Category Archives: United States of America

Positioning America for the Future We Face

I have listed, described and written about making very significant changes in America. That is what this series of posts is mostly all about.  There is no realistic reason in the world write all these things but some things are worth doing which are not realistic. We have to look around the world and see how America will fit into the future as it ties into the present. How will we find the world no matter what we do? In addition, in the context of my rather extensive and complex model of change and revolution described here how would America interact with the world after having undergone this transformation?

Anyone who really proposes revolutionary change must propose some things which would not be possible without some kind of revolution. If such a proponent does not then he is really some kind of a looter. The risk of revolution is not worth taking unless the results one needs to achieve are more substantial than can be gotten from ordinary political maneuvering.  I am exhorting America to recommit to a survivable future and one that could lead to what I would consider good places.  The chances of my living to see our society and the world get anything that I would consider a passing grade is almost negligible. However, there is a chance of moving from an almost completely dysfunctional student to one making low D grades and headed towards a B average after some tutoring. That would be a very good result.

I do not think there have been very many societies in history more intrinsically difficult to set on a sustainable path than the United States. On the other hand, besides sustainability there is another measure of a society’s success and viability. That measure is decency and the quality of progress or “progressiveness”.  I think that America is fairly near the top on that second measure of a society’s greatness. There have been many that were more decent and progressive but most of them were small and unambitious. We are one of the most generally decent and progressive  great societies in history. I say that being well aware of many horrors and inhumanities in our past and present.

We have to deal with recent geopolitical changes, with the limits of our own society and culture and also with the enduring and endless problems of  both the Earth and the human condition. That is in a sense a struggle that can never be entirely successful. However, it is true that it makes a great deal of difference whether or not one struggles. The mess we will end up with if we struggle well is much better than the mess we will be in if we struggle poorly or not at all.

If America makes the changes I am suggesting then it will be going down a path which will certainly be lonely at first and may not ever become much less lonely. First of all, many human societies (and most at many times) are fundamentally self-destructive and insane. America will become a society on the path of sanity.  Secondly, America will become even more committed to a moral sensibility. Thirdly, within the context  of sane and avowedly moral societies it will be a modern heir to the traditions of Western civilization in a North American context. Added to all of that, it will remain a great power. We will have to move forward with our own sense of what is real and right. Add to all of that the fact that we have our own dark side which I and others who might become key players would believe we have to deal with and you would surely have a country which nobody can find to be very much like any other country nor any less than a profoundly forward step for this country.

The science of calculating risk is very old and has been approached by many very clever and some very wise people from countless angles over a very long time. Nonetheless it is a vast distance from being perfectly systematized.  Only in formal games can we even get close to showing what would have happened if a set of complicated human decisions and actions had been substituted for another set of complicated decisions and actions. America is living in a world where many bad things and many good things will come its way regardless of whether or not the changes I suggest are made. There is a whole set of possibilities in which the changes would be attempted but basically fail. Then there are unforeseen changes which could come from anywhere and rewrite the course of future events. We face a great deal of possible tragedy that is hard to exactly predict.

I have come to writing these posts after a life in which I have done many active and open things  but in which there are many open and active things that I almost never do.  I am committed to writing for a readership with which I have little organized connection.  I respond to comments that sort of come in over the transom. But this is very different from giving speeches in a public square, leading parades, putting pamphlets out or writing newspaper articles. These are all things that I have done in the past. I do very little now compared to what I would ever have believed I would be doing for such a sustained period of time.  But I believe there is much that I must attempt to do before the worst trends become inevitable. What those trends are has been discussed in earlier posts and will be discussed  in later posts more than it is discussed here.

I personally have had over the years a number of contacts and correspondents both in post-Soviet Russia and in the Soviet Union.  On the other hand I have never been there, do not speak the language and have run into a good number of  Russians in the many places that I have visited and I do not believe our relationship with them is good overall. It has gotten much better but we squandered a very big opportunity during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras. I think that even had Putin become the player he has become he would have been a different Putin had we acted differently. However, while I think Putin is a ruthless, homicidal, devious puppet master (who must prove he was innocent of the blood of the ninety-eight Polish leaders recently killed in the aircraft crash) I think he is basically a good man. Yes, I am serious and not sarcastic. He is willing to be a monster to save Russia from complete collapse but he has shown real interest in being something besides a Monster. He promotes the Russian Orthodox Church, tolerates other Christians, limits antisemitism and maintains a quasi-atheistic secularist power bloc in politics. That is a real work of  religious tolerance. He has invested himself in preserving parliament. If he faced a strong and dangerous President here who might exercise the positive pressures he might still be a better man and leader. However, earlier he might have turned out better. Russia is still devoted to Putin mostly because he is still devoted to Russia. That is how things are supposed to be. We are likely to be adversaries over the medium term but I do not believe that was inevitable.  

Of course one of the things about the system I have outlined (among many things) which is very notable is that  the system is a complex racially aware system and that will certainly complicate many geopolitical relationships.  However our current color blind system and our past of Jim Crow madness complicated foreign relationships as well. I will specifically say that our relationship with India would be among the most problematic.  Indian (not Aboriginal American Indians) would be presumed to be the types of people who live in the Colored Districts of the States or the Mixed Race Districts of the Territories. However, the Racial Codes of each State would need in some way or another to allow Indian families to file a particular form and have it verified that they are consistently and predominantly made up of a lineage of one or more of the following Indian Bloodlines (one form for all admixtures of the three) Moguls, the Old Northeast Asian Colonies of North Indians and Portuguese. Indian families certified as such would be eligible to vote in the North East Asian Districts of the States. America would pursue distinctions like this regardless of how they were received in home countries of populations. Portuguese found to be Portuguese families from India would eligible to choose Northeast Asian or ordinary status. No country will be quite as unique as India but many will have complex issues. 

Relationships with Britain, France and Spain, Mexico, Holland and Russia will be formalized to include their direct participation with areas they colonized. In the case of France, Britain, Mexico and Spain they should have formal relationships with a Compact each which are recognized by the US and limited by the overall society and yet are really direct to the Compacts. All of this will have a cost. These countries will play to their interests in areas we allow. There will be costs with ties to the constituted, armed and territorial Black community in a society that is formally white supremacist. The costs in money and blood are inevitable. But American institutions which are now not allowed to build our society would be given every help in doing so in the future.

The new era would be very difficult and would invest in the future. But not acting somewhere in ways akin to this plan will have serious costs as well.  I am urging us to take the medicines we need to take now and be a little but hopeful that things won’t go completely wrong. We could hope a little bit that hard work and courage will lead to a good result.

Domestic Regimes in a Renewed America

This is the next step in my ever longer series of posts on the subject of laws and institutions related to reconstitutionlization and renewal of the United States of America. I have already taken some time to discuss some aspects of this subject within my other posts. That is because it is a really essential part of the larger subject. In this post I will not exhaust the subject either. I will only bring it a bit more fully into focus. I will only make it the center of what is inevitably a very short note to deal with such a topic. There will be Direct The Imperial Government Civil Code which shall govern much of the life and legal operation within Direct Imperial Government Lands. There will be a title within this Civil Code called Variances which will discuss the ways in which the various Districts such as The District of Columbia, Compact Districts of Compact Zones, Royal Fiat Bands and Fiefdoms can modify this Code as well as fill in its gaps and how and to what degree they can interpose their own authority between this Code and their Constituents. This Code will not be binding on any of the Constitutional Jurisdictions nor on the Federal Jurisdictions such as military bases of the United States military. However, where there is ambiguity or silence the courts and other governments will use this Code as an understanding of the law within the Empire on all subjects. There will be no Title in this Code more vital and more honored than Domestic Regimes.   

