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
Robert E. Lee’s mother wrote at length once to her sister, concluding with the observation that her letter was long because she did not have time to be brief.
I feel like the following observations and ruminations could spread over the pages of many books. But I cannot write in that manner, discursively over minutiae. My cognition works in the other direction, ecstatically over coups d’oeil. Be who you are, he said to himself: content-compendious and stylisticly-cryptic. It is still lengthy, but not nearly so much as could be. And if it is too pithy, cryptic or abrupt, that is not my problem. I write for the learning and the learned.
In style, purpose and scope, these are siblings of the present study:
Where Is The Church — Take One
Where Is The Church — Take Two
The Gentle Shepherd As Fierce Warrior
USA Grand National Strategic Objective — Take Two
Studies in Authority, Sovereignty, Statecraft and Freedom
Ethics And War – Amplifications Of A Theme From Trinity Season
Three Brothers Doctrine: Rationale, Nature, Objectives, Implementations
USA Grand National Strategic Objective, Strategy And Tactics — Take One
Take One on this subject, dated 29 June 2014, is here. Take Two on this subject, dated 27 August 2014, is here. Take Three on this subject is here.
The grand national strategic objective of The United States Of America is to preserve, protect and defend (1) the inalienable personal freedoms and sovereign authorities of her citizens, who are thrown into existence by Almighty God and their parents, (2) the inalienable freedoms and sovereignties of state and subordinate authorities called into existence by Almighty God and residents of said state who are citizens of The United States Of America to facilitate fairness in their lives together and (3) the one sovereign nation called into being by Almighty God and those sovereign states through The Constitution Of The United States Of America.
In short, the grand national strategic objective of The United States Of America is to preserve, protect and defend The Constitution Of The United States Of America.
Theology (Logos/Reason) is what connects freedom and sovereignty. This is so for the same reason von Clausewitz insisted that national policy and actual war fighting be integral, connected by reason. If theology does not connect/integrate freedom and sovereignty, freedom is anarchy and sovereignty is anarchy’s obverse: tyranny. Neither is a happy condition, not for anyone. If reason does not connect policy with actual war fighting, policy is whistling in the wind and actual war fighting is whistling’s obverse: killing with no strategic purpose, no advantage gained, no human honor achieved nor moral glory affirmed. A waste of time, money and energy.
Rules can not and do not connect freedom and sovereignty. The cliche is true: laws do not compel behavior and morality cannot be legislated. Only that which is anterior to both freedom and sovereignty can connect those treasures and compel behavior through them. Only the prius of laws and other legislation can affect behavior and effect morality … or its deformation. The prius, the anterior, is reason, writ large as Reason (Logos) in classical philosophy and theology.
Reason/Logos (the universal) and reason/mind (the particular) share identical structure and functionality. This congruity makes reality intelligible, learning possible and life pleasant. So say classical and modern savants in unison, and rightly so. Parmenides: Where there is Being there is the Logos of Being.
A rules-based international community or system of global governance is smoke from a dreamer’s bong for the same reason there is no mundane freedom or sovereignty outside Christian or Hindu civilization: it stands outside the universal continuum from Reason to reason, from the personal to the political. Only a select few are allowed to govern a so-called global community. And chosen by whom, on what grounds? Not for nothing is the field manual of The Anglican Communion named The Book Of Common Prayer. Authority springs from the common ground: personhood, Logos, reason. This is not that.
The authority of any group depends absolutely on agreement by the commonality from which it is selected.
Paul Tillich (also here) famously wrote that culture is the form of religion and religion is the substance of culture. National sovereignty rests in and rises from the theological ground. Its prius is freedom. And the prius of freedom is Logos, Reason … Almighty God.
