RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

The Residence Of Authority

At Contest Now: Where Does Authority Reside?

Authority resides in each individual originally, as prius of their existence.

Authority resides in a group derivatively from individual initiative and concurrence, by which is meant representative democracy concretized nationally as federalism.

Christianity and Hinduism see authority residing in each individual. Judaism and Islam see authority residing in the group, their group only.

Grand National Strategic Goal

Restore the wealth of The USA: moral, intellectual, spiritual, political, military, diplomatic, financial, medical.

Of the nation’s citizens generally and of the nation as a whole, nationally.

Grand National Strategy

Defeat or detach, do not manipulate.

Defeat means force an enemy to unconditional surrender of their military, diplomatic and financial powers — that is, of their sovereignty. Detach means leave them alone. Non-manipulation means really leave them alone, stay out of their hair entirely.

The geographical concretizer of this strategy is The Monroe Doctrine: don’t stomp about in the Western Hemisphere and, beyond that, you are on your own … unless we determine otherwise following our observation of your activities’ effects on us.

The default strategy of The Monroe Doctrine towards anyone stomping about in the Western Hemisphere is defeat them.

The default strategy of The Monroe Doctrine towards anyone’s activities outside the Western Hemisphere is detach from them.

The Monroe Doctrine’s first default strategy — relative to the Western Hemisphere and its sea, sky and space approaches — is immuable.

The Monroe Doctrine’s second default strategy — relative to land masses other than the Western Hemisphere and their sea, sky and space approaches — is mutable relative to phenomena and our desire to address them.

Grand National Tactics

GOA Douglas MacArthur: There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity. And: Only the dead have seen the end of war.

Ergo, strive not to achieve a condition of peace or security, however fervently imagined, nor fret that such a condition always seems unattainable. It is. A condition of peace or security always is an illusion merely, nothing more. Disabuse oneself of it. A peace process is a Seussian utopia.

Ergo, strive to observe phenomena — toujours phénomènes, toujours phénomènes — and in observation thereof see opportunities to establish through war, law and custom recognition that ultimate authority resides in the heart of each individual, be they believer or not.

Ergo, establish that God is for everyone, equally, not just for Jews and/or Moslems. Establish monotheism (Christianity and Hinduism) despite and in the very midst of monolatry (Judaism and Islam).

Ergo, where — geographically outside the Western Hemisphere — national and/or tribal formations agitate disruption or essay hegemonic power off their legal or customary grazes, The USA, through her elected representatives, decides whether or not to address the bellyachers. And if address is decided upon its outcome must be unconditional surrender of the military, diplomatic and financial powers — that is, the sovereignty — of the disruptive national or tribal formations.

G u i d a n c e

At Contest Now: Where Does Authority Reside?

Authority is God enthroned in the heart of each and every creature, making each and every one of them a complete, plenary one, Him and His. Thus, authority resides in each individual. And not just some authority, all authority. God is not pieced out. Like the truth, He is the whole, everywhere, everything, in each as each.

Played out as history, this phenomenology of authority makes history God’s self-revelation and life God’s self-concretization.

One is permanence, thoroughness and solitude.

Grand National Strategic Goal

Political and social freedom are the bitter rind of the fruit of life. Spiritual and personal liberation are the sweet pulp of the fruit of life. You are the seed of the tree of life which produces the nourishment of liberation protected by the hard surround of political and social freedom.

This phenomenology our Founding Fathers remarked in phrases such as: the moral and religious basis of a freely democratic republic.

Liberation from what, for what? Freedom from what, for what? Liberation from anxiety, for courage. Freedom from intrusion, for production.

The wealth of nations is their condition of liberation and freedom. The deeper and wider the number of her individuals experiencing spiritual and personal liberation, the wealthier the nation. The fewer and narrower the number of such individuals, the poorer the nation. Likewise, the larger and stronger the number of citizens experiencing political and social freedom, the wealthier the nation. And the smaller and weaker the number of such citizens, the poorer the nation.

With respect to spiritual and personal liberation, the wealth of nations is measured as their number of monasteries, libraries and self-educating families. Religious and educational institutions are not a measure of the wealth of nations. At best, such institutions are an epiphenomenon of wealth — liberation and freedom — created by monasteries, libraries and self-educating families. Usually, religious and educational institutions only measure the wealth of their patrons and operators. What prays, contemplates and learns grows confident, experimental and reliable. What talks, speculates and hopes grows impulsive, vacillating and absent. Spiritual and personal liberation is the engine of culture. Nations who maximize monasteries, libraries and self-educating families maximize wealth. Nations who minimize monasteries, libraries and self-educating families minimize wealth. To maximize liberation of her individuals — and therefore her wealth — a nation minimizes obstructions to founding and expanding of monasteries, libraries and self-educating families.

