The Fatherland: In Sardinha's "On Behalf of the Commoner"

"Superior to the individuals of a sad passing hour, the Fatherland is not, in any way the pretext of our transitory passions, neither do we have the power to transform it after our whims and according to our ideologies. The stranger is not, thus, solely he which was born from another community to another language and others customs. Also a stranger is he who, insurrectioning against the rule which socially conformed him, realises in himself the tremendous word of Comte, by condemning the Revolution as being a "rebellion of the self against the species". Now, when that stranger, which is the stranger of the interior, denacionalised by cosmopolitan ideals, masonised by lowly interests of the sect, takes over the government of a nation to imprint in it a goal which is adverse to its fundamental sentiments, is there not legitimately, even from a minority, the right to revolt?" 

- António Sardinha in "A Prol do Comum (On Behalf of the Commoner)", 1934

 

Text from O Horizonte Português - The Sun at Night