This Domestic Regimes title will describe the full policies and some of the reasons or connections between the policies as they are embodied into the making of law and the enforcement of that law. The title will also state again that a Jurisdiction of a constitutional nature must be able to regulate and order its own Domestic Regimes.The title will also reference another title in the Imperial Government Civil Code, that title is  Persons which will define Men and Women as two principal classes of persons under the law. The Title will also state the connections and cross-references to other titles of significant if lesser importance to the topic of this area of law. This will be a rather long and intricate title but I am going to set out the basic outlines of the title as of right now with no basic sources in front of me and without asserting that none of it would change in the final analysis and the final version of the text. But here it is:

Title:  Domestic Regimes

of

The Imperial Government Civil Code

I. Definition, Legal History Political Science and Philosophy

Defining this Title

A. Definition

1.Domestic Regimes as the Basic Units of Society

2. Marriage and Nuclear Families with Legitimate Filiation;  The Preeminent Institution

a. Creation

b.Maintenance and Effects

c. Dissolution

d. Special Cases and Problems

3. All Other Domestic Regimes and their Limits

B. Legal History, Political Science and Philosophy

1. This Title

2.Variances

3. The Other Constitutional Jurisdictions

4. Federal Jurisdictions in the United States

5. Federalism and Mixed Sovereignty Concerns 

II.  Marriage

A. A Union Between a Man and A Woman Effected by Themselves

1. Impediments

a. Incapacity

b. Mistake

c. Estoppel

2. Betrothal and Weddings

a. Contract

b. Honor and Affection

3.Union

a. Consummation

b.Marital Rights

c. Community and Personal Property Effects

i. The General Rule

ii. Variances, Rights to Modify and Special Cases

d. The Husband as The Head of Household

i.Rights, Prerogatives and Limits

ii.Special Cases

e. State and Social Interests Preserving the Autonomy, Dignity and Autonomy of Wives.

i.The Rights and Roles of Family Associations

ii.The Empress’s Bureau of Women’s Affairs

iii. The Individual Exercise of Civil Rights

iv. Rules Relating to Divorce

4. Filiation and the Rights, Status and Expectation of Children

a. Care and Education of Minor Children

b. Inheritance

i. The Three Parts of the Spouses Estate as Passed to Children

* The Forced Portion

** The Free Portion

***The Offset Portion

ii. Spousal Inheritances and Special Expectations of  Children

iii. Filial Rights Regarding Spousal Usufruct and Life Tenancies.

iv. Titles, Patents and Distinctions. 

 III. The Domestic Veil and Expectation of Privacy

A. The Preeminence of Legitimate Nuclear Families

B. Recognized Marital Regimes with Defects

C. Divorce and Remarriage and Subsidiary Issues

D. Issues of those Seeking or Claiming Full Polygamy

E. Special Regimes Of  Filiation and Connection with Other Regimes

1. Adoption

a. Capacity

b.Rights

c.Obligations

2. Medicaly Assissted Parental Complexities

F. Rights of Other Domestic Regimes

1. The Mistress of Ceremonies’ Office of Alliances, Liaisons and Placements

a. Contracts

b.Filiation

2. The Imperial House and its Imperial Chaplaincy’s Office of Religious Communities

a. Roman Catholic Monasteries, Convents and Other Regimes Associated with the Chaplain

b. Roman Catholic Regimes Not Associated with the Chaplain.

c. Other Christian Monks and Nuns

d. Non Christian Monks and Nuns

3. Parent-Child Relations as Regimes Created by Nature and Law Directly

a. Maternal Duties, Rights and Expectations

b.Fathering Bastards  and the Least Associated Ilegitimate Children    

4. The Fiefdoms 

5. Bonded and Covenanted Master Servant Relationships Permitted under these Laws

IV. Deviance From Policy Ideals

A. Veiled Deviance

1. Requirements to Penetrate the Veil

2.Mitigation of  Illegalities and Improprieties Behind the Veil

a. Special Rules for Partial Compliance Behind the Veil

b. Privacy  and Enforcement of Laws against Veiled Offenses

3. Legal Paternity of Children not biologically fathered by the Husband in a legitimate Marriage

a. General Rule and its Operation

b. Exceptions and Special Cases

4. Active Homosexuality and its Various Legal Effects in Domestic  Regimes

5. Prostitution

6. Adultery

7. Domestic Violence

8. Incest

B. Unveiled Deviance

1. Criminal Sexual Behavior and Domestic Regimes.

2. Licensed Morally Flawed Behavior and Domestic Regimes.

V.  Mixing And Social Status

A. Mixed Marriage Issues

1. Race

2.Religion

3. Class and Rank

4. Jurisdictions

B. Mixing in Alliances, Liaisons and Placements

C. Master-Servant Mixing

D.Rights of Rolls of Kindreds as Regards Mixing

E. Rights of Family Associations

F. The Rights and Status of the Emperor

G. The Rights and Status of the Empress

H.The Rights and Status of  All and Varied Nobles And Royals

VI. Domestic Discrimination in Commerce and Contract

A. Housing

B. Schools

C. Public Spaces

D. Common Carriers

E. Employment

F. All Other Matters

VII. Imperial and Royal House

THIS PART OF THE TITLE WILL BE CITABLE HERE AND BE NOTED FOR SUCH CITATION BUT WILL APPEAR UNDER A SEPARATE TITLE OF THE SAME NAME AS THIS SUBSECTION. 

 Of course what would be said in each of these sections is quite vital but already one can see that it is a very great distance from our current sate of affairs.  However, this would not replace the law within the Constitutional Jurisdictions. However,  it would replace the law both in the District of Columbia and in those lands that would be governed by the Direct Imperial Government. Should the system proposed come into being such a title would doubtless have some influence everywhere. However, there would be parts of it which could not be reproduced in the States or elsewhere and that would tend to limit its other provisions being adopted out of context.

Delving Into the Deep Unknown: Specific Institutions of a Renewed America

The United States has abolished legislative election of Senators and made them almost the same as House members in Congress. It has said (which actually makes some sense) that States cannot have one house with population based districts and one with land based districts. It has not elected a General as President since Eisenhower. That is after Washington, Jackson “Hero of New Orleans”,”Rough and Ready” Taylor, Harrison “Old Tippecanoe”, Johnson, U.S. Grant, Pierce,   Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison and Arthur before Eisenhower. All the evidence is that we are slipping completely away from the direction of an Empire despite books about Nixon and the Imperial Presidency. However, I am going to keep spelling out the steps and elements which might make this society the American Empire many of our founders thought we might eventually become. This is not the end of dealing with this subject but it is another step in the discussion. Controlling cost will be different than it is under our regimes now. I did not write  this earlier in the last post but those organizations chartered permanently into each compact would have to commit one mil of their gross gross revenues to the Compact Treasury. Although they will possibly receive more than that in operating fees in many cases it is just another part of the independent funding culture which will certainly be different whether  one admits it is better or not. 

If one had to bet one way or another then the way to bet as pure oddsmaking would be against the model that keeps growing more elaborate in this blog. Yet it is the kind of thing that must be made more elaborate unless the process is interrupted.  The path I am marking out for us is very different from the paths that lie within the parameters others may have set up as the outer limits and range of acceptable and reasonable paths to take. I am seeking to describe the correct path and the path supported by right but also am trying to avoid the many paths to which extreme desperation and  or rage can lead.  This is a path of constitutionalism and law in many ways more so than our current order or other orders. But it is motivated by a desperate set of circumstances. It is time to discuss the problems we will face in creating this specific regime.

Let us follow out the device of filling out the Major Compacts. Let us start with the Compact Assemblies which will be the lower chambers of the Compact Legislatures. Fifty percent of the Seats in these Assemblies will be filled from the Compact Roll of Kindreds.  From five to fifteen percent will be filled from the internal election of Compact Charter Organizations. That will leave between forty-five and thirty-five percent of the seats unfilled. Half the remainder of the seats in each Compact will be filled by the legislatures of each Constitutional Jurisdiction. In discussing this there will be a rule that every major Compact must either consist of all three types of Constitutional Jurisdictions (State, Territories and Possessions) or else only one kind.  No Compact may unite two kinds and exclude a third. The seats shall  be allotted so that where all are members the States have 3c seats, Territories 2c and Possessions 1c ( or c) seats.  This will occupy between twenty-two and a half and seventeen and a half percent of all seats in the Assemblies. Each Jurisdiction will set any term it wishes between on and eight years for its delegates.

So far the Compacts have shown how they will act to make the American system more authentic, real and representative. They have not added much to unity as a whole except that every jurisdiction will belong to more than one Compact which creates a kind of social and cultural cross-bracing.  The appointment of the Special Vice Presidents by the Emperor would be  the other uniting factor and that the Compact Zones are all united in the Direct Imperial Government Lands. The Remaining Seats, as they shall be called, in the Assemblies shall be another uniting factor and part of the stuff which will make the Empire itself. These shall belong to the Imperial and Royal House in the following way. First, every one who is a ranking member of the Imperial House who is clearly a member of the Compact and clearly a Noble  will be granted a seat in the Council of Nobles by preference where the rules and vacancies allow. Those who are high Nobles and not seated in the Council of Nobles shall not be properly seated in the Assembly but shall have the privilege of seating a personal representative for a two-year term when a seat becomes available and this person shall serve through even if they lose their position.  Next all those of high rank in the Imperial House who do not rank above the lowest rank of Baron in the protocol ranks properly or the equivalent in extraordinary nobility may be seated in the Assembly. The highest eligible rank may choose to appoint a delegate as above or serve themselves.  Then whatever seats are left shall be filled by that portion of the Direct Imperial Government known as the Grand Royal and Imperial House and Household Assembly.  This shall occur as follows:

1. Every time a First Executive Vice President is elected one or two kinds of electors from each jurisdiction shall become eligible to serve in these seats from each jurisdiction. Any elector actually sent to the Electoral College or in a “winner take all” Jurisdiction the electors from the final winner’s slate if they received the second most votes and these were more than ten percent of all votes cast.