With respect to political and social freedom, the wealth of nations is measured as their freedom of movement, internal and external. Communications — universal commonality, concurred uniformity — is the measure of a nation’s movement, therefore of her freedom, and therefore of her wealth. Political and social freedom is the protection of culture. Nations who maximize communications maximize wealth. Nations who minimize communications minimize wealth. What moves grows stronger. What stops grows weaker. To maximize her freedom — and therefore her wealth — a nation minimizes obstructions to her movements, her communications, her universal commonality, internal and external.

By movements is meant all forms of human endeavor, to include even crime, which is most thoroughly uprooted when its visage is unmistakably grotesque.

To restore the wealth of The USA, de-inhibit monasteries, libraries and self-educating families. Get out of the way of individuals’ yearning for liberation. Let them be themselves.

To restore the wealth of The USA, de-inhibit movement, internal and external. Let her people go. Let them be themselves.

Discussions of grand national strategic goal at Theological Geography.

Grand National Strategy

On The Justification Of War

Re-Examining Imperialism, So-Called

The Reason For War And A Tripartite Alliance

The International Public Park Of The Middle East

Ethics And War – Amplifications Of A Theme From Trinity Season

Grand National Tactics

The USA Armed Forces are for protecting The USA national sovereignty, not for international peace keeping or freedom fighting.

Military forces are not police forces, although for their internal use they employ policing functions to enforce laws made for their own (for example, The USA’s UCMJ) and to protect their own from external attack. Military forces are for winning wars, not for enforcing laws made by their representatives to regulate civilians’ interactions. Usually — and at best — wars are on foreign soil. Were a war to occur on domestic soil — for example, a civil war against The USA national sovereignty — military forces rightly would be used on domestic soil to protect The USA national sovereignty.

Tactical thinking and planning treat of activity inside close-by geographies. Tactical thinking and planning, therefore, summon meditations on morality and efforts at ethics.

Morality and ethics are not synonyms. They relate dynamically. Morality is a field of action and ethics a field of analysis. Both are phenomenological.

Morality is accepting another creature as the residence of original authority. And with respect to another human creature, morality is accepting the personhood — a phenomenon unique to humans — of another human creature, which is to say not only as the residence of original authority but also as the creator, integrator and preserver of power and meaning. The human creature, a unitary person, intensely distills and reflects the Divine Person, to include His aseity. They and their personhood are not to be traduced, bandied about or otherwise trifled with.

The divine, unitary nature of the human creature’s personhood requires they be treated with single-pointed consistency. In dealings with the human creature, thought, word and deed must align in unison. Unity of personhood requires union of the triple thread of life: thought, word and deed. Coming and going!

That union measures morality. If thought, word and deed are united — even for evil — morality is present because a human creature’s personhood is treated as a unity. If thought, word and deed do not align — even for supposed good — morality is not present because a creature’s personhood is treated as pieces.

Ergo, grand national tactics — by definition aimed at protecting The USA national sovereignty — are assessed as moral if their thought, word and deed align with respect to the personhood of each human creature on each side of the line of battle. And if they do not demonstrate single-pointed consistency, said grand national tactics are assessed as immoral on both sides of the line of battle.

Morality is unity of thought, word and deed. Immorality is disunity of thought, word and deed. Morality’s measure is phenomenological, not relative, personal or attitudinal.

Ethics, in contrast to morality, is an analytical tool set upon the phenomenology of human interactions to discern whether they are moral or not. Ethics is the labor which scrutinizes and reports upon action ex post facto or contemplated action a priori to determine its fidelity to the rigor of morality, to wit, single-pointed consistency of thought, word and deed.

Morality is alignment of thought, word and deed. Ethics is scrutiny which assesses that alignment.

Morality is the boat, ethics is the crew. They relate dynamically.

Discussions of containment at Theological Geography.

The Good Shepherd — The Gentle Shepherd As Fierce Warrior

Update 1: Steven Hayward at Power Line posts profoundly on this very contest regarding the residence of authority. With edits here, I commented there:

The question of public and private spheres, and their intersections, is — deeper down and wider — the question of where authority resides: in an individual or in a group? And especially where does original as compared to derivative authority reside: individual or group?

Classically, Christianity and Hinduism — both Aryan religions — say original authority resides in each individual and derivative authority resides — following concurrence of individuals, at best through representatives — in a group of some size/description or another. The implication there is that God is for everyone, equally. This is called monotheism.

