Category Archives: Christianity

Feast of the Assumption: National Day of the Acadians

Posted on August 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Today is for Roman Catholics the Feast of the Assumption.  Today is the National Day of the Acadians. those of us who are both would like those in the Acadian Nation who are Jewish, Protestant, (even Anglican though today is an awkward day to be both), Freemasons with no other formal religion and adherents of other faith to join what is still the (not so large) Roman Catholic majority and not merely plurality of their countrymen in celebrating the Le Jour National des Acadiens. We also wish those Catholics who are not Acadians but live among large numbers of us would remember this is a dual holiday for us. It is a sad kind of National Holiday. We do remember all that we are but we are not principally celebrating the founding of Acadie by our ancestors which has become Nova Scotia. We are not primarily remembering the founding of the Novelle Acadie in Louisiana which has become Acadiana. We are primarily remembering the tragedy, time of weakness (relative to an old and established empire in its homeland) , loss and death which is the destruction of the land of Acadie and the start of Le Grand Derangement.  This holday has roots in the past since the Acdians were French subjects and as the first came to the new World the King of France had just designated the feast as the special day of France and the Fench. In 1881 there was the first large publisc and open convention of the Acadians since the exile itself in which a few thousand gathered for real national policy and it was at that time that they declared the holiday a national feast. The reason cited by some knowledgeable sources is in part to distinguish them form the Freanch Canandians who honored St. John the Baptist as their patron. You will see that I think the truth is more complex but the tie to the French synthesis they left behind is vital enough. We are remembering that we are a people and have a past and future in the face of great suffering. Here are some Acadian links in this site itself:

1. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/acadian-forum-archive/glossary-of-terms-casually-defined/

2. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/acadian-forum-archive/

3. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/well-see-if-bps-viking-shows-his-horns/

4. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/after-an-american-revolution-the-royalist-portion-of-the-empire/

5. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/images/photographs-in-vermilion-parish/photographs-reproducing-mommees-paintings-1/

There are many more than these posts and pages which reference Acadian ethnicity and the Acadians in some way.  I hope that this set of links will help the reader to find more than they planned on in the time devoted to one post. Then there is the other side of the Holiday. Acadians celebrate the Feast of the Assumption as their National Day partly because it falls during the days when the first flotilla of surviving exiles were all at sea. Having watched the destruction of Acadie largely in the form of dying frail relatives and the plumes of smoke from farms and churches near the coast.   But Acadians also choose it because it is a holiday that has entered the Universal calendar of the Catholic Church as a Solemnity in this modern era in which they experienced this loss. They also honor it because it is a feminine holiday in a Christianity which has sold out to a largely woman-hating world in much of the modern era. While some parts of the world were more anti-feminist in the past and some are eager to bring that back — the feminine  half of things was prized in much of Ancient Greece, Byzantine Christianity, High Medieval France and Acadie. Acadians can remember that we stand with that always developing tradition and against its destruction. In 1938 the Pope officially recognized the Acadian celebration of the Feast of the Assumption as their national holiday. He also entrusted them to the special patronage of Our Lady that this recognizes. 

Of course the Assumption itself actually celebrates the raising of the body of Mary into Heaven to join her believers spirit. this is very hard for Protestant, Jewish or Skeptic Acadians to relate to one would think. First let us think about the celebration in Biblical terms of interest to Protestants and Jews. The Bible talks of Enoch and Elijah being taken up into heaven and so it is not without precedent in the Jewish Scriptures.  For Protestants remember that in addition to these two Old Testament precedent we have what can be taken as the prophecy of Mary in the Canticle Catholics call the Magnificat .

And  Mary said.

My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely , from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done Great things for me, and  holy is his name…

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones

and lifted up the lowly.”

Luke 1:46-49, 56

Depending upon one’s hermeneutic the whole canticle is even more of a prophecy of such an event as this one or it is not such a prophecy at all. But there is a case which can be made.

For the true skeptic especially in modern times the whole thing is indeed pretty alien but remember if you possibly can, how very much you take on faith from poorly reported science that is constantly changing. There are different kinds of faith, some see this holy event and others out of ordinary experience as primarily symbolic and having a great deal to say about womanhood, queen mothers, suffering mothers who lose sons, the human body, death and other things without really thinking of any event.  Others have a more earthy and integrated faith. The point is that sadly while your skepticism is poorer than religion in artistic light and shadow I am afraid theat I cannot grant you status as having a more rational faith experience — that has not been my experience so far. I do have lots of experience with skeptics.

I wish everyone a happy Feast of the Assumption and National Day of the Acadians. Life is marked by holidays in important ways. 

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Posted in Acadians, Christianity, Frank W. Summers, Jesus Christ, Jesus's Mother Mary, Judaism, Protestantism, Religious Holidays, Roman Catholicism, United States of America, Western civilization

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Friday the Thirteenth: Some Thoughts About the Darkside

Posted on August 13, 2010 | 3 comments

Today is Friday the Thirteenth. This is not the same kind of holiday as Halloween, it lacks the roots in all kinds of deep Pagan traditions and the ties to major Catholic Christian holidays still celebrated within a few days. It is not a day which is the same kind of thing as some day dedicated to a full-fledged and living set of terrors or celebrations of a dark cult.  it is a day to think of the weird, skewed, unlucky and creepy if you live in a milieu which will note such things.

