, not so, things that at first glance may seem similar, are really the same.

We must avoid with great care to confuse such pairs, because in such error the degradation always hides. The belief that the license is or can be equivalent to liberty, is accompanied at all times by his faithful friend, the servitude, as well as the belief that vengeance is just augurs darkness.

We must clarify then the schismatic difference between such concepts, which are all times irreconcilable.

On the one hand, liberty and license, with all their similarities, are irremediably contrary. He who has liberty decides, guided by his will, whether to act or not, and how to do it, on the contrary, who has a license acts or not, based on the will of another, and does so as the latter allows.

Can we say that there is liberty if you need the permission of another to act in this or that way, or on the contrary, we will say that liberty derives precisely from not needing anyone's permission?

Here we already intuit the error, if it is necessary for us to have license to do this or that thing, then necessarily we lack liberty, and on the contrary, we have master.

Many times people confuse all kinds of licenses, and mistakenly they attribute the rank of "freedom" to a permit, such are the cases when we speak of economic freedom, freedom of speech, press, and so on, things that are not truly freedoms, that freedom there is only one, nobody is nor can be doubly free.

If we have free market nothing else, and we do not possess any of the other "freedoms", can we say then that we are free, or will we say that in spite of not being free we have certain permits in what is relative to the economy?

Neither freedom nor liberty can be divided, fellows, let us not be deceived. If we can do some things, and others do not, based on the will of another, we don't have "freedoms" or "liberties", we have licenses.

Such is the degree of confusion that exists between license and liberty, that it is even possible to listen to some "ask" or "demand" liberty, which is an absurdity.

Asking for liberty to another is like a young man who asks for more independence from his parents, instead of becoming independent by himself. Would not it be absurd that the young man depended on his parents to be independent?

In the same way it is absurd for a man to depend on others giving him liberty. Those who ask for liberty, ask their masters, and what they seek are permits, never liberty.

A free people is not the one that the government allows them to do many things, a free people is the one that, in any case, allows the government to govern, let's see that there is a big difference there where sovereignty resides. No matter how many permits you have, there will never be true freedom in a dynamic where power does not reside in people.

The license, although permissive, is the cousin of slavery and enemy of liberty, because it¿s necessary not to have liberty to be able to possess the license.

And moving from one concept to another, let us notice that Bolivar has not chosen his words in vain, and gives us another magnificent example of similar opposites, such as vengeance and justice.

In the same way that the license, although it gives airs of freedom, can only exist in slavery; vengeance, although it seems an emanation of justice, can only have life in injustice.

Take vengenace for justice is to attribute divinity to the judgments made by men, is to believe that every man has in his hands the ability to decide over nature and society what is right for all, is to confuse the subjective with the objective.

Not even the most just of men can or should choose the punishment of those who, it is worth remembering, he believes that they have offended him. Imagine then each man with his own system of justice that is responsible for punishing anyone who in his eyes offends him. The most despotic chaos can't be more than the only result.

What has not been precisely the presence of vengeance and the absence of justice the guarantor of most wars? What many have not started because a country believes itself smart enough to do justice over others? What have not started because a country believes that its judgments are absolute and only his opinion matters?

An example that Bolívar does not mention, but it is worth mentioning, is that of flexibility and weakness, because many also confuse both. Flexibility, although it may seem weakness, is only typical of strengthness.

Weak ones who pretend to be strong, and who therefore are incapable of being flexible, are those who seek revenge on anyone who offends them. Every situation, as terrible as it may seem and delicate it may be, always has two sides, and each time one of them believes that he can impart justice for both, there will be chaos and conflict, and therefore, the result will be the opposite.

Let us not be deceived then, and carefully observe the concepts we use, justice can never fit into a man, no matter how good he is, as liberty can never be given.

Let's remember again the example of the stout blind man, because that is us, that with a perfect vision we want to walk safely ignoring the invisible.

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