In my wanderings today I stumbled across a quotation I hadn’t seen previously. This is from one of the world’s truly great writers, Victor Hugo, who is mostly known now as a source of plots for Verdi operas, movies, and stage shows.
“There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoléon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.”
from Le Journal de Victor Hugo, August 1830
I’m less romantic than Hugo. I think that I’d say that one of the surest ways for preserving the great thing is to protect us from the great men. It would be wonderful to have more creative legislators, more skillful Presidents, and wiser Supreme Court Justices but in their absence institutions and traditions that preserve liberty are a pretty good substitute.