I am really getting this post out too late to matter and it will be too short to matter much. I will just sneak it in under the wire with a few thoughts for next time. One thing that I feel is really true about our era is that a great number of very large adjustments in society and the world and people’s lives are going on all at once. The change in Christianity as it exists in Protestantism differs from the change in Orthdox and Catholic traditions. But it seems to me that as a whole Christians are more and more afraid to see in their faith tradition  that strand which is mysterious and careful and nuanced and aware in dealing with spiritual darkness and evil. In my experience that stuff has real risks for a church. But I also believe it has  very often been the case that those most aware of such aspects of the Faith were the greatest warriors for pure light and truth.

I am tapping this out without quotes but you can look this up or trust me. The New Testament is careful to exhort us to show respect for devils who are fallen angels and beyond the comprehension of fools. An epistle writer cites an extracanonical book in which St. Michael says “May the Lord rebuke you!” in struggling with Satan over Moses’s body. This is the language of a respectful adversary. St. Paul in addressing the Areopagus speaks partly of pagan religions and their gods themselves when he says that God spoke to the generations before Christ in varied and fragmentary ways.     Jesus called his Passion and Crucifixion “The Hour of Darkness” as a time in which evil forces had the right in some real heavenly law to be in control.

So what does all that matter?

Well it seems there is a huge market for thinking art and entertainment about this stuff of dark and evil forces. Christians seem to be losing an edge. Catholic church proceeding never require a Devil’s Advocate under law any more. Protestantism is marked by those who disbelieve in evil forces of the Satanic type, those who find them uninteresting and those who trivialize and insult them. Obviously I am oversimplifying and being negative as I so often am. However, Look at film, music, video and other things and ask if we are even slightly holding our own as makers of popular culture in this regard. I do not think we are and I think that this has consequences.

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Posted in Christianity, Contemprary Christian Music, Music, Protestantism, United States of America, Western civilization

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Population Issues and America’s Future

Posted on August 11, 2010 | 1 comment

In many ways the policy sheet you are about to read here is virtually unimaginable. I am sensitive to all the things that seem offensive to some and less than ideal to almost all. However, I really believe in civilization. I think America is till aspiring to true civilization. It is vital that those who are willoing to kill and die and do unpleasant things can lead a civilization forward or else it will surely lose all its civilized qualities soon enough. I believe our situation is already precarious and the paths to survival are not apparent to most of those in leadership and authority. In order to justify the time you would spend reading and trying to understand this post which outlines policy for an institution that does not yet exist and will probably not exist you should have some idea of America’s population situation.  Here is  a set of links which will give you some idea of what is the situation now. They do not tell you all that much but they will put you on the path to some kind of understanding:

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

I will simply state that this is part of the larger model for remaking the United States as a society, country and union. I had written a paragraph about the model and several other paragraphs that I lost somehow so this will be shortened by my weariness with things.  In the model the DIG is the Direct Imperial Government. State Governments would continue to exist, the US Congress and Supreme Court would be reformed but continue to exist. However, some new things would be created and one of them would be a set of lands ceded to and governed by the Direct Imperial Government as the DIG lands. This is the population policy proposed for that as yet nonexistent institution. States would have a renewed sovereign autonomy over many issues related to this policy because of their  authority over domestic regimes and institutions. But there would still be a limited leadership inherent in the DIG. 

Population Policy of the DIG

I. New General Initiatives The regime would take a very serious view about human life, filiation and population which is distinct from what is the norm in the rest of the world. That will be one of many reasons why America will have to transform its foreign policy. There will not be the consensus based on lies and half-truths with which America currently functions in the world. 

A. Record Keeping

There will be a great deal of investment in records and record keeping in the DIG. The power generated by such records will be offset by empowering other institutions but the goal will certainly and unmistakably be a newer and more powerful system of more coherent government in the Direct Imperial Government leading the way in many specific ways. 

1. Two Levels of Application

Those subjecting themseelves to DIG jurisdiction will be more directly and quickly integrated into the records policy. However, the DIG will work with other authorities to achieve similar goals over time.

2. Life Accountancy

The most important part of this whole policy in many ways is a comprehensive system of cancelling birth certificates with death certificates and requiring people to register at 18, 50 and one hundred years of age. Real data on births and deaths of a really high quality will gradually emerge that will drive other policies.  

3.Marriage Certificates and Related Documents

All marriage certificates and Contracts of Liaison and Placement for Certified Mistresses will be attached to birth records, will record known sterility and will be used to get an idea also of trends merging in the popultion.

B. Marriage, Family and Domestic Regimes Government Support

1. Taxation and Withholding for Family Kinship and General Population Fund 

There will be a variety of revenue streams for non-residents of the DIG lands to pay into the General Population Fund. One percent of all the net income of DIG residents will be collected for and go directly into the General Population Fund. In addition part of the revolutionary remaking of the union would be some requirements imposed on all jurisdictions. One of the principal most important and most radical of these would be that all citizen-subjects of the Federal American Empire of the United States would belong to at least one family association and no more than three. The governments would collect a minimum of one percent of net income to be paid directly to these associations. The Family Associations would pay a small annual collection fee to their tax collectors.  The programs outlined here would be funded through these funds and not general treasury funds.  

