http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2006/12/argentine-quote-of-day-from-1647-but.html Sunday, December 24, 2006 ARGENTINE QUOTE OF THE DAY-- FROM 1647, BUT IT COULD BE FROM ANYWHERE AND FROM ANY TIME
I've been so taken with Argentina that I found a bookstore that sells English language books above and beyond cheap airplane ride novels. Ateneo on Florida is the place (places; there are a couple of 'em)-- and I found a thoroughly engaging volume by one of Argentina's most popular contemporary writers, Felipe Pigna. Although I was searching for a book on Argentine history that would give me more information about the very substantial Argentine cooperation with the Nazis during World War II and/or about the Chaco War-- I still can't figure out how impoverished little Paraguay somehow thought it was prudent to simultaneously take on Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay (and maybe Bolivia) and then kept fighting until it had lost 80% of its male population-- but I found something completely different. The book I'm halfway through is called The Myths of Argentine History and, basically, it seeks to show the roots of Argentine current events in the earliest incarnations ofthe nation. I came across a quote from Juan De Solorzano Pereyra (1647) which rings pretty universal in terms of both time and space: The corrupt are greater and more insolent sinners than thieves, as these steal in fear, while the former do it openly and securely. The thief fears the law's whip, while they want to turn their deeds, no matter how noxious, into the pillars of the law. The thief might cower under the threats of the law and refrain from doing what is forbidden; but corrupt rulers shape the laws to whatever illicit advantages their malice and cowardice might lead them to.