2. These seats shall be filled by  the GRIHHA one month after the inauguration of a new First Executive Vice President. The GRIHHA shall be free to fill available seats in any portion it wants without regard to any guidance or opinion of outside groups even if all came from one or a few jurisdictions (within the Compact) and a single party or were randomly chosen from a list. But a regular vote and Act of Election must be made by the GRIHHA to fill these seats.

The Grand Royal and Imperial House and Household Assembly will have four main  functions it will fill these seats and  secondly it will be a necessary party to consent to both Changes to the Supreme Charter of the Direct Imperial Government (which will be the nearest equivalent to a specific constitution of the Direct Imperial Government) and it will form a part of the Direct Imperial Government Legislature on votes relating to the Constitution of the United States and its Amendments. It will not  be part of the regular legislation of the Direct Imperial Legislature. Thirdly, it will be the body which reviews publicly and administers the Imperial Services Operating Treasury. Fourthly, it will hold the Privy Functions which shall be seven:

1. Impeachment and Indictment of Peer-Electors and High Ranking House Members.

2.Certifcation of Abdications and Related Protocols.

3.Certifcation of Betrothals of High Ranking Imperial House Members.

4. Certification of Ritual  Confrontations of  Ranking (above median) House Members.

5. Certification of Genealogies, Lines, Filiations, Placements and Alliances of Peer-Electors and High Ranking House Members. This Shall not include any role in the Full, Sacred And Legitimate High Marriage of any person under the power of this article although the effects here reviewed are under its review. 

6. Custody of Royal and Princely Prisoners of War.

7.Report on the Unity to the Bouletherion.

One cannot really have an Empire that is not really an Empire in any way .  Therefore there must be institutions which make up the Empire itself. We will return to this subject later on but it is enough to make that clear now.

Thinking a New Thing: A Competing American Narrative

I am proposing that America must change and the changes must be radical. In order to preserve itself America’s ship of state must steer abruptly and hard to an alternative direction. I am committed to this project myself and although I have very little left really have committed much of my own lingering resources to this project as well.  I have of course written quite a bit about which direction all of this ought to take in other blog postings.  These postings do come from a life experience and therefore have some rootedness and connection with some relevant political thought and action but they also represent, in many ways, a kind of exorcism of hope.  That of course is theologically a great sin. However, in the political realm I think that it is fairly innocent more often than not. As  Elton John sang (and still sings) “When all hope is gone, a sad song is saying so much…. When every little bit of hope is gone, a sad song is saying so much.” The truth is that there is often enough in history a point at which one must put forward a program or ideal regardless of whether there is any hope for the program to be realized. For those interested in Greek history the case of Demosthenes was one that loomed large in the thoughts of leaders of Western Civilization for many centuries. But the great orator Δημοσθένης  is hardly alone in proclaiming a cause or an agenda which he believes is unlikely to be adopted. Within more recent times we also have another of these great failures Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar, Fürst von Metternich-Winneburg z u Beilstein. This Austrian Prince is usually referred to simply as Metternich in the brief writings of political historians writing in English. Like Demosthenes and others he stands before the destruction of the thing he loved — that great Empire which (despite reams of officially titled documents of great importance) never really achieved a single well received name. I mean the Austrian Empire, the Later Holy Roman Empire, The Hapsburg’s Eastern Empire, the Hapsburg Empire, The Austro-Hungarian Empire, The Great Germano-Slavic Power, The Central Power of the White Peoples and half a dozen other names describing roughly the same rather impressive entity that could afford many niceties besides and without a clear and definite identity. Metternich ‘s great fault was failing to secure a more honest and prominent part for the democratic element in what he clearly thought should be in some sense a mixed government. But like most others in his position he was working within many tough and severe limitations. Positive, warm and optimistic as his writing can be it holds a secret. Rich, privileged and fulfilling as his biography seems to be it holds the same secret. The man is writing to us and all his audience from hell. He is smart enough to see that between the things his Sovereign cannot accept, those which people cannot accept in various duly constitutional communities and what his power’s enemies will not allow there is not a path to success or even survival for the civilization he wishes to save. For a man writing from the infernal interior addresses of genius he does a very good job.

In the United States of America we must do a lot of hard things quickly to save ourselves and transcend our crisis. We must bring together groups of people who have not been friendly in a common cause which recognizes the profound diversity of this society. Even stating that objective in a simple sentence is rather convoluted and difficult. I have written of the Thirteen Major Compacts and the Constitutional Jurisdictions and the Direct Imperial Government  I think we need to add to our maps, hearts and constitution but even if that is not the exact final arrangement something like it would be necessary to lead us to a secure path.

Let us revert to the model that I have set out for the sake of argument and to keep this specific and because it what I am advocating.  I have suggested that half the seats of the lower chamber of Compact Assembly of each legislature be reserved for those seated from the newly created Rolls of Kindreds. I also believe that another five to fifteen percent of each Lower Assembly (as well as possible variable offices in the Council of Nobles where appropriate) should be reserved for various organizations forever if they are willing to take their cultural capital as it exists now and invest it into the revolutionary change of bringing these things to be. So there would be seats in the lower assembly forever elected from within the ranks of certain groups and not open to outside votes or competition. But who would those groups be?

Well in The Louisiana Purchase Compact, The Confederate States of America Compact and the Spanish Borderlands Compact there would be seats for the same three organizations in differing quantities along with other groups. These three would be CODOFIL, Congres Mondial des Acadiens, and Action ‘Cadien    all would have more seats in the first of these three Compacts. Also in the Louisiana Purchase Compact would be the Organization of American Historians seated under its old title as the Mississippi Valley Hisotrical Association and others. In the Spanish Borderlands Compact would be La Raza, several Cowboy culture organizations and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as well as the Order of Friars Minor.  In the Confederate States of America Compact  would be the Military Order of the Stars and Bars, The Sons of Confederate Veterans,  ( a single reformed and amalgamated and duly chartered incarnation of) th Ku Klux Klan,  The Southern Baptist Convention, a single organization of Southern Herittage for the Five Civilized tribes, the SEC and a polical office of  the Ursuline Nuns. In the Compact of the Possessions one would definitely have seats reserved for groups associated with the Black Panthers, Buffalo Soldiers,  and several black athletic associations. These are just a samll number of the Compacts and not all the groups in any compact. Just on skimming through these it does not seem likely that they would all be able to work together even a little bit until after the structure pressured them to do so.  Of course without working together the structure is unlikely to ever emerge. I realize all this quite well. But I believe America must become really American or else become extinct so I keep writing these little essays.  We will overcorrect a bit as all revolutions must from an absurdly simplified system to one too complicated in purist terms. But the change is not excessive. These groups will not have all the power even as a sum total. However, they will help our very complicated and diverse country to stay in touch with the difficult and demanding reality of who we are.

If the new American story emerges then we will have less boundless optimism and less promising to be first and best in everything. We will have more people reminding us of our costly and often tragic greatness who are not willing to throw it all away on the slight chance of some new reality we cannot even articulate. It will be difficult at first even if it happens. Europe will likely ridicule these Compacts with small powers and many seats and Asian powers will be uncomfortable with unexpected change in directions they had not plotted. The Americas will want to downplay the things they like from memory of past disappointments and play up the things they fear for political reasons.  So we would have to do all of these difficult and challenging things not to fit in better but because we were convinced that they were necessary for our survival and development.

Demosthenes and Metternich are high company but if one chooses very obscure references it is almost worth leaving them out.   So this sort of change is really what I think we need. I am not certain we will not get it but it seems unlikely.

The NCAA Championship: A Few Thoughts

The Duke Blue Devils  have brought basketball glory back to the state of North Carolina. This state has the powerful UNC tradition for whom Michael Jordan is the greatest example and highly respectable traditions like the Wolfpack of North Carolina State. But Duke is the pre-eminent glory.

This year they had to go and beat a “never say die” team from Butler whose Bulldogs felt they were defending a home court in one of Basketball’s sacred Hoosier venues.

The 2010 Championship team and their coach

   

I did not follow the tourney as closely as I sometimes do but I did follow it enough to see that these two teams in the final had a pair of great stories.  This post is another break from politics I suppose.

Passover, Holy Week and the World’s Insane Savagery not always Progressing Civilization

“On the First Day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the disciples approached Jesus and said, ” Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat Passover?” Matthew  26: 17  NAB. During Easter and Holy Week Christians celebrate Jesus celebrating his national and ancestral holiday of the feast of Passover.  Jesus the Redeemer and Deliverer was celebrating a holiday of Delivery and Redemption when  he entered into the suffering and death of his Paschal mystery. According to the Bible the Hebrew had come into Egypt as wealthy administrators whose zenith was embodied in the man Joseph who struck  a shrewd deal to help Egypt through a crisis and secure his people’s survival. Perhaps ties to Hyksos Semitic elements before or after their dynasty and ties to lands as far away as Babylon and as close as Canaan enabled the early Hebrew clans to play a key role as a small part of the Egyptian society and economy. But things change. “Then a new king, who knew nothing of Joseph, came to power in Egypt, He said to his subjects, look how numerous and powerful the Israelite people are growing, more so than we ourselves! Come, let us deal shrewdly with them to stop their increase, otherwise in time of war they too may join our enemies to fight against us and so leave our country.” Exodus 1: 8-9 NAB.