Two religions recognize the Divine substance of freedom and two cultures form that substance into useful artifacts. One is Hinduism. The other is Christianity. Both are trinitarian religions. Both maintain sub-forms which communicate, in one sub-form, the penury of God (Shaivism, the Latin Church) or, in the other sub-form, the majesty of God (Vaishnavism, the Greek Church). The United States Of America is a form of the Latin Church. In turn, the Latin Church is the substance of the United States of America.
Denial of or attack upon that simple reality must be regarded and declared as evidence of insanity as well as sedition. Such efforts are right up there with the seditious insanity and betrayal of asserting that gender is a social construct and half at least of the human race is toxic. Personalities asserting such things are cuckoo, barking, and unwelcome. They deserve prosecution for subversion of their state and its subordinate authorities as well as sedition and/or treason against their nation, depending on the substance of their activities.
Christianity connects USA citizens’ freedom with their sovereignties as persons, states and nation. This fact must be faced and accepted. It is immutable and not going away, ever.
This raises the question of the interaction between The Declaration Of Independence and The Constitution Of The United States Of America. Here is a metaphor for visualizing that interaction:
The Constitution is the vehicle.
The Declaration is the drive train.
Christianity is the fuel.
The USA citizen is the driver.
Three Zones, Enclosures Of Authority
Let us ponder the three factors or zones of USA grand national strategic objective: Personhood, Statehood and Nationhood.
Personhood
There are two themes here, comprising a dance, so to speak, through livelihood. Or, one could say, a polarity.
One dance partner is the absoluteness of a creature’s right to be here. This right starts at conception, and before that even, with Divine resolve upon one’s embodiment. It is God-resolved and parents-executed.
The other dance partner is a creature’s need to associate, in several conditions, with other creatures. Association is done for protection and for the maturing effect of conflict or struggle. Life exists and expands because of struggle.
Without conflict there is no life. Death or non-existence is described accurately as conflict-less-ness. Existence is described as struggle because omnipresent struggle is the most obvious characteristic of existence. A man’s cardio-pulmonary system illustrates struggle as the fundamental condition of life. When it ceases work, the man is not there. Procreation is omnidirectional struggle from start to finish.
So we have an individual and a group in countless combinations and permutations, all dynamic, and that is the dance of life. The dance being the struggle.
Personhood appears only as human creatures. Among creatures, human creatures comprise the most complexity and possess, in consequence, the strongest claim to and measure of freedom. Said freedom, be it noted, is neither plenary nor untrammeled. It is a lot but not all. No one and no thing has absolute freedom … nor absolute anything. God even, Who is neither a being nor a thing, is [willing] slave to the love of his devotees.
Human creatures ask a question no other creature asks: what is the meaning and purpose of power? Animals are not free to ask that question. A human creatures’ struggle to answer that question — a struggle engaged in by every human creature — gives a human creature a sense of personhood in themselves and in other human creatures.
All creatures relate to all other creatures through calculations of relative power, which means threat. But only human creatures inquire — and especially as to other human creatures, who they know are making the same inquiries — after the meaning of power differentials. Non-human creatures do not study political philosophy. They do not study philosophy of any denomination. The question of meaning belongs to the human creature alone. This is because only the human creature labors in the dimension of spirit, the dimension of life wherein questions of power and meaning collide, strive and ultimately unite.
Power is God. God is power. Therefore, questions regarding power — such as questions regarding political philosophy — are questions regarding God. Political philosophy is theology by another name. Thus the name of this blog.
The person is the foundation of the state and the nation, the root of the tree of life. The person’s freedom and sovereignty define the stewardship responsibilities of the state and the nation. Next after the person in the order of importance on the tree of life is the family as traditionally, which is to say rightly, understood. The family’s freedom and sovereignty define the stewardship responsibilities of the state and the nation. Next after the family in the order of importance on the tree of life is the village or town. The village’s or town’s freedom and sovereignty define the stewardship responsibilities of the state and the nation. Then the county, then the state, then the nation as a whole.