2. Birth Bonus paid to mother

About a third of all funds accumulated in the General Population Fund would be paid out in Birth Bonuses to mothers every year. The bonuses would vary year to year by the amount of money on hand and the number of births. Mothers having babies on rich years with fewer babies would get mor money. The value of a birth bonus is represented here by the variable x.

a. Cumulative scale:   Every child starts off with x determined by monies available in fund

i. The following add monies to the bonus:

.5X First child, .25x child one to three, .35x above average health child at birth, .5x parents married in recognized high or monogamous marriage,  .25x parents joined in plural marriage or certified natural filiation relationship, .2X mother between the ages of 22 and 40 years of age , .2x White child, .15X child whiter than mother, .15X Aboriginal American Child and .1X Aboriginal American child largely White, .07x Old American mix child, .1X one or both parents are certified geniuses and 1.5X father dead in service of Empire or polity federated therein.

ii. The following deduct monies from the bonus:

-.11x child four to seven, -.14x child eight or higher, -.19x ilegitimate child under law, -.22x bastard under the law, -.08x mother is a felon, .-12x both parents are felons, .-15x child less White than mother,  -. 04X mother has been divorced, -.4 both parents are not citizen-subjects  and -.3X child is born of known case of adultery to one or more parents who are young married complainants.

3. Mother’s Christmas Bonuses

About ten percent of funds in the General population fund will be paid out mothers of minor children equally each year on December 10 regardless of religion. An additional ten percent will be divided among mothers who have a child turning one, two, five, ten, fifteen or eighteen years of age. These bonuses will have a formula but a simple and more equal one. Children committing juvenile felonies will receive a modest reduction. Otherwise, the mothers will receive on tenth of the child’s original birth bonus, one tenth of the average birth bonus given out in the years since the child’s birth and  an equal share of any remaining monies among all recipients once the first two amounts have been awarded. 

C. Empress’s Bureau of Women’s Affairs

There will be a major institution that is under the authority of the Empress and will have standing in most cases involving first impression issues relating to women and shall have funding and other things. This bureau will have the authority also to undertake and co-ordinate many projects and initiatives to benefit women.   

1. Motherhood Initiative

This will be  a nest of programs to promote quality mothering and family experiences and a progressive maternal culture in the Empire.  The approach will be more positive than one of policing infractions or failures. 

Items 2,3 & 4 are included because they are part of the whole policy but not explained because they can be discussed elsewhere and are not as central to these issues.

 2. Wives Initiative

3. Cottage Industries and Gardening Administration

4. Girls Sport Administration

5. Sex and Fertility Education Agency

All girls will be educated in detailed natural family planning classes certified by the Bureau in secondary school. We will be committed to a brief explanatory course for boys but not of the same depth or quality.

http://www.contracept.org/symptothermal.php

http://www.nfpprog.com/how_nfp_works/symptothermal.htm

6. Liaison to Women’s Religious Communities

Working with women who can find religious meaning in infertile lifestyles or mostly unfertile lifestyles to achieve the highest social good thereby.

7. The Ladies Alliance

Working with women of the nobility and titled gentry to deal with population issues an other issues affecting the Noble ranks of society. I do  not mean that this is mostly a population  agency but it is likely to deal with population a great deal.

II. Population Directed Programs and Agencies 

The Emperor will have a number of programs designed to deal directly with all the issues of population which would confront the Federal Empire of the United States.  This will be a theme woven through a great deal of policy rather than a cluster of poorly focused initiatives and ill-defined objectives.

A. Emperor’s Minister for Integrated Population Study and Management

This minister will be in charge of forging a coherent population policy throughout the government. He will work with relevant institutions to improve the population impacts of their work.

1.Liaison for Fertility 

This liaison will work with many diverse elements of the government to monitor and address issues of human fertility.

2.Liaison for Human Habitat Expansion

This liaison will work primarily with the agencies and ministries which will  focus on human habitat expansion. Therefore he or she will be primarily a sort of single customer official.  

3. Liaison for Foreign Affairs

This liaison will work to promote marriage and sound filiation policy, girls sport, sound fertility education and every other imperial value in the limits of Foreign Policy restrictions as well as to focus these values on the very slow population growth we see as the ideal demographic pattern for humanity as a whole.

4. Liaison for Immigration

This  Liaison will work not only with direct Border Zone related programs but also all aspects of the government that relate to both immigration and population. We live in a world and country where this will always be very challenging.

5. Liaison for Monasticism and Near Monasticism

Dealing with tradition in which not having children is incorporated into a larger lifestyle and a religious ideal.  This liaison will work with the Chaplain and other religious ties of the Emperor. However, the liaison will also work with all qualified groups in the Empire including the non-Christian  entities. 

The large remaining portion of this outline in numbers 6,7 & 8 has to do with the making of a society which can realistically chart slow and real population growth indefinitely. It is not a simple matter as each Liaison will work keep this goal in view for the government. 

6. Liaison for Waste Policy

7 . Liaison for Population Density

8 . Liaison for Reward Efficiency

 B. Imperial Cryptkeeper General 

The Cryptkeeper will be in charge of making the Death of those who die for the Emperor or Empire and his federal partners as glorious as possible. In the Empire a certain budget of young and glorious deaths is part of overall social  policy and it is admitted that this includes population policy.

  1. Liaison to the Imperial Chaplain

2. Liaison for Tombs and Monuments

C. Court Physician’s Office for Meaningful Medicine Minister of Population

1. Sub-ministry for Hospice

This ministry will acknowledge the precious and sacred character of human life. However, he will also be charged with assisting the Court Physician with spending relatively more resources on people who can largely recover and not spending enormous resources on people who remain sick, dying and expensive to care for indefinitely. This includes having death benefits, counseling, burial support and other resources in the sub-ministry at his command.