The Hebrews are enslaved (although neither in the systems we have known relatively recently nor in the system for individual war captives in Egypt) and when that doesn’t do the trick infanticide is commanded to keep them down. Doubtless many Hebrews gave children to any Egyptian who would save them. One of those saved was Moses who became the deliverer of the Passover. There are no real vowels from which English translates his name in the oldest texts.   So we may say his name was Mss. The Pharaohs often had names like Ramses (Rmss) or Thutmose (Ttmss). As a Hebrew  reared as an Egyptian Prince he was doubtless possessed of the name of an egyptian God followed by the “mss” name. He then removed that Pagan first syllable and had a new meaning given to the last two syllables of that name perhaps based on an event or perhaps based on a wall known story of Sargon which was in the Pharaoh’s  Palace Library — and so his name tells a story. Moses’s struggles, spiritual journey and growing sense of Hebrew identity filled a period after he fled Egypt for killing an Egyptian and then returned to seek the deliverance of his people. Why would an atheistic team of scholars and scientists say he appeared to confront Pharoah at that time?  Many such say the story is made up. But I say they are lazy cowards.   

A man learned in all the vast science and wizardry of Egypt that an astute Princeling could learn there he added to it ties with Semite and nomads with old ties to his Hebrew Ancestors. He preayed and sought the help of God for a deliverance for his people. Through consultation and study steadied in prayer he became certain enough that a vast volcanic eruption was coming to the Eastern Mediterranean. The first shifting of plate and upheavals of the Earth came after he had already begun to prophesy to Egypt’s leaders. They found the water reddish and discolored and somewhat poisoned after the prophesied first quake. Hebrews rejoiced at this sign that their unique leader could predict the future. Frogs first, then gnats and then flies were driven from wetlands and wilderness and among the flies were stinging water creatures found in new puddles and flats. Moses preached and life got bad. Moses and his agents kept a sense of pace and theater building the tension and soon the bad water, gasses from fault cracks and rotting bodies and waste of insects led to devastating disease.

The Seventh plague of hail came as the first ashes coated with ice and snow stirred up storms with the early eruptions.  These storms stirred up unprecedented numbers of bugs that swarmed to escape the hostile climate. Then the Locusts descended on a blighted land. Finally the main eruption poured forth and the ejecta cloud darkened the skies for three days. Moses had prevented the Hebrews from being victimized in these terrible ordeals — perhaps sacrificed or eaten and instead had made them feared when he preached and predicted all of this. In the Wealthy Houses many if the Heirs lived in areas of the building nearest the outgassing inlets and as the Hebrews gathered to pray, plan, drill at arms and feast these died in their sleep.

Then the Hebrews moved away from Egypt and found water courses diverted and dams of debris creating dry corridors. The crossed over these and when the Egyptians had second thought s the waters were returning to courses and the armies were cut off surrounded, flooded and washed away by the returning waters.  The Hebrews followed a column of cloud near the coast by day as the cloud of the erupting volcano was visible and of fire at night as it glowed. Exhausted birds flying from lands devastated by the volcano fed them and the ashes fell down with humidity from the sea and caused little plants to produce food in the desert for flocks and people and this went on for a while and was called manna.  With courage and faith they risked it all in a world turned upside down and found themselves free at the end. Unfortunately many seminaries are either illiterate or else see only how fairy tales are similar to these stories.

Jesus was also a real man who really healed the sick. He really fed the hungry and preached and led crowds. He came to Jerusalem knowing he would die horribly with the endless courage that typified him and his life. He came among other things to celebrate the Passover. 

I do appreciate the glories of Egypt and Rome. I am not a romantic idealist purist who hates all trappings of power and pomp. But the great stories at the heart of  Judaism and Christianity are also about human greatness. These are not worthless fools serving a worthy God. This is God drawing near to his people.   

In recent posts I have been putting up a goodly number of more or less political postings.  In fact, the last half-dozen have all been political without an exception. I could have interrupted these to do a personal post on my brother’s wedding but I did not.  Having committed to this political expression I have decided to go on with the process for the immediate future. Everyone has got their discontents and their sense of what are the tolerable limits of their civic and social situation before they must take some kind of drastic action to change that situation or remove themselves from it. I am not arguing that whatever I will do is immediately and inextricably linked to what society as a whole will find to be the right and practical response. In fact, in may ways my own place is one of having lost that basic sense of trust in society which would be at the base and part of the very essence of such an assertion as I disclaim here. But on this holiday as we think of our civilization let us remember that civilization is more than power alone. Besides the unique and great criticisms of Moses and Jesus Egypt and Rome retained much of whatever habitability and decency they did retain because of others who sought more than just power in that sense and were also able people who could wield power.

Human Habitat,  Resources, Sex and Reproduction, Military Culture, Bio-diversity,  Really Understood Moral Hazard, Preservation of Momentum and Continuity of Resources are all themes I would like to address in my blog. I would like to draw near to a plan for reforming our society. However, I want to take a break to ponder God’s mercy in the redemptions we celebrate just now. As we move into SPRING, maybe a new springtime of a genuine and intelligent faith can find its way into our policy.

Happy Passover and Happy Easter.

Summary of the American Situation on the Brink

America is positioned for permanent and total collapse as a recognizable social order and national administration in very short order.  Right now we are faced with the early symptoms of something that can be fast and cataclysmic. While I admit that I have higher goals and aspirations than mere survival. In anything I do I find that I am working on goals at several levels of success and several spans of time. Most people do act that way. The truth is that if one only works to solve an immediate crisis one is very often back in a state of crisis very soon.   Yet none of these long-term plans or efforts to improve one’s overall position will  replace the need to address an immediate and serious crisis. When one has symptoms of a heart-attack it is not the time to work-out a detailed retirement plan. The heart-attack must be tended to first and then other issues can be tended to after the heart-attack has been survived. America shows many signs that it has reached a point where every refusal to confront the great challenges that demand our attention exacts an ever higher cost.  I want to briefly examine five aspects of our current crisis.

These concerns are our borders, all aspects of waste management,  the soundness and effectiveness of our country’s fiscal concepts, the health and progress of our military overall  and the totality of sex in our culture and society.  I would argue  that although clearly we are less distressed than the weakest countries in almost all of these areas the rules that apply to great powers and large societies are distinct from those which apply to Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo,  or Nicaragua. Nor or we (or anyone else) absolutely superior to every small and troubled country in the world. Countries like ours (MEANING RELATIVELY LARGE, RICH AND POWERFUL) draw in upon themselves a great deal of negative energy, resentment and opposition that is both skilled and determined.  We also have friends and allies but nobody as committed to holding us up as there are people committed to tearing us down.

America can face these challenges effectively but not without real effort and sound decision-making in the start of all the processes that will be necessary. So what are the dimension of this crisis I am discussing?  The answer to that question is too long for this blog post but  I will cover some of the five main points I have selected here.  it is not necessary to rank the order of these priorities of issues to resolve and it is not even necessary for all who would attempt to work with this essay and its goals to even agree that these are the five most important points in the national crisis. So I will spend some of the time and space that I might have spent justifying this set of priorities to address instead in defining some of the ways I think about societies as a whole. I would like to discuss how I see this subject of national crisis. It will be different than how most (and perhaps any) others have constructed the subject and framed it for analysis and discussion.

So bear in mind these principles when trying to understand my point of view and analysis.  I do not think one can have it every possible way in an argument and have it make sense or be in any way useful. Simply to say things that make one feel better is not really an argument. I am not some kind of objectivity purist either  but as John Adams said “facts are stubborn things” America has to face a variety of important and disturbing facts.  I also don’t believe one can use the same excuses as having the same effect which applied to other societies and eras. Yet again, this can be taken too far — one surely must learn comparatively about other nations and times to understand the challenges of one’s own time and nation. There may be a few books needed to really explore what I mean by these ideas but we will have to deal with these as important assertions that I simply cannot bother to address or describe very well in this place and time.

