Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
A PDF version of this post is available here.
National sovereignty is a sweet fruit tree who grows in the rich, blood-soaked soil of freedom by imbibing the power of rivers and rains. The alluvial wealth that is freedom descends from vital minerals and molecules crushed, scraped, burnished and washed away from the hard rock of Divine History and the soft flesh of Divine Creatures.
National sovereignty is the up-welling, surging yearning of a bounded geographical area, the families inside and on it and their political Constitution to protect themselves and their institutions, starting with their borders, their language and their manner(s) of calling on God.
Theology is contemplation of God driven by the yearning to find Him, the Extraordinary, in the midst of the ordinary, the Infinite in the midst of the finite, the Eternal in the midst of the corruptible.
Thus national sovereignty and theology are intensely practical. They are yearnings of deepest origin, profundum, ur-urges one might call them, or demi-urges in the classical sense of ur-fabricators.
National sovereignty and theology belong together, are mutually dependent and work to the same end: strength and happiness.
The U.S. Army Center of Military History affords a study of the evolution of US Armed Forces’ Oaths of Enlistment and Oaths of Office since 1776. National sovereignty and the theological virtues of obedience, sincerity, perseverance, trust and loyalty — soon focused on the Constitution of the USA — mingle energetically at and about the center of these Oaths.
Some Brits and Americans are serving hard time grasping the concept of national sovereignty, each country’s grandees having shot clean past it without knowing that they did. The grandees, globalists, imagine, envision and reach for a superficial unity the thought of which swells their heads, making all manner of improper behavior seem suddenly and sweetly dangerous (edgy they call it) and legitimate. Then come the darts of truth, popping swollen dreams with pictures, tapes, statements and torts.
Globalism iterates a phenomenon known as Superficial Vedanta in Hindu theological discourse and Pelagianism in Christian. It is the first and easiest of lazy and crazy thoughts (aka heresies) waiting to warp neophytes and the perpetually jejune.
Globalism has had many names. Humanism is among the first. Then, variously, came Democracy, Socialism, Liberalism, Syndicalism, Positivism, Fascism, Communism, Progressivism, Rules-Based Order and Open Society. All such names are synonyms and have a common referent: Leftism.
Superficial Vedanta and Pelagianism are synonymous terms of art, in theology, for Leftism. They are equivalent to Humanism, Socialism, Fascism, Progressivism, Communism, etc, which all are synonymous terms of art in political philosophy.
The definitive examination of Leftism is by Erik von Luehnelt-Leddihn: Leftism Revisited: From deSade And Marx To Hitler And PolPot.
Leftism is said, by Leftists, to be their desire to end conflict and impose peace by imposing rules, a rules-based order, or at least directional nudges, on human behavior, ALL OF IT. Leftists rejects the human condition as found and demand it be replaced with a human condition as demanded, BY LEFTISTS. Details of the human condition Leftists demand change now and then, sometimes rapidly, but there is a constant: whatever obtains naturally must change to whatever Leftists currently demand of it, AND NOW.
Leftism is totalitarianism with a painted-on smile. The appearance of unity on a pretension of non-conflict. ALL FORCED. That is Leftism. The forced bit is the important part.
A premise of Leftists is that the human mass can and must be educated — they mean indoctrinated — to obey the rules Leftists place ON EVERYTHING. A corollary premise is that individuals unwilling or unable to obey said rules should be eliminated quickly and quietly. Leftists therefore demand everyone undergo processing in their education/indoctrination facilities. And the more thoroughly and sooner children can be moved from influence by parents to control by Leftist staff at those facilities the better.
In culture, economics and politics, Leftists’ rules-based order demands bureaucracies with plenary authority and decision-makers with no hinderance by authority other than their own. And that order demands legions of analysts and scientists to justify the current order’s rules and develop rules for the next order, soon to come in the form of new plenary demands against reason and nature.
In other words, Leftists’ demand for peace by rules makes for perfect perpetual instability, worry, and grief. In a word, CHAOS. Since the human condition changes naturally, Leftists are obliged to constant new-rule-making just to pursue their unreachable objective of nullifying the human condition.
Thus no Leftist society can have what Leftists promises: the end of conflict and the advent of peace. Cold evidence bears out the plenary finality of that truth.