2. Sub-ministry for Natural Family Planning and Registered Condom Programs

This sub-ministry would seek to create culturally authentic programs that recognize the many real challenges of fertility management and seek to address these challenges at a level of wisdom and class not really available to disparate small entities. The programs will mostly be outreaches of the ministry.

3. Sub-ministry for Risk Integration

This will seek to recognize how activities that people choose to engage in and which shorten life will be integrated into an evolving society so that not everyone has to aim to live to be a hundred years old to affirm the value of human life. 

 III. Special Category

A. Death Penalty

Using a wide variety of offices and programs the Emperor and DIG will promote relatively cheap, easy and swift administration of the death penalty where allowed  by law elsewhere and within DIG jurisdiction for Murder, Agravated Repeat Incident Manslaughter, Agravated Rape of a Child and Felony Assisted High Treason. In the transition to the new regime it might be necessary to execute people currently set free to re-establish an understanding of what justice systems will be like.

B. Dueling and Vendetta

The new regime will have a fivefold nobility. Three of the Noble types Ordinary, Sword and Games will be expected to use the Office of Ritual Confrontation relatively frequently to resolve disputes. The programs are designed to make peace and preserve honor. However, there will be an acceptance of a number of deaths of valued people in these programs over time.

C. The Absolute Person

The Emperor can be resisted in persona so long as the force and means are less or nearly equal to those he brings and their is a real threat and the proceedings are personal and the intent is to survive, in such cases there is no treason. Flight from an angry Emperor is also not treason under similar limitations. However, the personal wrath of the Emperor effected by himself with weapons he can carry has no legal recourse — neither civil suit, criminal prosecution nor equitable injunction is allowed as relief to the victim.  In his own person the Emperor can do no wrong. The exceptions are constitutional and do not embrace physicalities no matter how great the harm to a person. Resistance and flight provoke an investigation as to whether the alleged victim committed a Misdemeanor against the Court, Low Treacherous Acts or High Treason or whether the Act was Justified. 

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Posted in Christianity, Geopolitics, Healthcare, Louisiana, polygamy, Population policy, race, Sex, United Nations, United States of America, War

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Reconnecting

Posted on August 8, 2010 | Leave a comment

This is a certain kind of blog post of which there will be relatively few. It is about connecting specific recent events in my own life and internet activity to the larger patterns of society and the world. I do similar things but not this subset of specific things. I may drop down to some tiny little number very soon but as of a few minutes before writing this line I have 823 Facebook friends.  There are a truly thousands of people I know and sometimes think about who are not on that list. There are many among the two or three hundred people I would most like to have contact with through Facebook and other means who are not on my Facebook list. In general my relationships as carried out by way of Facebook’s services are not very complete an are relatively unsatisfying. In addition they make one aware that sustaining real relationships (especially if one has the disadvantage of being me)  is really rather difficult and uncertain. I enjoy the fact that in some way academic, political, religious, space-oriented, paramilitary, missionary, media and other spheres of activities and groups of associates are joined fo me in representative samples in one convenient place.  

But the point of bringing up the Facebook list is really how much I appreciate and enjoy it. I enjoy and appreciate the way i can get news from relatives, friends and acquaintances. I enjoy having direct and even sometimes only indirect contact with people from my sojourns in Mexico, Colombia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Tonga and the many foci of my activities in the United States. I enjoy having these contacts gathered together in one convenient medium.

I recently served as lector and pallbearer for an uncle only nine years my senior.  It was sad to say goodbye to Will. It was meaningful and even pleasant to reconnect with hundreds of people ( a good number well-known to me) who came to pay their respects.  Those days meant a great deal and I am still glad to have shared that time with them sending off one of those who had a real impact on my life.  This was a time of reconnection that meant a good bit to me.

I could write about so many people and probably could name them whom I have reconnected with in one of the two venues. Guys I went to school with and now can keep track of a bit better and cousins who had almost slipped off my radar screen but are now back in view deserve to be mentioned if  one goes by their importance in my life.  A few of these people  are “flat-out famous” as a friend of mine used to say. Perhaps I exclude their names partly to protect them from unwanted attention and partly to protect myself from their displeasure. Not any specific fear but just a habit of caution.

Beyond these two specific venues for reconnection I have also recently been involved in a couple of rather brief correspondences which had the effect of reconnecting me to my past as well. However, I feel reticent again to go into specific details about who these people were too.

That leaves me with one specific name to mention. I mention her because we are not friends I have therefore nothing to lose and she is so famous that my little blog is not likely to cause her any real harm or inconvenience no matter what which would not have come first from many other sources. 

Amy Grant is just a tiny bit older than I am and I have been listening to her music about as long as she has had a record deal. I used to own My Father’s Eyes, Age to Age, Straight Ahead, Unguarded and several other albums in what was never a really large record collection. She is the most successful artist in the history of the genre called Contemporary Christian Music.  She has won several Grammy Awards and a plethora of Dove Awards. She has been part of my life and I have played tracks of her albums at prayer services, lectures and retreats. But it has been a long time since I have played her stuff for anyone else. It has even been a long time since I owned any copy of her stuff.