Thousands of people cross our  physical southern border every day without legal permission, identification, or other clearance.  We have lots of shooting and large justified (and approved by us) troop movements just south of our border  by a government with whom we have a very mixed history. The Governor of California is an immigrant whose father was an Austrian Nazi and who has shown an affinity for many Nazi values (but not the most objectionable ones) in his body of work and who governs a state (at least for a few more months) with a frontier with this border of open crime. The governor of Michigan is a  dual citizen with Canada and our history with that country is not the fantasy love fest most Americans believe it is. Her state is able to provide access to the North in all sorts of ways.  One of our largest ports (that of New Orleans) is governed by in the State governed by a man who is a second generation descendant of Indians  who are one of the most up and coming trading powers in the world and whose ties with the United States in key areas are expanding rapidly beyond almost any precedent and beyond all proportion  in the balance of our geopolitics. Our President is the most destabilizing and disruptive person imaginable to be head of state and commander-in-chief. To a remarkable degree our country has already ceased to exist as a real country and always was on the low-end of national integrity and coherence. It would hard for things to be much more threatening before total collapse. It is not so much what is happening but what we can see nobody will stop that speaks volumes about our national demise.

Much of what is reported as wealth and success in this country is actually simply waste. Almost all our systems of accounting reward and honor some kind of waste and hide its nature as waste. Yet in spite of greatly diminishing the amount of waste that we report from the real ocean of waste produced we still know that we produce more waste per capita than anyone in history. That is seen as horribly offensive to every responsible person in the world. It is storing up horrors for the future, straining our environment  and literally killing innocent productive people in all kinds of ways that are not reported. It is a massive national crisis in and of itself.

The next part of the crisis ties into this issue of waste. Our fiscal ideology as a nation must be changed. We need to create a work safety net and a study safety net that acknowledges that many people simply know they cannot find any meaningful work and not just give such people money or force them into death or crime.  Counties, cities and others should be encouraged to operate week and day labor farm and shops that produce real good in high standards and are free to mix tax money with market generated funds. Family farms which use high labor, high-grade production, nature conservation, hunting, experimentation and things like weather watching need to be given special rights to take them out of the horrific tyranny of our psychotic concept of free-market capitalism.  Wastes and ruins need to become a major separate area of property law. Foreclosures need to be taxed a little bit punitively, stock market transactions minimally assessed for insurance premiums and bankruptcies made more not less painful. Floating Quatrimetalism is what I would espouse as the ideal for US Monetary Policy. The Treasury and Federal Reserve would certify four metals for circulation. Platinum, gold, silver and copper would be related  in adjustable formulae and on percent of the total value of all legal tender would be issued in “single metal coins” with a steel outer and inner ring and with the alloys adjusted within a limited range to approach market value during the issuance of the coin denomination.  Three percent of the total value of all legal tender would be issued in two metal coins made the same way. All of these would be able to be carried on strings like Chinese coins of the past. The FDC would require every bank to carry one percent of its assets in these coins on hand.  Banks would all be required to own half ( in value) of all the real estate assets in which they operate under their own publicly displayed names. The government would have a bureaucracy to support true micro- loans to true micro-businesses.  However,  there would be a blatant understanding that no anti-trust laws would be interpreted in a way that allowed the accumulation of great fortunes by companies and individuals who created barriers to competition by securing assets they produced. Restraint on trade would require some form of hostility toward the assets of others in a fuller sense.

To say that President Obama is giving up on our only really clear advantage is harsh but true. To say that George Bush had chosen to pursue a policy I call “Pissing Off Russia as A Mean Weakling”  is harsh but true.  To say that our space policy is an elaborate and expensive form of suicide is harsh but true. Our military is one of the things that works best in our country but it is to really remarkable degree an unbelievable mess.  I just cannot justify saying all that needs saying here.  

Sexual policy in the United States is almost hopeless. Almost beyond hope or repair we see conditions that make me certain our best days or behind us unless we act decisively.  Things that need doing include:

1.  Formal recognition of extended family associations.

2. Harsh and full investigation and prosecution of typical violent stranger rape and clear division from less clear forms of sexual coercion without destroying them as prosecuted crimes all together.

3.  Change of the Full Faith and Credit Provision to a full provision on interstate and a nd federal recognition of domestic regimes.

4. Their must be a bureaucracy supporting women gynecologists, midwives, farmwives, women’s cottage industries and house to house marketing. This must be independently and securely funded.

5.  Under federal law in the district of Columbia and elsewhere there would be reformed laws. States (and any other Constitutional Jurisdiction) must be able to recognize betrothals,  concubinage and polygamy under laws which are able to accord them a secondary status to regular monogamous unions. That would include a gradation of inheritance laws and titles of filiation. All children would be presumed to have some claims on their parents but they would be allowed to vary. For men their would be the traditional (but lost) distinctions of legitimate, natural, illegitimate  and bastard children and the children of donated sperm, each would have a distinct claim on their parent’s estate but none would have no claim at all. Each class would be determined by the relationship with the mother. For  women all children would have rights to her (name concealed) basic medical records and some federal benefits. The first of  the classes of filiation would be children born in marriage to the natural father and reared. The second class would be other children conceived, born and reared. The third children given up for adoption. The fourth surrogate children wombed and given to others. The fifth children of donated eggs.  It is my honest opinion that we are in our current state of law best described as hypocritical savages or barbarians at best..  

So this is how I see these things. There is much more to say. There is much more to discuss. However, we must face the facts are be destroyed in my opinion. That is the whole crux of the matter.

American Survival — American Transformation

America must decide to survive.  If it does so it must in some sense transform itself. What kind of transformation is that likely to be?

Identifying a crisis eventually becomes effortless if the crisis is severe enough. In terms of identifying the crisis the worthy trick is to identify it in time to take some kind of actions to avoid, mitigate or redeem its worst results and consequences. America is in a deep national and societal crisis. Not all of us are free to react in the same way to addressing this crisis.  However, we can perhaps do what we can do.  Suppose one is eager to do more than whatever one’s present actions are, what can be done?

To identify the real dimensions and parameters of our crisis goes beyond what can be achieved in a single blog posting.  I do a lot of listing in these posts but there would be nothing but list if I even attempted to mention every major area of concern and cause for serious  anxiety and action.  In recent posts, especially the last five,  I have outlined where I think we need to end up in very general terms. In this post I will try to outline what perhaps can be done prior to the revolutionary transformation taking hold in these United States of America.

First, if you follow my advice you will have to adopt a mental attitude quite distinct from the mental attitude on which most politics is presented, proclaimed and outlined these days. If one accepts the revolutionary changes outlined here as a goal and takes them seriously then one can still admit that it is unlikely that the goal will be achieved. Although it is not more likely im the distant future it is possible that it will happen but not occur until after a reasonable life expectancy has passed. So this means a distinct political approach recommends itself.  Agitation and campaigning for candidates must both be relatively minor aspects of this effort to achieve political transformation.

One thing that can be done is to read this blog and other related material and then to discuss it with people selected as being the best people to help push these ideas and changes forward. Another thing that can help is to find ways to build value and grow one’s own dreams in such a way that they have value on their own but also can work to bring about a larger program and pattern of change. So let us talk about some principles of creating this movement if it is to become a movement.

First, after the reading described above try to set down a few notes and remarks somewhere to show you are committed to the project. Maybe take a friend out for coffee and explain that you are committing yourself to this project.

Second, do not diminish your participation in politics. Whether that means changing where and how you participate or merely finding ways to let those people know that you basically support there goals but have some more refinements and other profound changes that you would also like to see in our society. Be less pushy and assertive than those who can get more satisfaction out of quick short-term goals.

Third, work out the principle of autonomy linked to loyalty. That is trying to create your own resources that are really yours but which can also be restructured readily to support a movement for change and identify the causes discussed here particularly (along with country, family and religion) causes you would and are willing to support with resources that are wholly yours even if it costs you more than it is really worth to you personally.

Fourth, be invested in community and tie that to your social ideals. Don’t put the idea of revolutionary change above all the needs of your family, church congregation, soccer league, neighborhood watch and alumni association  but try to tie all the commitments you make to these community-building things to a sense of the social transformation you would like to see.

Five, learn to supply critical support.  Consider giving care boxes to local National Guard units and building a real relationship and still speak openly about changes you would like to see over time in the military culture of our country and society. Give money and write letters to candidates for office when you can and mention some of these ideals not as a condition to your modest donation but identifying where you would like to see things going over time.

Six, consider starting a discussion group. Consider getting together with some other people who are able to take small steps to help bring about these changes.

Seven, IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING LEFT CONTACT ME.  You can contact me here are on media linked to this site like Twitter. If you wish to support these ideals through me directly I am not incorporated but you could mail a check payable  to Frank W. Summers III to:

Frank W. Summers III

PO Box 22

Perry, LA 70575

If you do that, write ” Reconstitutionalize America” in the memo line. If you give me a return address I will try to let you know how I have spent it.  This is not even really a recommendation but rather an option just in case it seems right for you. I make no representations in advance about how it will be used and it will not be tax-deductible.