Leftism, really, is an ideology, an excuse, a pretext, for bullies to beat up the defenseless and rob them of their power, privacy and wealth. This is the point of contact and reason for kissing among Leftists and Jihadists.
In geo-strategy, Leftism has but one choice: global governance, rules-based global order, WITH LEFTISTS IN CHARGE. Whatever is going on among nations, Leftists must condemn it and impose their own rules on those nations. Those rules start with eliminating national sovereignties, of necessity, because national sovereignties — nations — by definition do not submit to a rules-based global order.
Leftists really have to paint on a smile to get humanity to invite that disaster upon themselves. But having no sense of self-effacement, and no thought of self-abnegation, Leftists have within them no smile to replicate on their face. This is their doom: THEIR LACK OF HUMOR.
Heraclitus famously said, War [conflict] is the father of all things. Plato famously said, Only the dead have seen the end of war [conflict]. The truth is that peace is the ability to make the other guy want not to attack you. That is all it is. If the other guy thinks he can get away with and profit from attacking you, probably he will do so. Not everyone will, but enough will to make the foregoing sentences monitory and more likely accurate than not.
Peace is the measure of your ability to maintain your freedom as an individual and your sovereignty as a nation. Past that, there is no peace, not for you, not for anyone.
National sovereignty is the ur-wealth POTUS Trump promised to lead forth from Americans and to inspire citizens of other countries to lead forth from themselves for their own countries.
What goes in the mouth may pollute the body.
What comes out of the mouth may pollute the personality.
Men and women are judged by what comes out of their mouth.
Theology Provides Epistemological Ground For National Sovereignty
Not a few these days say that reality is what they say it is. Theology says reality is what reality says it is. For example, someone says their gender is what they say it is, another says America is what they say it is, and another says, What I say is true is true, although I may change my mind, in which case now that is true. Theology, in contrast, says that what is true is true, your gender is the one your parents gave you at conception and America is what the Founders resolved upon as the Constitution of the Sovereign United States of America.
The question at conflict is clear. Reality is what one says it is while on the fly, so to speak, or, reality is what it is, take it or leave it. Theology goes with the latter. Theology is phenomenological. It observes reality and describes it. Theology does not posit or define reality. Theology is existential, not ideological. Furthermore, in matters existential theology is comprehensive, plenary. Its subject is human experience, all of it, to include yearning for completeness and unity. In projection and speculation theology has no interest whatsoever. Theology is an application of philosophy to the existential question of/yearning for soteriology consummation.
Nothing is more existential than national sovereignty, nothing more phenomenological than the desire to live safe from subjection and exploitation. Ergo, nothing is more oriented towards fostering national sovereignty than theology.
Theology Provides Historical Ground For National Sovereignty
History implies destiny. The moment you say something is, you inquire regarding it “To what end?” If you have a present, you had a past and you already have a future. No one with a present lacks a future. Destiny summons Theology and Theology impels and steers history, from within history towards beyond history.
History has many qualities, comprising many forces. The most crucial and forceful of history’s qualities is paradox, the unexpected, the surprising, the not anticipated. Paradox is a footprint by its vertical dimension in the horizontal dimension of life. Paradox leaves a trail of breadcrumbs tracing passage in history of that which transcends history. In Christian locution, that would be the Holy Spirit, an articulation which is both a symbol and a Name of one of three operations of the Divine Person.
The theological question is ever that nearest and dearest to man’s nature and intellect. “To what end am I? Whence came I? Who am I?” The theological question is the most subtle and therefore powerful engine and driver of history. It is about one’s destiny and it makes one’s destiny. Like religion and morality, national sovereignty (culture, to include politics) is constructed by man to facilitate his answering the theological question properly and in full.
Religion, culture and morality are evidence attesting confluences of the vertical and the horizontal dimensions of life, of the Divine and the mundane, of infinitude and finitude. Logos, existential Theology, is the form and substance of national sovereignty.
And that is the abstracted version of the observation. The empirical version is the observation of continuous struggle between secular and religious authorities in every size of jurisdiction always and everywhere on the globe. History-making theology is the only force powerful enough to transcend (flank, correct) secular government, and secular government is the only force powerful enough to protect (subdue, cleanse) theology-making history. Paradox is the bane of tyrants and the broth of patriots.