Freedom and sovereignty belong to each of those authorities because they belong to their root: the individual person. The root of the tree of life governs and guides the above-ground parts of it, so to speak. Personhood — which is to say God — governs creation no matter how you might care to slice it. Tyrants try to overlook the fact, but persons make their personhood sovereign one way and another, in spite of doom.
Personhood is the first and foremost authority of Being Itself (esse ipsum). Of the five dimensions of life — inorganics, organics, psyche, spirit and history — animals operate in the first three and persons operate in the first four while some persons operate more or less also in the fifth dimension of life, history.
Statehood
Persons and families residing in zones of geography note singularities of their zones and adjacent ones. These singularities together with demographic histories — which reflect the availability of (1) potable water, (2) arable land and (3) communication on interior lines — produce village or town and then state boundary demarcations. Roughly speaking, state boundaries reflect differentials in geological textures, demographics and micro-climates.
A state authority is defined by the persons residing in it, roughly speaking, as a geo-demo-climate singularity that perceives itself as a unity for the purpose of self-governance. It is all based on geography, demographics and climate, which is to say, mountains, rivers, trees, fields, families and precipitation. Textures — geologic, human, atmospheric — of enclosures on the planet’s surface. So, mostly hard geography/demos/climate … but identified and defined by families residing thereon and therein. Village, town and state authorities are of that order of things.
A village or town and a state are self-protection and fairness assurance devices. They are constructs impelled by Almighty God and fashioned by families to increase said families’ survivability amidst and against the vicissitudes of life. Villages, towns and states are servants or stewards of the welfare, which is to say the freedom and sovereignty, of the families who made them. They have no other raisons d’être.
Statehood — to include its subordinate authorities — is the second and secondary authority of Being Itself (esse ipsum). Of the five dimensions of life — inorganics, organics, psyche, spirit and history — all states, and their subordinate authorities, operate in the first four while not a few states operate in the fifth dimension, history, some more so, some less.
Nationhood
In Volume III of his Systematic Theology, Paul Tillich, discoursing on the Kingdom of God, discusses the constituting entities of history.
The passage is typically Tillichian, which is to say thorough and erudite, and his observations are typically accurate. Time pressing through it, in spite of unfamiliar concepts and turns of phrase, is time profitably employed. After all, much treasure of knowledge has been ignored, hidden or discarded during the last half century and more due to the academy’s being stuffed with personalities having no or negative reasons for being there.
Like a state and its subordinate authorities, a nation or country is a protection device. Its purpose is self-preservation of its constituting persons and families. To accomplish which, a nation’s being is three-fold: Land, Families and Constitution. From October of 2009 I explored that three-fold nature as The United States Of America, and then in June of 2015, while maintaining the original analysis of three-fold nature, I amended the same post with a happier prognosis for the USA nature’s survival, an anticipation which turned out to be accurate.
In order for a nation/country to form, to dissolve or to transform, all three components of her being must concur. The Land, the Families and the Constitution must all want it. This is the basic reason not to fear revolutionaries. And note, please, that the Land is counted as an effective participant in a nation’s decision-making process. This is why in the Bible and popular consciousness proper conduct among humans elicits blessings from powers of nature whereas improper conduct among humans elicits retributive violence from those same powers.
The Land itself is an independent power for action and reaction. So too the Sea and Air. And Fire and Space. Each of the elements is a happy camper or not in reference to the moral condition of families depending on them. Nature is moral, reasonable, Logistic and interactive, not a-moral, treacherous, harsh, or grim.
The Constitution also is a power and especially so when (1) it sets high costs for amending itself and (2) the nation’s Armed Forces swear loyalty to The Constitution rather than to one of the Branches of Government the Constitution authorizes. In other words, USA Armed Forces support and defend the root of the nation, not its branches.
This structure is possible because The United States of America has no titles of nobility. Had we the same, our Armed Forces would be tasked with supporting and defending the titled families in precedence order, top first. The Magic Negro labored to transform The United States Of America into just such a system. The Fetid Harridan would have pushed harder for it.