Classically, Judaism and Islam — both Semitic religions — say original authority resides in the group (the Jews or the Moslems, led by their scriptural scholars) and derivative authority resides in an individual, especially a male individual, but only if they are, respectively, Jewish or Moslem. The implication there is that God is for Jews only or for Moslems only. This is called monolatry.

In Hayward’s citation of him, Strauss is reaching for the classical Aryan rather than the classical Semitic view of the residence of original authority. Still, Hayward in this post puts touch to the really fundamental matter at issue –i.e., war — today across the globe: the residences of original and derivative authority.

Update 2: From another direction, William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection presses upon this contest as well. I commented:

There are people who believe that as long as they are talking they are accomplishing. State, CIA and White House today are full of the kind. It seems inconceivable that anyone could be so vacuous, but it is there to see is happening. In their minds, their talking eventually (strategic patience) compels their interlocutor(s) to abide their wishes and live by rules to which they long-since resolved to compel those interlocutors to submit.

It is not your grandmother’s way of thinking. Or, perhaps it is. To the extent hoax is involved, it occurs bi-directionally: the talker hoaxes their target and is hoaxed by their ego. That pan-optic delusion-ing flummoxes the decent. Well, for a time anyway.

At the moment there is no way of getting to the hoaxing and its consequences to make it and them move in a sane direction. However, and importantly, there are ways — and sufficient means — to get fixes on what a sane direction of movement would entrain. And upon such I urge the expenditure of time, energy and wealth. The days advance when results of that effort will be dearly treasured.

Update 3: My Last Sermon: Christianity Free Of Religion

Update 4: John Hinderaker at Power Line has mentioned the desirability of crusade against Caliphists (and here) more than once. Easter 2015 brought another mention by him. And again here, for which I thanked him.

Update 5: John Hinderaker at Power Line exegetes Rand Paul’s announcement that he is standing for election as POTUS. I commented in some frustration with the low and cliched general discussions of affairs:

So far, no announced 2016 POTUS candidate has enunciated a grand national strategic goal. Rand and his father have an implicit grand national tactics and a presumed (?) grand national strategy. But no grand national strategic goal has been announced by them or by Ted Cruz/Cross. Hillary C, on the other hand, has announced a grand national strategic goal: empathize with enemies. This sounds batty, and it is, but it is chock full of content — nefarious content, but content: both grand national strategies and tactics.

Everyone, including evil doers doing it inside and to US government, ecclesia and academe, knows the USA is being dismantled as a sovereign nation state and that this is suicidal. Everyone knows environmentalism is window dressing for artificially induced 80% die-off of humanity. Everyone knows that evil doers of several flavors labor to impose global domination by themselves on everyone else.

OK, there is no need to restate that or note its myriads of manifestation. Most of the comments here are tiresome because they repeat only that known known at several pitches, but the same tiresome tune. Everyone knows the picture is red and black going to ash.

Who is articulating what sanity looks and sounds like? Who is offering for discussion phenomenological fundamentals of grand national goal, strategy and tactics? And par excellence, who is offering for discussion what really is the issue at contest –the residence of authority — and with that, why, who and how to bring it to teleological resolution rather than merely cessation or bored neglect … i.e., entropic dissimulation?

Soldiers can lead nation states. Professors, clergy and physicians — and professional politicians and lawyers — cannot. The latter have a place and leading a nation state is not it. Everyone trusts a Netanyahu or an Al-Sisi because they are Soldiers: they know how to respond to evil doers and have courage and fortitude to do so. Ditto Bush One and Two. Bush Three is no Soldier. Nor is Rand, Hillary or O’Malley. The Chief Executive[of the people’s desire for safety]’s job is to defend and protect the nation state, starting with its Constitution. Only a Soldier is intellectually and temperamentally disposed to do that.

Update 6: Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church are contesting this very question of the residence of authority right now.

Update 7: Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club expresses faith in Americans as Americans in his post Malice vs Incompetence. Respected commenter Subotai Bahadur made a comment on which I commented, with edits here, as follows:

With respect, I cannot agree that there have been no consequences of The Fraud’s malevolent ego that have worked for USA benefit. Forcing Saud/Wahhab to take care of himself, albeit with USA materiel and probably intel and logistics support, benefits everyone. Saud/Wahhab deserves exile with but the shirt on his back. Also, forcing Iran to gun-up makes their evil intentions patent and seduces them into thinking they are a global power. When the weed grows tall, the more easily is it pulled up, root and all.

