?THE FILIPINO is worth dying for.? It?s a magnificent sentiment, particularly when backed up by deed. Which, if so, tragically also means it?s the very last deed anyone will do.

That?s what Ninoy Aquino said, and that?s what Ninoy Aquino did. For which he is rightly hailed a hero now. The idea of the Filipino being worth dying for isn?t always easy to propose. The dying part is hard enough, the dying for the Filipino is harder.

Heaven knows this is a country that can sorely test you. Ninoy himself expressed his frustrations when he said that this was a country populated by one SOB and 65 million cowards. A thing that could have been said as well during the past nine years except that the cowards had multiplied to close to a hundred million. It is a country that can dumbfound you with the profligacy of its rulers and the uncaringness of its ruled, with the ruthlessness of the few and the submissiveness of the many.

But I don?t know that the idea of the Filipino being worth dying for doesn?t also overlook something about the Filipino, which the Filipino has shown resplendently time and again: His capacity to die for himself. Or his capacity to rise to defend himself even at risk of dying, though preferably without things reaching that pass. The proposition that the Filipino is worth dying for tends to suggest a teeming mass that is passive, requiring heroes to make ultimate sacrifices on their behalf. While that is true for interminable periods of our history, that has also been broken by epic displays of the people themselves bravely acting to end their oppression. In some instances well ahead of their leaders.

The Katipunan was a mass movement in every sense of the word. It has the distinction among the anti-colonial struggles of the 19th century of being founded not by a representative of the elite, or by a group of elite?the wars of liberation of Latin America in the 1820s were led by ilustrados?but by a plebeian, Andres Bonifacio. And it had a truly grassroots base. When the Americans invaded the country shortly later, tacitly saying the Philippines is worth killing for, or betraying the principles of the Founding Fathers for, they encountered resistance from them everywhere, not least Samar, which they turned into a howling wilderness.

The Huk movement that began in the ?30s, flourished during the War, and reached its pinnacle afterward before being crushed by Ramon Magsaysay with the help of the Americans, was a mass movement as well. So was the CPP-NPA movement that arose in the 1960s and posed so imminent a threat to the regime of Ferdinand Marcos that the US ruled to drop him as he had become the ?number one recruiter of the NPA.? Many of their members fell in the dark night of the Japanese Occupation and martial law, believing only that freedom was worth dying for.

You may disagree with the principles that animated them, but you may not disagree with the impressive way they proved that the masses are not bovine, they are perfectly capable of acting and thinking for themselves, they are perfectly capable of ?making their own history.? The scale at which they managed to teach themselves reading and writing, health care (acupuncture was a staple) and self-sufficiency in general while fighting off Marcos? troops was breathtaking. Of course all this explosion of people?s creativity fell ?under the guidance of the Party,? a guidance that proved increasingly dogmatic and paranoid it became its undoing.

The three Edsas?yes, three?again showed that the people, or indeed the masses, aren?t just the natural objects of acts of heroism, deserved or not, they are the natural subjects of acts of heroism. Or they are capable of acts of heroism themselves. It?s not true at all that Edsa is a largely middle-class phenomenon, though that was how Marcos tried to depict it in his day and that is how Erap continues to depict it to this day. Marcos? proposition that the ?silent majority? was for him against the ?loud minority? that was for Cory was no less imaginary than that martial law was a smiling one. And Erap?s proposition that only the rich conspired to do him in overlooks the phenomenal popularity of the impeachment trial, one that turned him into a fallen idol in the eyes of the masa.

The third Edsa is of course Noynoy Aquino becoming president. It wasn?t an ordinary election that carried him to power, it was an Edsa that carried him to power. An ordinary election does not have an improbable candidate stealing the thunder from everybody else from the start, an ordinary election does not have people spontaneously coming together to offer their help like they do in the aftermath of an Ondoy, an ordinary election does not have people lining up for hours under a beating sun to give themselves a new hope.

All this arguably has also happened alongside long periods when the acquiescence and indifference of the people have been next to infuriating. Before Cory died last year, we had reached deadening levels of cynicism and apathy, nothing seemed capable of outraging us anymore or rousing us to desperate action. But we got out of it, with yet another magnificent act of self-assertion, and with no small help from Providence, for those who see it that way. The shining examples of the people?s capacity to initiate, to create, to act are abundantly there, like an undercurrent in our history. The luminous examples of the people?s capacity to become their own heroes are plentifully there, like the beating heart of our history.

We exploit that capacity, we explore that capacity, we explode that capacity as a matter of policy, who knows? Maybe nobody need die for the Filipino anymore.

Maybe we need only say, ?The country is worth living for.?