The Fathers of the Liberal Land

Abstract

It is our belief that it is more constructive to describe the European and American liberal revolutions of the 18th century and early 19th century as the descendents of patriotic movements rather than to see them as movements of nationalist inspiration, as anachronically often happens. The evidence corroborating this view includes expressions used by the players in such movements, since their language is not politically neutral and conveys images of the World. What is most impressive is the references to figures and sources of Ancient Greece and particularly Rome. Restricting their use to rhetoric is to not understand that, blended with both their modern European and national updates, they helped to rethink the ties that should exist between ethics and politics, and to trace the historical path in which to follow, particularly when - as was the case of the Liberal Revolution of 1820 - the archetypical invocations were rooted in the need to refound the fallen fatherland. This is why we lend such importance to analysing how, under this strategy, the trend to call the devisers of the fall of absolutism the "Fathers of Our Land" developed, so that we may understand the manner in which the heritage of Classical civil Olympus grew in the company of the those who were elected to the national Elysium in construction.