And another benefit of The Faud’s malevolence, especially the lack of challenge to it: it, too, self-reveals, and so sharply as to convince veritably all creatures that he deserves oblivion. Put another way, The Fraud’s competence at imposing his agenda (rules-based post-national order where he makes the rules via strategic patience) exposes his incompetence at bringing it to fruition much less making it stick, anywhere. I think some version of this insight is Fernandez’ point here.

Ultimately, malevolence is subverted by its own incompetence on the far side of its more fearsome than actually competent onset. No evil personality is irresistible or invincible, after all. One should not fear that one is or could be. For example. And in any case, is one born, does one die?

Malevolence is its own destruction. It is competent at malevolence and incompetent at persistence. The Fraud has the competence of a malevolent ego: seeming much asserting itself, really little maintaining itself. The incompetent are shunned. The malevolent are hunted.

Update 8: VDH: Are formalities that we now write off as minor or irrelevant—how one shakes hands, the lost arts like etiquette and pleasant diction, a rich vocabulary, the avoidance of slang and profanity—not that really minor after all?

Update 9: Sarah Hoyt: The Architecture Of Fear:

I can’t push you and I won’t. If you want to keep your opinions — left, right, moderate, libertarian, anarchist — hidden, it’s your job. I am not the keeper of your soul.

However, I want you to think of the dark and dank place that fear and that suspicion and the constant spying lead.

And then I want you to think of how good it would feel to get off your knees, stand on two, look your tormentors in the face and say “No more. I’m free. My thoughts and my opinions, my beliefs, my tastes, my friends are my own. You have no power over me. Not now, and not ever again.”

That’s all. I just want you to think.

Update 10: The Second American Civil War

Update 11: John Hinderaker at Power Line exegetes Marco Rubio’s announcement to stand for election as POTUS. I commented:

FWIW, Rubio’s foreign policy — which includes immigration — concepts, especially his assumptions, will measure whether he really is a harbinger of American restoration or merely a decent, if charismatic, man out of his depth, as are so many, many many. I will be listening for his grand national strategic goal, with luck patently expressed. And I will be listening for his moral courage to fight towards that goal, with luck one worthy of us.

And I will be watching his team for known anti-Americans, Globalists, worn-out, failed political hacks and hangers-on. A man is known by the company he keeps.

The American Dream is not a grand national strategic goal. It is not even a goal. It is a family achievement, or not. And it is a dream, not reality … unless a husband and wife and their children make it reality. Millions are disinclined that way now, prefer handouts, which is slavery.

I want to hear an American Goal worthy of Americans. I think making the world believe The Monroe Doctrine, in modern, full-spectrum warfare terms, is the ground of that Goal.

Update 12: Glenn Reynolds on 19 November 2002(!): The Barbarians Are Back

Update 13: Time to go on the offensive: Glenn Reynolds and Kurt Schlichter (and here) (also here), also Scott Johnson. Ivy League lawyers all, screwing up their courage, lubricating their saddles and tack and professional tools of art.

Update 14: How Maggie Thatcher handled the most slimy journalistic practice:

Update 15: Stephen D. Krasner embodies the bathetic stupidity of America’s ruling class. I commented:

Good enough governance. Sounds micro-managerial, timid, sophistical/Solomonic and Ivory Tower. And a military not tasked with winning a war/conflict? … words fail and casting aspersions is unmanly. I prefer colonization and culture-splicing. Solve the problem, don’t manage it. It is unmanageable. Defeat it or detach from it. Do not manipulate/manage it.

Update 16: Americans helping Kurds.

Update 17: Michael J. Totten reviews ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. See also Michael Ledeen: Who Is IS?

Update 18: Scott Johnson at Power Line links two videos of Senator Tom Cotton discussing USA foreign policy. These are instructive, depressingly so. I commented as follows:

I have attended, carefully, both videos mentioned here. Senator Cotton is a good man, a fine man. His intellect, heart and bona fides are unimpeachable. He walks point for the best intentions and thinking our nation’s official leader cadre can produce at this moment in time.

His grasp of American strategic goal, strategy and tactics so lags the need as to arouse disconsolation.

This is not a personal failure of Senator Cotton’s. It is a corporate failure of America’s leader cadre. And behind them it is a failure of America’s parents (in particular, mothers, but also fathers), schools, churches and synagogues to foster spiritual, cultural and moral infrastructure that builds and protects our mother country.

Related: PL has two mentions in Tom’s Wikipedia bio. And he’s a knuckle-dragger. The Times letter may have caused his move from line to staff and then out. Something got him out early after a fast rise in the line, consignment to staff and a short time in reserves. I’d say the Times letter signaled political aspirations and counter-signaled mil career, another reason for an early out for a rising OBC line officer.