Theology Provides Patriotic Ground For National Sovereignty
Plenty of phenomenology does not interest us but is interested in us. Paul Tillich (also here) famously wrote that culture is the form of religion and religion is the substance of culture.
What runs to God runs to liberty.
What runs to liberty runs to sovereignty.
What runs to sovereignty runs to sacrifice.
What runs to sacrifice runs to true patriotism.
The natural progression of life is to grandeur and nobility.
Self-made and self-governed. Life and man are divine.
Patriotism is the sweet fruit of running to God.
God -> Freedom -> Sovereignty -> Peace
Si vis pacem, currunt ad Deum.
If you want peace, run to God.
The famous Roman proverb — Si vis pacem, para bellum [If you want peace, prepare for war] — is true but not plenary. If you want peace, run to God … and then prepare for war. Or, as the great St. Augustine put it: Love God and do what you want. Famously, Joan led The French Army into the Confessional before leading them into Battle.
And when you prepare for war, make your preparations sufficient to convince the other guy it is not worth trying you. And if he goes ahead and tries you anyhow, annihilate him immediately as a lesson to others potentially inclined to that stupidity. This is the language of statecraft.
There is not, there was not and there will not be a Universal Caliphate. There is not, there was not and there will not be a Global Governance. Pretensions to the same are juvenile and jejune. The world of man is essentially divine, but its organization this side of a divinely-initiated eschaton is secular and distributed as sovereign nation states, conditioned voluntary organizations, and conditionally sovereign individuals.
Update 1: Donald Hagan: Americans do not share a common ancestry and a common blood. What they have in common is a system of laws and beliefs that shaped the establishment of the country, a system developed within the context of Western civilization [aka The Latin Church].
Update 2: Mackubin Owens: Is There An Emerging Trump Doctrine?
Obviously an rhetorical question. He answers with five pillars of Trump Doctrine visible so far:
Patriotism
(Freedom, Allegiance, Reject Race/Religion-Based Nationalism)
Nation-Centric Inter-Nation Relations
(Sovereignty, Freedom, Reject Global [Oligarchic] Governance)
Armed Diplomacy And Finance
(Statecraft, Power, Freedom, Reject Meddling, Purchasing Friends)
Prioritize Economic Growth, Leverage Geopolitics Of Energy
(Fair Trade, Reciprocity, Freedom, Reject Free Trade, Looting Of USA Wealth)
Defense Of Liberality
(Freedom, Fairness, Loyalty, Reject Responsibility To Protect)
John Quincy Adams, July 4, 1821: Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
Update 3: As stated in the first sentence of this post, the question of authority and its location is the center of this era. Here from Glenn Reynolds is more evidence of the accuracy of that observation.
Update 4: A priest’s comment about yearning (i.e., for the sublime, the transcendent) came to mind when, updating items, I happened across this post on my blog from 15 November 2017: Theological Ground Of National Sovereignty.
The phenomenon of yearning figures prominently in Vedic existential phenomenology and of course, albeit with fewer terms of art but to the same import, in Christian theology and liturgics. The Rev. Dr. Paul Tillich tracks the phenomenon of yearning as source of Christian Trinitarian Theology, and I believe Vedas arrive at their counterpart Trinitarian formulations by the same tracking, albeit with more elaboration of the existential phenomenology and articulation thereof.
The phenomenology of yearning for the sublime and transcendent impinges rapidly and closely upon the phenomenology of national sovereignty … and upon its deprecators. In other words, theology and political philosophy are joined at the hip, so to speak, because ineluctably they share an existential base.
Case in point: witness Michael Caputo on 01 May 2018 threw an imprecation on members of both parties in the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence: “God Damn you to Hell.”
This is Draupadi’s Imprecation in modern dress.
Update 5: Foreign Policy magazine gnashes her teeth, good: Brazil’s Love Affair With Diplomacy Is Dead
Update 6: Vaclav Klaus: National Sovereignty and the Unsolvable Problem of the EU
Update 7: Sundance: Pelosi Rejects U.S. Sovereignty – U.S. Immigration Subject to Laws of “A Global Society”
Update 8: VDH: A Western Globalized Phenomenon That Citizenship Doesn’t Mean Much Anymore
Update 9: Contemplating Positions On Chinese Flanks
Mark David Hall: How Reformed Theologians’ Commitment To Self-Rule And Resisting Tyranny Helped Form America
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