I belonged to  (and still do belong to) a college household with a Hebrew name and have often celebrated Christian direct borrowings from the Sabbath Meal and the Pseder Supper. She made her mark with many songs but one of the early big hits was a song with a Hebrew lead line. I combined doing ministry and religious communications with involvement in secular media work. While she was a successful phenomenon it is still true that I could often see her working though decisions and difficulties that were the same as mine in that same process. Some challenges were identical, some very close and others just  resonant but it was a real bond.

I also went to her concerts a couple of times and I felt I could invite a variety of friends who would not  form a group elsewhere. Although the actual groups were small and kind of unsuccessful the potential seemed to be their. With my own sisters and some other young girls I could use her as a role model for a real young woman struggling to survive and grow in faith and be herself. Amy Grant was part of a soundtrack that included Michael Doucet, Bruce Springsteen, Rush, the Carpenters, John Denver, Willie Nelson, George Straight, U2, Rafe Vaughn Williams, Ray Charles, Fats Domino and many other artists when I was young as well as lots of live worship music. However, Amy Grant’s music has more special stories than almost all of the others from the large pop culture world.

I have recently downloaded some of her music and interviews and it makes me remember watching her career progress. She has now been married to Vince Gill for years and I remember when that was topic of conversation as an upcoming event. She has kept working and I have seen some of her stuff on tv and  now can see that she is still working.   I still find the vibe associated with her fascinating.

I want to put in a few links about reconnecting from her own work.

1.Here is  a mature piece of spiritual work than reconnects with her whole past I think: Better than a Hallelujah  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3AmhFXckSc&feature=related

2. Stay for a  While…  is about reconnecting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om_6q_diHw0&feature=related

3. Thy Word  Amy also reconnects with an old friend and the industry she made rock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZi-Nqndeok&feature=related

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Posted in Amy Grant, Arts, Christianity, Contemprary Christian Music, Country Music, Frank W. Summers, Music, Personal Philosophy and Moral Economics, Protestantism, United States of America, Vince Gill, William Charles Summers

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Some thoughts about marriage in America

Posted on August 7, 2010 | 1 comment

The US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker has held that Proposition 8 which outlawed same-sex  marriage was unconstitutional and that this  is because heterosexual couples and same-sex couples were identical.  The judge ruled that the ban on homosexual unions was simply a kind of persecution which is at once entirely unmerited and simply cruel. There will be a lot of controversy as this goes through appeals and makes its way to the Supreme Court. But it does raise issues related to marriage and particularly polygamy that I wish to discuss here. I am going to point out a couple of my own posts where I have touched on issues relating to marriage, sexuality and the varied crises and have in one of them at least touched upon polygamy. However, the issues covered in this post do not require a close reading of these posts.  

 1. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/why-i-dare-to-advocate-radical-change/

I start with this post above because I think that it is vital that we recognize how far away from any ideal of marriage that has been proposed by the Christian faith in it its most idealistic and monogamous we really are.  If polygamy could be achieved for a portion of the many who are having children and expressing their sexuality with no reference to that ideal then it would be progress in terms of social and cultural nearness to both the spirit of Christ and the life of the gospel. That does not mean that there are not real risks and nothing that can be lost which is valuable and precious.

The link below is one in which I have discussed both the nature of human sexuality and also how it relates to social development and royalism.  We must find a way to address sexual reality. That is especially true for those of us who have the kinds of ideals that relate to humanism, Christianity and Judaism. It is imperative that we become conversant with reality again.

2. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/monarchy-and-royalist-culture-in-america-past-present-and-future-part-3-3/

I am a Christian and Christianity has never been the most polygamous religion. However, it has never been as completely anti-polygamous as it currently has almost entirely become. The Roman Catholic theologian Tertullian argued against the common and theologically supported practice  of priests (some of whom were celibate even then) commonly marrying two wives and especially sisters. When Tertullian was later disciplined for other reasons it is possible that in part it was because of the portion of the church which believed polygamy was an important part of the Christian tradition for some men in leadership both royals and some clerics especially. But there were few Christian royals (not none) in the third century. This is just part of the picture: Charlemagne who was able to add the filioque procedit   phrase to the Western version of the creed was an open polygamist as were all of his sons. 

One issue that I think has to be discussed if one is going to discuss polygamy at all reasonably is that one has to begin to visualize it in order to understand it and discuss. Where it has been so universally illegal for so long it is not so easy to visualize. I want to include some film and television references that deal with varied and complex glimpses of polygamy and make it possible to see where the institutions of plural marriage have found their way into American viewerships and audiences.  Here are some worth watching:

1. One Night With The King: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430431/

The first link is to a film that tells the Biblical story of Esther.

2. The Other Boleyn Girl: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467200/

The second link is to  a film telling the story of Henry VIII and his women.

3. King David: http://www.amazon.com/King-David/dp/B000JGD264/ref=pd_vodsm_B000JGD264

The third link is to the telling of the story of King David which is extremely important to both Judaism and Christianity.

4. Big Love: http://www.hbo.com/big-love

The  fourth link is to a fictional family trying to restore and modernize Mormon polygamy. It is complex, muddied by multiple perspectives at times but I think it is a good show nonetheless.

Then I want to show some examples of contracted relationships between Americans in our history and present.  These are real lives past and present that matter to those who live them quite a bit. As a committed son of Louisiana I am pleased to discuss one of the institutions that expressed polygamy in a new and workable way tied to old traditions. Take a chance to look at this and I may return to it later and have actually touched upon this before in other posts. Clearly the social realities of the quadroon ball are very far from where we are now. But if you take a global perspective it is entirely clear to me that  they were often superior values and ideals from which we could still benefit some day.