PL featured the Times letter, as I recall. It would be a rare serving officer, especially a junior, who would address the Times without command prior-approval and expect a mil career afterwards. Maybe the Harvard Man Syndrome punched through to dominance for that incident. The military is not a democracy.

Update 19: Give Caliphists credit for driving directly against their enemy: Authority.

Update 20: GEN (R) David Petraeus granted The Washington Compost a interview which reveals the best thinking of a Beltway insider post-Ramadi. That, however, falls short of the need. The need is to cast away all assumptions regarding alliances and interests and look exactly at what is happening and by whom. Throw away the current, agreed puzzle pieces of world order and look freshly, without reference to those puzzle pieces, at the actual phenomenology in the ME and beyond. Trace the vectors and name what they imply. Look at the activity as a neutral observer, impartially, with no assumptions regarding shoulds or ifs or musts. I guarantee, that exercise will produce resolves like unto this.

Update 21: See also morchidat in Morocco.

Update 22: GEN (R) Petraeus: The Islamic State Is Not Our Biggest Problem In Iraq

Update 23: Sultan Knish: De-Islamization Is The Only Way To Defeat ISIS

Kurt Schlichter concurs.

Update 24: A Story From The Fall Of Ramadi

Update 25: A story from Ammo Grrrll

Update 26: Regarding developments in North Korea.

Update 27: Americans Have Lost Confidence In … Everything.

Update 28: OPM Deploys Government Coaches After Hack.

Update 29: The Saudi Connection: Wahhabism and Global Jihad, and related: Qatar.

Update 30: Related: It’s Not Easy Going Green.

Update 31: Paul Bremer made a disastrous strategic mistake dissolving the Iraqi Armed Forces and General Staff.

Update 32: Saud meets karma.

Update 33: Reality has caught up with King Abdullah of Jordan, at least superficially.

Update 34: A side-point on this post: is it really true that Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, aka global Islamic hegemony by every means available? This statement is repeated again and again, seemingly everywhere, by everyone. Is it true? I do not know, but I suspect it is not true, and have no way to validate my suspicion.

I suspect al Saud is the world’s largest state sponsor of global Islamic hegemony (Caliphism), at least if large is taken to indicate monies spent and time-in-grade.

For example, who pays for the Islamic Centers, Islamic propaganda/information circulars/curricula and Islamic Studies Departments at … how many primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities around the globe? Who pays for the Islamic “prison ministries” in virtually every country not officially Islamic? Who pays for the madrassas in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere? Who is trying to bankrupt some countries while funding others as well as supposedly non-state actors?

Who fills the world’s media with continuous cascades of sanctimonious double-talk to justify global Islamic hegemony?

If my suspicion regarding the world’s largest sponsor of “terrorism” is correct, then a one-eyed laser-focus on Iran as the primary enemy of the USA in the ME flouts Von Clausewitz’ first rule of war, does it not?

Finally — and of this I am certain: in the ME, it is deeply and widely held as fundamental truth that the State of Israel birthed ISIS — which in the ME is deeply and widely hated by the generality — to cripple Arab freedom, independence and self-determination.

Update 35: Daniel Greenfield: Building An Islamic State In America, One Church At A Time

Update 36: Richard Fernandez: That Old Time Religion

Update 37: Daniel Greenfield: Dear Corporate America

Update 38: The American posture would be to ally with Russia in Syria, take out both Assad and ISIS, hold Iran at her border and beat her out of Iraq, help al-Abadi quiet and impartial-ize Iraq, invite India to join their alliance, tell other MENA governments to shut up and get out of the world’s face or else and then the three amigos, Russia, USA and India, pivot to face down humanity’s big and serious enemy; China.

Update 39: The actuality of women in the Israeli Defense Force

Update 40: Kissinger never will understand nationhood and statecraft. He thinks only of manipulation, which is deadly for all.

Spengler takes him down.

Update 41: Democracy Alliance funding ~~Black~~ Bastards Lives Matter

Update 42: Charles Kenny: Saudi Arabia Is Underwriting Terrorism. Let’s Start Making It Pay

Update 43: Syriac Christian women also are fighting ISIS

Update 44: Yazidi female line battalion

Update 45: Good News: Zoroastrian revival among Kurds

Update 46: Iran, India, Russia, Kurdistan, Iraq, O My!

Update 47: The Religion Iranian Mullahs Fear Most: Zoroastrianism

Update 48: ADM (Ret.) William McRaven: A Warrior’s Career Sacrificed For Politics

On the other hand, see here what the Admiral does. Instead of renouncing his clearance in protest, he wants to showboat for leftists.