After an American Revolution: The Royalist Portion of the Empire

This is a separate post from the four-part American Revolution post. It is also being written (at least in part, we shall see what happens)  the week of my brother Joseph Anthony Summers getting married to Brooke Lee Ortego.  I do have some things to discuss about the transition to royalism and the royalist aspect of the Empire and the changes that are necessary.  I choose to do this partly in terms of Twelve Principles and Precepts of the Transition to the Empire. This is all so very extremely distant from the run of American politics and yet it is quite the minimum in terms of understanding a transition from a republican to a royalist system. This is the kind of thing where the big break is to discuss the matter at all. Once one begins to discuss it there is no way to avoid saying many things that must seem ridiculous from the current vantage point. But the transformation would be a real transformation and so one must explain how it ought to work or else really had better not discuss it at all. I am also inconsistent in my use of person and tense here and I am not going to go with single style. This is in a sense incorrect but also suggestive of the context of this blog.

First Principle and Precept: The Emperor shall reign, shall be the Supreme Executive, Special and Extraordinary Commander in Chief and Judiciary of  Last Resort.  He is a minor and indirect player in the making of laws known as Legislation.

Second Principle and Precept: The Emperor shall preside over an a federal Empire which while it is more unitary and less federal than the true nature of the republic is as federal as the republic was often understood to be recently and his sovereignty is that of the federal and direct imperial power and not of the States or constitutional jurisdictions in which a portion of the system of dual sovereignty exists.

Third Principle and Precept: The Emperor shall by right occupy in fullness the Presidential and executive power during times when the First and Executive Vice President is disabled or unnamed but the powers of the Executive Branch as they have been vested in the Presidents of the Republic shall be ordinarily and customarily exercised by First and Executive Vice President  except where the written constitution of the Empire clearly transfers or reserves those rights to the Emperor or where lands, bureaucracies  houses and tribes clearly fall under the special power of the new Empire and were not part of the old Republican Presidency.

Fourth Principle and Precept: The processes of the Founding of the Empire shall in every way count as the Election of the Founding Emperor and the joining while the Constitution endures of the title of Basileus and Emperor. Basileus shall be the senior title and the Acadians shall provide no less than two-thirds majorities in all conclave elections under the Constitution. The Emperor shall also be at least King of the Compact of Louisiana and possibly of some of its Jurisdictions as well. This shall be a title equal in seniority to that of the Emperor and shall produce no less than half as many elector in the Conclave as the Empire itself produces. Further the Empire must accept that some of the Acadians  will not be citizen-subjects of the Empire. These Outside Acadians will number no more than one fifth nor less than one tenth of the Acadian section of the conclave unless the demographics or politics should obviously mean that the se persons had become citizen-subjects of the Empire.

Fifth Principle and Precept: With the exception of the National Parks and existing military bases the ordinary Federal government’s  land ownership shall be that which most yields to the transitions of creating the Empire. The Imperial House, The Peer-Elector Fiefdoms, The Gift Estate and the large transfers to the new Constitutional Jurisdictions will largely consume and exhaust other federal land ownership. Thus the First Executive Vice President will control fewer and less extensive lands as federal although new lands will enter the hands of the Emperor.  The Peer-Electors chosen and choosing will pay something for their lands and these funds will be divided into four equal parts. One part will go to a fund to pay down the national debt, one part will go to the Emperor’s  and Imperial House Trust, one part will go to a Custodial trust of the Fiefdom and Title of the Peer and one part will go the Imperial Combined Aristocratic Trust. The Forty-Nine Fiefdoms will be part of the Direct Imperial Government.

Sixth Principle and Precept: There shall be a handful of Institutions which shall be most especially the Preserve of the Royalist Imperial element of the government and society. A partial but substantial list that includes most of these elements would be:

1. The Imperial House itself.

2. The Office of Liaison to the Ethnos Arkadios.

3. The Empress’s Office of Women’s Affairs

4.The Empress’s Ministry of Protocol.

5. The Mistress of Ceremonies’  Office of Liaisons and Placements

6. The Mistress of Ceremony’s Office of  Ritual Confrontation

7.TThe Imperial Household

8. The Imperial House & Household Bank

9. The Emperor’s Office of Wastes and Ruins

10. The Imperial Office of  Human Habitat Expansion.

11. The Personal, Household and  Direct Imperial Military Institutions.

12. The Imperial Services Agency.

13. The Imperial Wellness Agency.

14. The Imperial Borders Administration.

Seventh Principle and Precept: The funding of the Royalist section shall not be subject in large part to the ordinary legislative process. The Operating Treasury of the approximate dozen major agencies of the Imperial Bureaucracy  would receive certain fixed funds by Constitutional prerogative:

1.  One  half of one percent of all revenues collected by the Federal government during each year would be given to this Operating Treasury.

2. A fourth of any and all taxes collected in the Direct Imperial Government lands would be evenly divided between the Imperial House Trust and the Operating Treasury prior to any other claims upon them.

3. All those passing through the entries to the United States in the Royal Fiat Zone would pay  a fee and all freight would pay an entry tariff to the Imperial Operating Treasury and the Imperial House Trust. A formula for these fees  would be set permanently  in the constitution.   The Emperor would have the right and prerogative to make use of the labor of apprehended illegal aliens and to maintain an office of Liaison with Canada and one with Mexico solely to operate this program in a state of transparency. The EMperor would have no obligation to arrest or detain anyone and  the US Border Patrol would operate on the interior line of the Fiat Zone as on an international border enforcing US laws of immigration. These aliens detained by the Emperor would be paid, fed and housed but paid less than other  American workers for Imperial projects especially in the border’s Royal Fiat Zone. There would be an escalating system of arrests. One week of labor on first arrest, six weeks on second arrest, twelve weeks on third arrest, one year on fourth arrest and five years followed by legal acceptance as permanent resident aliens on fifth arrest.  All aliens would be released with some portion of the profit they had earned when released, a portion equal to half the amount the alien received would go to the Transparency and Resettlement program of either Canada or Mexico or be held in trust until such date as they should agree to set up such an office and program. Labor would be forced but consistent with the health, capacities, skills, willingness and interests of the aliens.  The regular US border beyond this Royal Fiat  zone would operate on separate and parallel rules.   

3. The Emperor and Empress would each have an ex-officio Estate and Manor and the Peer-Electors would each have certain covenants to entertain and   support some aspect of the Household from their estates.  The legal principle regarding these operations should be “The King shall live on his own”.

4. The Imperial Operating Treasury shall receive one tenth of the revenues produced from all foreclosures in the United States but shall at the end of three years of earning conservative interest remit half of these funds to pay off the national debt. This shall be both a tax and a penalty on foreclosing institutions. The Imperial Operating Treasury shall also remit one tenth of these funds to the General Treasury of the Direct Imperial Government.

5. The Imperial Services shall include a Stock Market Assurance Agency. Every share of stock traded in the United States will be charged a one percent SMAA premium. A third of each premium will go into a General Recovery Fund.  Most of the rest will go into accounts attached to the names and credit of various players in a transaction according to rules set out. Each stock exchange in the United States will also pay one half of one mil of its gross gross volume of trade to the SMAA as an annual premium. When a company fall into nearly nill value its shareholders, employees and creditors will  be entered into an SMAA Company Holding Venture. The SMAA will evaluate which of a schedule of options is best from partial making whole of all, to a minimal settlement and dissolution of all interests and to a rehabilitation of the company. The Imperial operating Treasury will receive one percent of all revenues collected by the SMAA as an operating fee.

6. By a set of laws set out in the Constitution the Emperor shall have a right to profit from anything left to waste and ruin in the United States.

7. Every person voting in a national election would pay a nickel to the Emperor each time the voter exercised this right.

8. The Emperor shall have fees and excises associated with titles from which he may derive incomes.

Eighth Principle and Precept: The Imperial Commerce of Agency of the Imperial Services would be set up to pay taxes on activities of the Emperor and House in the free and private sectors of the economy. Both parties may engage in such activities and profit from them but when they do they can sue and be sued through this Agency.

Ninth Principle and Precept: The Emperor and the Imperial House (as well as each Peer-Elector and their House) shall have an official religion or a group of sponsored religions with which he will set the example of that mix of devotion, conflict, adherence and protest which typify these relationships. In the case of an Acadian Basileus the Roman Catholic Church is the Official Church and the Greek Orthodox Church is the most honored other church to which also an excommunicated  Basileus should first seek admittance for himself. However, the Emperor’s religion shall not be imposed upon the Citizen-Subjects of the Empire.