The Quadroon Ball:

I. http://www.frenchcreoles.com/CreoleCulture/quadroons/quadroons2.htm

II. http://www.nathanielturner.com/livesandtimesofquadroons.htm

I also wonder how it would feel to be this young woman in the next video and be aware of all that is disastrous in our sexual realities in the world and still have one’s lifestyle just barely outside the criminal. I think it is horribly tragic.

Modern polygamy in the Mormon tradition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANXeiyGx7To&feature=related

It is to be remembered that if you are reading this blog you are reading the blog of someone who wants to change and reform the government and not either escape or limit it into insignificance. I think that governments of the States of the Union and of not yet existing institutions I have proposed would have a vital role to play in making any polygamous domestic institutions work.  It is not entirely clear to me whether the current king of Thailand can be said to ever really have entered into plural marriage. I have not confidential sources and the public sources that I have seen indicate all sorts of contradictory things. It is perhaps a powerful sign of anti-polygamy in the United States that the only true Oriental King to have been born to the rights of an American citizen is part of the possible complete dismantling of an institution so valued in Thailand. However, it may be that it has been a slightly concealed part of his life. To see something about the history of the royal polygamy of Thailand see the next link:   http://www.1stopchiangmai.com/articles/dara/

One thing to understand that is really vital is that those of us who would rather not lie, murder slaughter innocents wholesale or proceed blindly into the future have competitors and opponents who would  like to have all these thing happen routinely and others who would like most of them to happen often. We can still recognize that polygamy is something less than the best and highest forms of monogamy and acknowledge it has a role to play in the survival of anything that can be called civilization.

I will make on of my personal revelations here in this post. I have been married only once and to only one person. Although I am involved with Christian ministry I am not a regular churchworker and not reaping rewards that would cause me to greatly limit my romantic life on that basis alone. Given the actual realities of my life I think it is true that I have had a very limited sex life outside of the seven years of my marriage. However, I have dated a lot. I have sometimes had more than one girlfriend who knew each other. In a few of those instances I have dated two women who were lesbians and attached to each other. I would not flatter my self so much as to say that had polygamy been legal I might have married those gals, certified one as a covenant mistress and one as her maid or whatever else. But it has been an issue in my actual life. I am getting old and tired and mean and in every way less eager to marry but I feel personally that  I have been harmed as well as in the lives of my friends.  

There is so much more to discuss. Polygamy has dark potentials and sides that must be resisted and that is why government has a role to play. I am not interested in persecuting homosexuals but I do think commitments between wives or ladies and maids in royal harems meets the needs of those who really need commitment and maintains marriage between a man and a woman.  I do not want a world where all monks and canons are presumed homosexual. But I do believe homosexuals who care for each other can find civilized happiness as part of such groups. We must find ways to embrace sane civilized options that are imperfect and build again. We live in a world where ruin and deliberate evil  combine to threaten more than most people can imagine. Life will not be improved by further simplifying a too simple society nor by pretending same-sex couples are capable of marriage to each other as heterosexual couples are  capable of contracting such unions.

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Posted in Asia, Christianity, Frank W. Summers, Geopolitics, Louisiana, Royalty and Empire, Sex, United States of America, Western civilization

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General Elena Kagan Confirmed to the US Supreme Court

Posted on August 6, 2010 | 1 comment

The Solicitor General of the United States has been named to the US Supreme Court by President Barack Obama. Her nomination has been confirmed by the United States Senate. She will be the first third woman on the court if you take my meaning. There have never been three before. There was O’Connor, then O’Connor and Bader-Ginsburg, then Bader-Ginsburg and Sotomayor. But now there are three female justices.

Elena Kagan was Solicitor General and I have to believe she picked up some valuable skills in that job. She was Dean of Harvard Law School and that was probably useful as well. I do not think three women is excessive and I do not pretend for one second to seek a gender blind society. I think a third of the US Supreme Court could be a good place for women to be operating who are willing to engage in and capable of performing top-level public service .  I do believe that it is kind of scary and unfortunate that there are now no Protestants on the court but I do think that Jews are rightly found more often on courts than a random person of average or unknown ethnicity. They bring millenia of cultural conditioning suitable to the task.

I think Kagan brings some real limits and weaknesses to the court but that is true of all the Justices and all those they beat off the short lists to get there. Her main issues of concern are that she is beholden to an outside figure and his swept-in administration for support and lacks court experience that ties her to other unrelated positions.  She has a reputation for strong commitment to the homosexual lobby’s agenda and she is coming in just as a case written the most socially destructive terms imaginable will be coming up from California.  She is suspect as regards the US military  and we are in a position where things already seem very troubled in that regard. I sincerely hope that things will work out well for both soon-to-be Justice Kagan and for the Union of these American States.

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Posted in Christianity, Judaism, Protestantism, United States Armed Forces, United States of America, Western civilization, White House

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American Republicanism within the Proposed Federal American Empire of the United States

Posted on July 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

In my life I have only recently begun to advocate radical political change in a medium as permanent, easily traceable and permanently accessible as a blog in my own name. It is a very small and slow process which compensates for its low probability of success mostly by being risky and unpaid.  Nonetheless,  it is a very serious little enterprise and so I am always able to find something  to work on within this advocacy and change modeling process. In this post I want to discuss how my model relates to the idea of republicanism and the history of republicanism within the United States of America. It is not an absolute rejection of republicanism.