The nation or country is the primary and indispensable actor in the dimension of history. Many nations define themselves by race or religion or both. These yearn for racial and/or religious singularity and purity. They believe sovereign national cohesion is not possible outside racial and/or religious uniformity. Their governments focus on maintaining what they imagine is the purity of one race and/or one religion inside their enclosure (border) at least.
A few nations, such as USA, Russia and India, define themselves as multi-racial and multi-religious sovereign countries. Such nations are unique, the historical exception rather than the historical convention. At her founding, USA eschewed uniformity (establishment) of religion. Following her dispute over secession by states, USA eschewed uniformity (slavery and race-selective immigration) of race. Following World War Two, USA eschewed purity (segregation) of race. Those decisions are irrevocable.
Forget not: Nationhood and Statehood exist by the resolve of God and persons to serve Personhood, and not just the Personhood of a select few but of all citizens of the nation or state, respectively. The United States of America is a representative republic. It is not a democracy. Our Founding Fathers labored mightily to prevent democracy from overwhelming the national government they were creating in response to the resolve of Almighty God that our nation be formed.
Nationhood is the third and tertiary authority of Being Itself (esse ipsum). Of the five dimensions of life — inorganics, organics, psyche, spirit and history — nations operate in all five, some more and some less so. The nation is the full package of human enterprise, defined by her Land, Families and Constitution, making her way in the hubbub of mundane affairs. A nation’s priority is self-preservation. She has no choice about that and must succeed either directly through formation (e.g., India, Great Britain, USA) or indirectly through re-formation (e.g., Russia, Rome, Israel).
Atop the dome of this Capitol stands the Statue of Freedom. She stands tall and dignified among the monuments to our ancestors who fought and lived and died to protect her.
Monuments to Washington and Jefferson — to Lincoln and King.
Memorials to the heroes of Yorktown and Saratoga — to young Americans who shed their blood on the shores of Normandy, and the fields beyond. And others, who went down in the waters of the Pacific and the skies over Asia.
And freedom stands tall over one more monument: this one. This Capitol. This living monument to the American people.
A people whose heroes live not only in the past, but all around us — defending hope, pride, and the American way.
They work in every trade. They sacrifice to raise a family. They care for our children at home. They defend our flag abroad. They are strong moms and brave kids. They are firefighters, police officers, border agents, medics, and Marines.
But above all else, they are Americans. And this Capitol, this city, and this Nation, belong to them.
Our task is to respect them, to listen to them, to serve them, to protect them, and to always be worthy of them.
And the linguistic kill shot:
Americans are dreamers, too.
And this:
We want every American to know the dignity of a hard day’s work.
Why We Fight
Short answer: we fight to protect our mothers. Each of us has seven mothers:
Natural Mother — She gives us birth
Mother Cow — She gives us nourishment
Mother Earth — She gives us space
Mother Country — She gives us safety
Mother Language — She gives us skill
Mother Scripture — She gives us knowledge
Mother Religion — She gives us grandeur
Long answer: we fight because it is our calling to protect our seven mothers. We were born to do it. We also choose to do it, but unlike the majority of our countrymen, we were born to make the choice to do it. The Profession of Arms is a profession, not an occupation. It proceeds from an inner call, a Divine urging, not merely a career choice. The Profession of Arms has a strong vertical component that occupations, which are horizontal vectors, do not. The Almighty calls — internally — certain roles from the ranks of human creatures to serve citizens of their nation as preeminent repositories and practitioners of certain life-sustaining essential knowledge and skills. The Profession of Arms is one of these roles
Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God
Update 1: General Douglas MacArthur addressed [the] Massachusetts State Legislature in Boston, July 25, 1951: “It was the adventurous spirit of Americans which despite risks and hazards carved a great nation from an almost impenetrable wilderness … which built our own almost unbelievable material progress … which raised the standard of living of the American people beyond that ever before known. … This adventurous spirit is now threatened as it was in the days of the Boston Tea Party by an unconscionable burden of taxation. This is sapping the initiative and energies of the people and leaves little incentive for the assumption of those risks which are inherent and unescapable in the forging of progress under the system of free enterprise. Worst of all, it is throwing its tentacles around the low income bracket sector of our society, from whom is now exacted the major share of the cost of government. This renders its paper income largely illusory. …”