Tenth Principle and Precept:  Those in the Nobility and Aristocracy shall be subject to an Imperial Honor and Protocol Code   which shall govern their standing. In the founding papers it shall be described how the Imperial bureaucracy may discriminate in favor of Aristocrats and Nobles in Good Standing and how they may not so discriminate.  Anyone may buy a lowest rank , such as that of High Squire, for the purposes of attaining some small participation in these privileges. A fee shall be paid to the Ministry of Protocol and  another to the House, a Family Crest shall be certified, a plot of land subject to the new entail law be established, a family trust  and a family charity endowed and one can unless sued to prevent it on solid grounds buy such an elevation. The True Nobility starting at the equivalent of the British Rank of Baron may also be applied for and in a sense purchased but here the Ministry of Protocol must certify that there is some honor to be gained by the Institution and the Purchaser must already be a High Squire at least before applying. No rank above the baronial may be purchased directly under this scheme. Here a Knight’s Hold, a Coat of Arms, a family Shrine and a Personal and Family History would all be required of the purchaser as well as a very secure trust sufficient to provide a modest living at the time of its creation. These trusts will not be subject to seizure by creditors and therefore will require new working out of various laws.

Eleventh Principle and Precept: The House itself will be a domestic regime unto itself under Imperial LAw and with a fairly extensive set of written property and domestic laws. It shall not be subject to other domestic and property laws.

Twelfth Principle and Precept: The First and Executive Vice President would report to the Emperor regularly as prescribed by law and would pay him homage openly at the start of each four-year term or would not be able to hold office.

The Mental Ferment for Men (and Women) who Might Foment an American Revolution: Part Four

In the previous three parts of this posting I have, in very brief form, showed that our system of governance is neither so honest about many of its basic principles, so true to its heritage nor  so worthy in its administration that a revolution is out of the question.  In general there is a rule that if one is going to go a distance in political action which is beyond the norm and involves risk then it is actually less risky to undertake greater changes than are absolutely necessary (without going too far) because a society that does so will have to risk fewer constitutional transformations and is more likely to live long and prosper than is one which must go back twice as  often to those borderlands of “the state of nature” where constitutional changes are created. So I propose the elements of this fourth section as reasonable and perhaps in a certain sense necessary but not as minimalist unavoidable necessities. These are changes which cannot be undertaken lightly. The new regime I have laid out for our consideration reasserts a more affirmative social structure which would enable many social problems to be addressed more directly and comprehensively than in our current society. It is a white supremacist constitution obviously but it also redistribute wealth in the form of public lands transfer from States, counties, municipalities and the federal government to non white constitutional jurisdictions. Further, these lands would also be comprised disproportionately of lands seized in tax  and other actions –thus while not all lands in the new Jurisdictions would be owned by the new Juris dictions much of the land in many of them would be. Some would be restricted in use but much would be available for sale into the private sector and lease. In addition while I favor cutting off programs to elevate these racial groups into the middle class within the states, cutting off the cost of integrating schools (without allowing public schools to be de jure 100% segregated either), cutting off the cost of imprisoning the unemployed and hopeless masses caused in part by many of our social polices I would create a single simple rule. Half of one percent of all revenues of any State government would go to aid programs for the needy in all of its neighboring non-State  Constitutional Jurisdictions and one and a half percent of all state revenues will be divided among the capital improvement programs of all neighboring non-State Constitutional Jurisdictions. The Federal Government would also be obliged to fulfill ten percent of all its contracts from non-State Jurisdictions. In addition to this there would be the horse-trading aspects of the legislative and electoral process and the access to the military among other forces to promote greater racial equality. However, There would also be a countervailing system of set-asides to accentuate the social structure. There would be some few named high offices only available to State citizens, a citizen of a Possession could not rise above the rank of Colonel in the US military and no citizen of a Territory could rise above the rank of a two star general. The residents of Colored Districts in States could not stand for election to any statewide elected office and State Citizens of the North East Asian Districts of a State could not succeed another such citizen as governor or chief magistrate nor serve more than two total terms nor could they hold more than one US Senate Seat from any state for more than one year.  These things are controversial, But they are nothing compared to where I am headed in this part of this posting.  I am so far pressed by what I view as extreme circumstance to urge these changes. The writing and declaring of these goals and opinions is more likely to do irrevocable harm to me and to what little reputation and fortune I may still have than they are to result in the achievement of the objectives described.  

So in the first three parts I suggested the creation of Censors and Electors for Life, the expansion and transformation of the Congress of the United States and the redrawing of the map to include Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands as well as creating fourteen new Territories and seventeen new Possessions. Those are radical changes to which I added the Major Compacts and Minor Compacts with their governments and new zones on the map as well. Much more ambitious change than is ever proposed by anyone serious.  A working out of the details of the Governments of the Major Compacts begins to push us into the changes that really go against the flow of events in our Union for a very long time. The Major Compacts should be governed by an Executive and Judical Board (and of which I will only mention here that these Boards will have equally voting seats and only a few members and that the Elector for Life of the Compact will be one of those seated) to which we shall return and a Compact Legislature which we have already begun to discuss. Compact Legislatures would be formed by A Council of Nobles in the Upper Chamber and a Compact Assembly in the Lower Chamber. Half the seats of the Lower Chamber will be filled from the Roll of Kindreds for the Compact but the means of filling those seats shall be diverse including both wide and limited elections, random selection among all Family Associations, ex-officio seats in the Roll’s Administration, rotation among family associations and seats auctioned off to qualified family associations. The other half of the seats in the lower chamber will be appointed by the legislatures of all member Constitutional Jurisdictions in the Compact.  The Upper Chamber should be a Council of Nobles divided more or less into three blocks composing 25% of the seats each and two blocks composing 12.5% of the seats each. The three larger blocks would be the Ordinary Nobility, the Nobility of the Sword and the Nobility of the Robe.  The two smaller blocks would be the Nobility of the Chamber and the Nobility of the Games.  All seats would vote equally and each Major Compact would in its charter state with clarity the manner in which each block seats it members but all those entitled to sit in a block are to be subject to a process of changing ratios — in other words the number of Nobles of a type may change but the number of seats will be constant. No more seats will be added unless added to all blocks according to their proportion and approved by the entire legislature. Leave the Ordinary Nobility aside for now except to say  a portion of these seats will go to Chiefs of the Name certified by the Roll of Kindreds and to other familial leaders of similar rank so certified. The Nobility of the Sword will be all general officers and retired general officers in the militaries of the member Constitutional Jurisdictions in the Compact and all those of the Rank of Colonel or higher in the US military.  Nobility of the Robe will be made up of high-ranking academics, clerics and judiciary officials as described in the Charter of each Compact. The Nobility of the Chamber will be made up of the Governors or other chief political executives and their immediate inferiors as well as leader of the legislative chambers of all Jurisdictions and any and all US Senators, Tribunes and Censors from member Jurisdictions of the Compact. The Nobility of the Games will be made up of the Olympic Medalists from the Compact as well as other who have been elected or selected from among lists of other types of competitive champions. Despite the name this would not only includes athletics and Games but other competitions as well.  Later in this posting I will return to a special function of this chamber alone.     

Now I have gotten to the final part of my four-part posting on the American Revolution.  If the revolutionary changes described up until this point were carried out in the context of an American Revolution that would create a much stronger and more just country than we have today. Such changes are vastly out of sync with what is discussed and proposed in Washington and in most of the United States of America as political options.  However, I think that I general our Founding Fathers  and the responsible leaders among the Revolutionary leaders thought that in time our republic ought to evolve into an Empire but that it should do so in a good and free way (they never equated freedom and democracy). I assert (AND YES I AM ABSOLUTELY SERIOUS ABOUT THE GENERAL THRUST OF THIS ALTHOUGH IN LIFE AND WRITING I AM SOMETIMES KNOWN FOR SARCASM) that the next large constitutional transformation of this society ought to be into an empire. I propose that this reconstitutionalized country should have two official names “The United States of America” and “The Federal American Empire of the United States”.

Eventually my proposal for a transition from Republicanism to Royalism will have to have a separate post on “American Royalism” or “Fulfilling Plans of Empire” that are not part of this blog post in four parts with deals with new revolutionary change in and of itself.  The mere basics can be mentioned here but all of the votes I propose would still exist, the federalism would still exist, the Censors and Electors for Life would exist as described. The Electors for Life would now elect the Emperor as well if we went all the way to royalism. Yes, an elected Emperor could be fully royal. The Holy Roman Emperor was elected, the Pope ( who is a Royal Monarch of an odd kind) is elected, the Kings of England before the Norman Conquest were elected, The King of Poland in recent centuries was elected,  Numerous Royal Chiefs and High Kings of Scotland and Ireland have been elected. There is also this dirty little secret which doubtless the United Kingdom would feel the need to deny if this were an official US document — QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FATHER AND PRINCE PHILIP’S GRANDFATHER WERE BOTH ELECTED KINGS. Thus if Charles become King of England then he will have a grandfather and a great-grandfather who were elected kings of different countries.  However this system would be like the Holy Roman Empire and Poland and the Pope and ancient England in that the elections would be regular and a matter of course not exception.