One assertion that I have made in the past is that America was set upon the path of Rome as it went through its original republican revolution.  It is in one of the many posts that make up this model:  https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/the-direct-imperial-government-in-the-new-american-regime-part-three/ and which ought to be read to fully understand what is being discussed. The point I am making there cannot be explained without considerable knowledge of both Roman and American history. However, one sign of the Roman quality of American Civilization is found in another post of this blog. It is the fact that we have a capital city which stands at a unique level and is not lost in our complex balance of the Union of States in these United States.

I have these nesting quotes on point: “To quote myself in a Facebook note I wrote on Western Civilization, “If Greece is ultimately our culture and Jesus is ultimately our conscience then what is missing. Neither Jesus nor Greece gave us a capital. Rome is the Capital of Western Civilization. That is actually Rome’s greatest achievement in my view. It is not insignificant. In Rome our center hold in some way none of us really understand but for reasons that fill libraries as well. Only in the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven in Beijing China have I found anything which approaches the feel of Rome. They are very different. Rome is more our cultural capital even now when we are hardly existing as a unity than Beijing is China’s cultural capital.” Both our revolutionary Founding Fathers and this revolution would seek to emulate much of what was best in Rome. A large part of it would be an effort to have a great and effective capital city.”

Now  the post for which I gave the link above states briefly how our Founding Fathers expected America to follow the path from royalist agrarianism to republicanism and into Empire. “One must remember that this would be a revolution that leaves the vast preponderance of resources in a slightly altered set of institutions that have evolved within a republican structure.  This is a very American approach since America’s 200 and more republican years have merged from a relatively slightly modified version of British and Arcadian-Acadian royalist regimes mixed with Iroquois Chieftainly confederated mixed government  seen through the lense of Greek Classical political science and the Roman republics emergence from the Kingdom of the City of Rome. In the tradition we now would move like Rome from Republic to Empire. However, the American enterprise has never been a purist enterprise and this is not a purist’s proposal.” 

Most of our words related to theories of government have Greek roots and are basically Greek. These include democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, monarchy, tyranny, politics, police and others. However republic and republicanism are Latin in root and origin despite the prominence of Plato’s account of the Socratic dialog Republic. The real name of the book is Politea which more or less means Politics. However, since English has called Aristotle’s great work Politics it is easier for us to call this earlier book Republic. It is also true that “City-State Politics” might better translate Plato’s title.  The very Roman concept of republic had not been invented in Plato’s time but they did get most of its elements from Greece.  Greece had conquered colonized and formed much of the cultural environment in Italy in which Rome grew to maturity. That is true although ancient Rome was one of the less Greek parts of that world until they started conquering Greeks of the aging and crumbling Hellenic Empires that also did not exist when Plato wrote or Socrates spoke. Republic is the joining of two Latin words: res and publica and begins as a phrase res publica before being contracted into republica.   The phrase means the public thing. There is a difference between a true Hellenic or Greek King and a Norse or Teutonic King in classic times. There is even more of a difference between a true Emperor and such Northern or some far Eastern despots. Christianity which is Hebrew and Greek and Roman as Hitler rightly pointed out brought to the North of Europe the balance that Henry VIII and the Lutheran Princes began to erode. In Christian Europe of the Middle Ages the King might own a great deal but God owned a lot as well through the democratic and aristocratic structures of the Catholic Church. Thus the Public Thing survives and the realm is not merely a possession of the King.  It was against this resurgence of a state which is not really public and constitutional that the Americans fought the revolution.

The new Empire proposed here will pay due respect to the Northern and Western origins of so many of the citizen-subjects of the proposed regime. It will recognize the Protestant importance which really eroded so much of the European consensus. However, it will recognize that there is a long tie of Celts to Greece, that England and earlier Britain were so much part of this constitutional public tradition for so long. Finally it will recognize that our Founding Father’s set us on the path of Rome expecting us to be an Empire some day. They hoped for an Empire directly springing from and formed by a republican period. We have reached the point where our republic has matured and must either decay into something vile or mature into a true Empire of the type intended. Therefore I do not believe myself a traitor to American Republicanism but rather one proclaiming the time and place has come to fulfill it or lose it.

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Posted in Chivalry, Christianity, Frank W. Summers, Geopolitics, Personal Philosophy and Moral Economics, United States of America, USA--UK Relationship, Western civilization

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Today and tomorrow…

Posted on July 25, 2010 | Leave a comment

Well, it looks like tropical storm  Bonnie may have pushed some oil ashore before breaking up and that is more pronounced because all fragile barriers had to be removed because of what Bonnie would have don to the barriers (especially boom lines) if they had been hit by a real tropical storm.  However, it is also significant that it caused the floating worksite over Macondo to be shut down for several days. Nonetheless it is possible for us to say that the impact of this storm has been very minimal.

This weekend I have been attending the Catholic Charismatic Conference in Lafayette, Louisiana. That is a hard experience to relate to if one is not involved in the renewal movement. I have attending many of these Lafayette conferences over the past thirty odd years. Always there have been elements of both blessing and concern. However, while I fancy that I remember better days, the conference is better tha many of those in the recent past in several memorable ways. I have also run into a number of old acquaintances I seldom or never see outside of these annual conferences or similar events. For  me that means mostly these conferences for a variety of reasons.