General MacArthur continued: “The so-called forgotten man of the early thirties now is indeed no longer forgotten as the government levies upon his income as the main remaining source to defray reckless spendthrift policies. More and more we work not for ourselves but for the State. In time, if permitted to continue, this trend cannot fail to be destructive. For no nation may survive in freedom once its people become servants of the State, a condition to which we are now pointed with dreadful certainty. …”
MacArthur added: “Nothing is heard from those in the supreme executive authority concerning the possibility of a reduction or even a limitation upon these mounting costs. No suggestion deals with the restoration of some semblance of a healthy balance. No plan is advanced for easing the crushing burdens already resting upon the people. To the contrary, all that we hear are the plans by which such costs progressively may be increased. New means are constantly being devised for greater call upon the taxable potential as though the resources available were inexhaustable. We compound irresponsibility by seeking to share what liquid wealth we have with others. …”
MacArthur stated further: “Much that I have seen since my return to my native land after an absence of many years has filled my with immeasurable satisfaction and pride. Our material progress has been little short of phenomenal. It has established an eminence in material strength so far in advance of any other nation or combination of nations that talk of an imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. It is not of any external threat that I concern myself but rather of insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions – these institutions which formerly we hailed as something beyond question of challenge – those institutions we proudly called the American way of life.
“Foremost of these forces is that directly, or even more frequently indirectly, allied with the scourge of imperialistic Communism. It has infiltrated into positions of public trust and responsibility – into journalism, the press, the radio and the school. It seeks through covert manipulation of the civil power and the media of public information and education to pervert the truth, impair respect for moral values, suppress human freedom and representative government, and in the end destroy our faith in our religious teachings. This evil force, with neither spiritual base nor moral standard, rallies the abnormal and subnormal elements among our citizenry and applies internal pressure against all things we hold descent and all things that we hold right – the type of pressure which has caused many Christian nations abroad to fall and and their own cherished freedoms to languish in the shackles of complete suppression.
“As it has happened there it can happen here. Our need for patriotic fervor and religious devotion was never more impelling. There can be no compromise with atheistic Communism, no half way in the preservation of freedom and religion. It must be all or nothing. We must unite in the high purpose that the liberties etched upon the design of our life by our forefathers be unimpaired and that we maintain the moral courage and spiritual leadership to preserve inviolate that mighty bulwark of all freedom, our Christian faith.”
Update 2: Spengler: No foreign intelligence service could learn anything from the House Republicans’ memo except that the FBI retailed the mercenary inventions of a retired British spook and concealed the provenance of its information. Some may consider it dangerous to expose senior officials of America’s counterintelligence service as political hacks and fools. They needn’t worry. America’s adversaries have been well aware of this for a long time.
Update 3: I feel that this study moves the wall forward against Leftist subversion of USA morals, institutions, intellect and manners. Some maneuver room is gained hereby. Quite a bit of it, actually, I think. After all, wars are won in the minds of the respective commanders, not in the bodies of their troops. My father was a wandering Aramean ….
Update 4: VDH: From Conspiracy Theories To Conspiracies
Update 5: Almighty God resolved upon your embodiment and your parents executed that resolve. Who you are, what you are, how you are, where you are … all are included in that initiating resolve and execution. So accept all of it and be grateful for it all. Then do what you find needful, knowing that the same Almighty God is both source and substance of whatever that is that you do. When you trust yourself, you will know how to live. (Goethe)
Update 6: Who can anyone turn to when the very institutions created to preserve liberty are intentionally utilized to eliminate the most basic of liberties: the right to choose our own government?