There would be a change in the title of the Executive elected every four  years and some of his powers and duties would be reduced but mostly the Emperor would fill a different role. Emperor would have a fulsome executive power over a central governance outside the Constitutional Jurisdictions and the Federal government per se. Even this government would have two broad types of land in its sway. First, the District of Columbia and the Federation of Compact Zones  would be  in the Direct Imperial Government category along with a substantial one time grant of lands currently owned by the Federal Government and administered by the federal Land Management bureaucracy.  This would consist of several components all governed under the same and independent body of law and procedure. However, this law and  procedure would acknowledge yet another subdivision of  the lands involved there would be the Fiefdoms made up of lands bought or granted from the Federal governments and State Governments and organized as estates of various kinds.  There would be a seventy-five yard band of Royal Fiat Zone around the land borders of every Territory and ten percent of its coastal boundaries that would be added to the lands taken from the States where these are created from State Lands. The  same basic rule would apply to the Possessions except that these would be one hundred and fifty yards wide. These interior bands would occur along with another set of lands.   In addition to these  buffers between constituencies  there would be a cession  of bands of five hundred yards to Royal Fiat Zones along all land borders between the United States and Mexico as well as between the United States and Canada. There would also be a cession of the same band width for ninety percent of each State’s riverine borders and fifty percent of each state’s Great Lakes borders with these countries and where the States retained coastal lands they would grant a very extensive Continuity Right of Way for infrastructure projects. There would only be a small base granted on Texas’s  southern Gulf Coast some where near the end of its land border  with Mexico.  For those living outside of either the Direct Imperial Government lands or the Royal Fiat Zone the Emperor would not rule or govern very much but rather he would reign and be Head of State while operating a few bureaucracies and a serving as Judiciary of Last Resort for the Federal system.    He would appoint the Special Vice President  for each Major Compact who would preside over the Executive and Judicial Board of each Compact.  Each Executive and Judicial Board would be composed of the Speaker of each chamber of the Compact Legislature, the Elector for Life for the Compact and the Commander of the Compact’s Cavalry Honor Guard. There is a lot which will be left out of this post about a royalist regime but one thing that must be addressed for such a post as this to be in any way genuine as a serious piece of revolutionary literature which is what I intend it to be. To do this  I need to discuss the royalist tradition which is relevant in America and tied to America. 

In the empirically unlikely event that the United States converts to a royalist system within a short time the Monarch if they are to be in any very good sense a Monarch and in any very good sense both royal and royalist will have a lot to do in terms of creating and restoring, both renewing and establishing royal and royalist culture. Hawaii can certainly still be restored to a royalist culture it can both influence a new regime and it can be influenced to conform to the New regime. Using the Councils of Nobles which I have mentioned the ideal Ordinary Nobility would be a mix of new titles and some renewed from worthy preserver of such color of right to those titles  as French, English, Spanish and other powers have left in good families of committed Americans upon our shores.  However, while I am constrained by space and unable to really do a decent job of presenting these ideas I am going to suggest that there is a royal line, tradition and apparatus which has pre-eminent claim to an American Empire for many reasons and that is the Arcadian — Acadian royal line.

This line is almost entirely unknown for a variety of reasons. There is a great deal to take in and almost no chance to weave it in coherently in this post. Yet it is imperative that we try to do so.      

the first really key point is that the real roots of the American Revolution occurred in a larger colonial context.  I am going to recommend a book that does not declare ( as I do here and now) that the Acadian expulsion (loosely described in Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline)  were a principal cause of and stimulus to the American revolution.  But it does show the connections of this event to the revolutionary ferment in a broad contest. In this regard I recommend Leach’s book.  http://www.amazon.com/Roots-Conflict-Colonial-Americans-1677-1763/dp/0807842583#noop 

Secondly, I want to show that the destruction of Acadie was a large and significant act. That it had everything to do with creating a British profile and character the Americans could distrust and that in their early history the Acadians had both elements the Americans were eager to restore to their experience of the British Constitution and also the chivalric and aristocratic values which I argue that we need to restore today. In which regard there is a recent book by John Mack Faragher:  http://www.amazon.com/Great-Noble-Scheme-Expulsion-Acadians/dp/0393051358  to understand the British view of how great and wealthy a land the Acadians had created and how eager they were to have its wealth for themselves.  The Acadian experience is deeply tioed to the American experience as a whole.

Two men whom I know (one much better than the other and neither all that well) have also written books that are relevant to this theme and discussion Carl A. Brasseaux has written The Founding of the New Acadia and Acadian to Cajun.  Meanwhile Warren Perrin has handled the appeal for the Apology from the Queen of England and Scotland and has discussed this journey and its partial success in the book Acadian Redemption. Le Grand Derangement or the Great Upheaval brought Acadians to all parts of the Thirteen Colonies before they were settled in Louisiana successfully in 1765 by the King Joseph Broussard Dit Beausoleil. During their scattering they did not get on well with the general population and there times were sad and bad mostly. But that does not mean that they did not have a powerful influence in turning the minds of their fellow North American Colonists against the English Government.  Even if it had only been the example of their suffering they would be the most likely true proximate cause of the Revolutionary ferment in America. But in fact we know they had vast network of communications and logistics with which they reassembled small groups of survivors from many parts of the world to found the New Acadia in South Louisiana. Res ipsa loquitur — the thing speaks for itself and although they have been cheated of that recognition and sought to conceal it just as they have been cheated and concealing of many other things  the American Revolution is profoundly tied to and rooted in the Acadian experience and expulsion. It can also play a role in the new American Revolution if it comes.

 In the Acadian Constitution is the resource for a royalist Empire that is truly American the Kings of the Acadians are not directly mentioned as such in any of these books but the Basileus Arkadion (or Arkadios) is elected from those most eligible in a complex line of succession. Tests of merit, election and heredity are all required. The Arcadian Bouletherion would have to be fully and openly re-established but it has in its ancient history been hybridized. They would supply the majority of electors but the US Electors for Life and other Peer Electors could also vote. Thus Americans as a whole would always have some voice in their Sovereign’s selection without doing violence to his tradition which would be very difficult to achieve anywhere else from existing options. The Keys to the Line of the Basileus Arkadios have always been known to very few as have the remnant of Acadian government in the Ethnos Arkadios (or Arcadian Tribe translated fully into English). These elements of Comites, Ridelles, Courires, Loups Garous, Gran Famille and Prince Chef de Gran Famille are very seldom mentioned by anyone. They are almost ignored in the public works of the Acadian Renaissance in recent decades. Nonetheless the Acadian royalist system might still be saved to come to America’s aid should it desire a royalist system. There is no European descended culture more North American than the Acadian and Cajun culture.  The Acadian system would also have some of the advantages of cost from both systems. In a royalist system the cost is contained if it works properly because a few facilities and people are paid  a lot for their role and this is not done away with so that over time one build up great capital with limited expense in royal hands. Ina republican system costs are contained over time if it works well because standards are lower for all the executive accoutrements. In Acadian lines since 1604 no great fortune has ever been in Kingly hands ( nor for hundreds of years before by the terms of European Royalty) and Arcadian and Spartan royals were often austere in the mists of time’s long past. This has not usually been so much deliberates it has been part  of the historic reality. Nonetheless, compared to other precedents one could bring to a truly Imperial USA this set of traditions has  the most apparent low price tag.

The Titles of the Emperor would include “Emperor, Supreme President and Extraordinary Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America”. Among the perquisites of the Emperor he would have the White House as his Imperial residence. Some duties of the current Presidency would go to him but many would remain in the hands of an official to be titled “First and Executive Vice President, ordinary Commander-in-Chief and High Imperial Political Minister” of the United States of America”. This person would become a Censor on retirement by right, would have a Deputy First Vice President elected on his ticket and doing many of the same things in the same ways as the current Vice President. The First and Executive Vice President  would reside in the Naval Observatory and would have a country residence as well provided by his office.    The Emperor should be part of a royal house and an imperial house but should be elected by a conclave and this conclave would include all of the ninety-four Electors for Life already described as well as an entirely random selection of a standard size Grand Jury of US citizens and Forty Peer Electors not guaranteed to be part of the Elections of the eight-year President. These Peer Electors would be seated in the Electoral College should the eight-year President not be elected on the second ballot.  They would vote for three more ballots before the Presidency would pass to the House of Representatives. The Peer Electors would include the long secret Princely Chiefs of the Acadians — The Prince Boulet, The Prince Theriot, The Prince Broussard, The Prince Mouton and The Prince Leblanc as well as some more tenuous titles new to the Regime in the form they would take but tied to the Acadians. They would include the King or Queen of Hawaii but they would largely include scions of old families with claims who were selected for this special honor partly because given their claims they had agreed to conform to the Acadian three-part succession system of heredity trials of merit and election. They would also include some key leader of religious, academic and at least one Masonic organization who have played a large role in the Republican era and have the qualities to pass things on with a title over generations. 

This essay is open to thousands of instances of many kinds  attack and has little chance of success if not attacked. Yet it is my heartfelt opinion that its four parts provide the best map of a way forward. I also believe doing nothing is always making a very big set of big and small choices that can be costly.