The Charismatic renewal fostered ministries around the world, created dialog among varied Christians, produced huge amounts of music, led to countless marriages, saved some collapsing institutions of various kinds and did manifest signs of God’s gracious spirit. Tomorrow, I will return to writing about some odd speculative political agenda for a bit — God Willing. But whatever I am and think about people relating to one another has been formed in some way by the years of varied levels of involvement in the Charismatic Renewal.  I may find time to blog more about that on some future occasion.

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Posted in Acadians, Charismatic Renewal, Christianity, Environment, Frank W. Summers, Jesus Christ, Louisiana, TS Bonnie, Wetlands

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Why I Dare to Advocate Radical Change…

Posted on July 22, 2010 | 1 comment

As I start to get back into the swing of this blog and some of its long-term themes I am forced to consider and address those who might ask why I should dare to advocate radical social change.

Well, because young people in the United States seem confused about some of the meaning and consequences of their sexual-social choices.

1. http://nsrc.sfsu.edu/article/health_statistics_teen_sexuality_std_pregnancy

Because married filiation is under stress as is the American family structure and there is a real race to the bottom because only marriage is a recognized domestic regime. Society is destroying basic human community.

2. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/unmarry.htm

Because, entirely unregulated sexual and domestic slavery is widespread in the united States and the world. 

3.http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/ncvrw/2005/pg5l.html

4.http://articles.sfgate.com/2006-10-06/news/17316911_1_trafficking-victims-human-trafficking-new-owners

Because, after huge amounts of social change at gunpoint the black community in America is really in a downward spiral in many ways. The great project of this country in my generation is suicide.

5.http://www.blackangelnetwork.org/stats

Because, we have destroyed communities in favor of society and society is doing an increasingly poor job of holding things together. Corporations and governments are not able to care for all this dislocated people well.

6.http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Because our absurd idea of national morality focuses largely on the total prohibition of recreational drugs and prostitution and it is quite possible to argue that this is not only hypocritical but also misguided.

7.http://www.fleshandstone.net/press_releases/1812.html

8. http://www.liberator.net/articles/prostitution.html

So this is why my royalist American program for radical change is something I continue for as long as I can stay here. I do think that things are disastrous in many areas of society besides coastal policy. I favor radical change because I think we are radically off-track.

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Posted in Christianity, Frank W. Summers, Jesus Christ, Louisiana, Royalty and Empire, United States of America, Western civilization

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Remembering the Near Despair and New Hope in 2 Weary Souls

Posted on July 20, 2010 | 1 comment

 I am feeling a bit weary today. I feel a bit weary most days. Honestly, I require a certain infrastructure of life which I do not have here and now to ever live free of weariness. In addition I am aging and at 46 I think there is some sense of having hit the top of the hill of human energy and heading back down again. Yesterday I served as a pallbearer and as a lector at the funeral of my uncle William Charles Summers. For me weariness was part of the whole experience of Will’s last years. I felt some sadness and unease mentioning this because his marriage to his widow Brenda and his relationship with the stepdaughters he cherished — Jennifer and Kayler occurred during these weary years mostly. I do not want to make it seem like the man who worked their farm, hunted alligators, saddle broke horses, coached basketball, drove them on vacations and lived as their husband and father was some old weary guy. But honestly I never saw him since the year 20oo for any length of time when he did not communicate his weariness to me in some way.   That was ten years ago and he only married Brenda eleven years or so ago. But for all he did in those years his energy was a small and frail thing compared to the vast fountains of energy I knew in his youth. Will was almost 55 when he died and I am almost 46 now and I can relate to his sense of weariness.   That weariness inspires me to write this blog post.

Will found a new life with Brenda and her children. he had a working farm and was a friend of the husband Brenda had just buried before he took a different interest over coming years in the widow he was helping. But in a quiet way he was near despair. He already had several physical ailments and an active life had left him burdened with varied old injuries. His religious journey and relationships with women including one named Jackie and another named Lisa and a few others I choose not to name at all had all come to a place that had left him for short of satisfied. He had helped his sister who was raising a child alone to help rear her daughter in different ways for several years.  That had gone the way such sibling volunteer fathering often goes in our society. He had kept close bonds with sister and niece but new walls and borders had grown up between them as the years passed.

Will had sailed some rough seas and backed away from a lifelong love affair with sailboats. The hard-drinking, sharpshooting, world-traveling, mysterious side of Will that existed on the fringes (at best) of the legal world in several countries and could help play music in a bar of questionable reputation or move packages of obscure origin or help women get around whose movements some might want to limit could be a dangerous and angry man. He had mellowed. Maybe more than I have mellowed at a similar age now that he had reached then. Will and I always had things in common and also were very different. We also had lots of things in common. Partly, we found some grace in people we cared about to temper other aspects of our personalities.

There is a cycle in all lives but perhaps in ours more than most. I will no longer be able to look over a few miles away to see my uncle’s struggle between despair and hope and compare it to my own.  I will not have the chance to compare notes on the spiritual struggles we shared in common. I hope, yes I feel some hope that he both rests in peace and is well-remembered.

To see Will and not violate copyright laws: http://www.meaningfulfunerals.net/fh/obituaries/vt_view.cfm?o_id=666635&fh_id=11197&s_id=7DC1F0D026E57519378C8C9000056A1B&vt_type=1

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Posted in Acadians, Anglo-Acadians, Christianity, Environment, family, Frank W. Summers, Frank W. Summers III's family, Jesus Christ, Louisiana, Wetlands, William Charles Summers

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