Nicely put. Global Intelligence Community. You know, I think we are racing to find and make the conceptual cranks strong enough to lift into completion the accomplishments of the past year and expand beyond those for the next ones. Sovereignty, reciprocity and trust are core of those cranks. And freedom.
It seems to me the essential articulation is the concept of grand national strategic objective. To that end, I have been working this one:
The grand national strategic objective of The United States Of America is to preserve, protect and defend (1) the inalienable personal freedoms and sovereign authorities of her citizens, who are thrown into existence by Almighty God and their parents, (2) the inalienable freedoms and sovereignties of state and subordinate authorities called into existence by Almighty God and residents of said state who are citizens of The United States Of America to facilitate fairness in their lives together and (3) the one sovereign nation called into being by Almighty God and those sovereign states through The Constitution Of The United States Of America.
In short, the grand national strategic objective of The United States Of America is to preserve, protect and defend The Constitution Of The United States Of America.
After that come the implementing concepts, such as the suggested GIC, scrupulous adherence to Constitutional authority markers, reciprocal trade, low taxes, etc.
Political philosophy, in a manner of speaking, is the art of discovering what in human affairs has aseity and what does not. Freedom, sovereignty (personal and group) and fairness (reciprocity) have aseity. They are actual powers of being existing even with no apparent embodiment. Organization charts and missions do not have aseity, along with so much else. They are fleeting conveniences. That I think is the ultimate answer to Messrs. Brennan, Mueller, Comey, McCain and the rest there.
The Constitution is the vehicle.
The Declaration is the drive train.
Christianity is the fuel.
The citizen is the driver.
Update 7: On the whole, I find Greenfield’s diagnosis persuasive.
Me too, but for one particular: the force totals in the dialectic of the battle are not equal, nor, more importantly, are the force origins. Normality has aseity. Leftism does not.
Greenfield earns a living orating, a stand up philosopher. He is not a theologian.
Update 8: Freedom and sovereignty in Poland drive NYT Leftists to distraction, apparitions and fatigue. I think that the NYT’s quibble with Nazis is that they are not Communists, not sufficiently committed to the extirpation of Christianity.
Update 9: Marek Jan Chodakiewicz: The Holocaust, the Poles, and World War II Memory
Update 10: With luck, Brennan is up next.
Update 11: Monica Crowley: Federal abuses on Obama’s watch represent a growing blight on his legacy
Update 12: Ion Mihai Pacep: I Should Know: Dems’ Intel Abuse Is Reminiscent of My Work for Ceausescu
Update 13: J. B. White: The OODA Loop President
Update 14: Charles Ortel: Trump’s ‘Draining the Swamp’ Is a Real-Life Game of Thrones
Update 15: Ginni Thomas: The Obama Administration’s ‘Brazen Plot To Exonerate Hillary Clinton’ Starting To Leak Out, According To Former Fed Prosecutor
Update 16: The Shock Of The Mundane: The Diffusion Of Basic Infantry Tactics
Update 17: John Quincy Adams, July 4, 1821: Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will be [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 18: When India’s Strategic Backyard Meets China’s Strategic Peripher
Update 19: Austin Bay: Erdogan’s Turkey and Nato
Update 20: L. Todd Wood: Putin Getting Played By China, Needs A Deal With Trump
Update 21: James P. Pinkerton: Why Buying Greenland Is One Of Donald Trump’s Best Ideas
Update 22: Steve Leonard: You Really Think I’m Irrelevant? LOL. A Letter To Clausewitz Haters From Beyond The Grave
Update 23: Anthony Vinci: How to Stop China From Imposing Its Values
America’s alliances were built to address a Soviet military threat. The economic bullying that Beijing uses requires a different kind of collective self-defense.
This is a hoot! Vinci calls for a solution to the problem I have already solved with Three Brothers Doctrine.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
