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Traits of Filipinos based on the speech of Manuel L. Quezon
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Manuel L. Quezon, the little brown cricket who for three years has been the Philippine Commonwealth's first President, passed his 60th birthday last week. Like royalty, he celebrated his birthday by a two-day national party—speeches, parades, festivals. The party wound up with a giant ball in Manila to raise—in more democratic tradition—anti-tuberculosis funds. To punctuate the festivities he addressed 40,000 students & teachers. His subject: the state of the Philippine soul.
The first half of his six-year term, said President Quezon, he had spent laying the Commonwealth's political and economic foundations. The second half, he would devote to "a spiritual revival of the Filipino people" by formulating "a sort of written Bushido."* Then he proceeded to do something that no successful politician can do in a real democracy, to tell his fellow countrymen that their national character is weak and full of flaws:
The late President Manuel L. Quezon Filipinos said that "We Filipinos of today are soft and easygoing. Our tendency toward parasitism is not inclined to sustained strenuous effort. Face-saving is our dominant note in the confused symphony of our existence. Our sense of righteousness often is dulled by a desire for personal gain. We lack the superb courage which impels action because it is right. Our greatest fear is not to do wrong, but to be caught doing wrong. Our conception of virtue is conventional. We take religion lightly and we think lip-service equivalent to a deep, abiding faith. Patriotism among us is only skin deep and incapable of inspiring heroic deeds. ... A wrong adaptation of foreign customs creates in us, especially among the young, a feeling that politeness is commonplace and that smartness and insolence are equivalent to good breeding. We attained our freedom but our spirit is still bound by shackles forced by the frailties of our nature. We are Orientals. Orientals are known for their placidity and passiveness. I refuse to allow Filipinos to be so regarded."[1]