Category Archives: Geopolitics

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.

Family, Community and Society a New Era

 By some happenstance or other this posting got published when only the first few lines had been written. I fully intended to publish it here but I always throw out a few lines as a kind of marker for myself and keep those as a draft to start from. That is a stage at which I never publish the post I am working on at the time. But this time it happened which kind of hurries me along in case some of my readers had already read those few lines out of context. It was a mistake and it must be corrected and therefore acknowledged and addressed.  In my post to my relatively low standards and for relatively small stakes it is easy to make such improvements. It is not so easy for the world to be made right or any major part of it.

 I have gotten around to advocating large-scale change.  The future is not at all certain and so I am playing the long pass and the swing for the fences.  I think that unless we succeed in greatly and profoundly transforming the discourse we are just burning through all hope, long-term capital, and resources to make a decent and livable future. However, in the end perhaps a brutal stupidity is the greatest of all superior powers. If one has enough brutal stupidity one can always feel that one is doing the best that can be done. One can always believe that one’s faults and shortcomings or inconsequential  and the myriad lies, offenses and acts of intellectual and other kinds of looting and thievery can first be justified and then rationalized. Almost every day of my life I have lived in the sense not of how gosh darn wonderful life is but of how amazingly horrible the world and the human adventure has become and how (in so many both distinct and combining ways)  we live in the worst of all possible (really possible that is) worlds. The programs and changes I propose would involve on of those periods when a significant part of humanity engages in setting things right and cleaning things up. It will be a costly period of progress if it happens and that progress will not endure forever as a living process. However, I believe that it from such periods as I hope to see coming into being that much of the survivability and almost all the good progress of the human race has largely come.

Our dreams are also in trouble. The Bible is not (except in a handful of places) really in the category of dreams, fiction and what could be if all were perfect. Far more often the Bible contains elements of history and biography as written in a particular time on the one hand. While on the other hand it includes advice for imperfect communities of imperfect people aspiring to a perfect communion and a plan of life progressing towards perfection. However, science fiction is about dreams and I have also written about it in these posts. I really enjoy the things that are being filmed and written today. I see a lot of good in them. However, I see that there is so little being done about using  resources of our own solar system and of our seas in ways that we could if we perfected  and enhanced existing technologies and had the heroic spirit easily created in fiction. Even our dream machine is failing to lead us forward.

When I think that we put men on the Moon more than forty years ago and exploded a nuclear device more than fifty years ago it makes me very aware that we have not followed the paths to a full a rapid development of the kind of resources in outer space which would make it possible for us to have a more slow and cautious pace in the full and rich development of ourselves. One great truth which Thomas Jefferson was very aware of and wrote about a good bit during his life was that America offered humanity a chance at a better path of development if it allowed people to slowly evolve from healthy agrarian communities. This kind of development need not oppose science and venture such a s founding universities (like Jefferson’s University of Virginia)  nor need it oppose technology (just as the USA led demand and assisted in the growth of key technologies like rifles, railroads and telegraphs more than other countries of comparable importance because it had so many agrarian centers to link together over a large area). We really should have a thriving colony on the Moon by now just as we really should have many other things as a human species. Like many of the challenges involved in developing the United States we would find that the colony was pushing nuclear, communications, solar power, recycling and other vital technologies. However, working on these technologies without a great cause like the space colonies will not pay as well and therefore will harm far more people and other living things than necessary. We can define free market capitalism as we define and practice it these days as the fine art of kicking the can down the road. Many other economic systems have been worse. However, the fact that there are so many other worse alternatives does not mean that there are not also better ones left untried. In fact it does not mean that we do not face terrible consequences for not doing better than we are doing.

One can think of the billions of gallons of untreated sewerage that enter the water surrounding cities at the same time when many of thee cities have people who need low-level jobs and a demand for the fodder that could be grown on marginal lands with slightly treated waters and their heavy organic waste loads. We are all drunk on and addicted to the kind of liquidity our economic doctrines, models and concepts. We can think of how little attention we have given to fixing our decaying dams and sewer lines in the United States and remember that we are still above average in regards to some of our infrastructure. Katrina in New Orleans and 9-11 in New York are both small tastes of the horrible feast being served to the world.  Worldwide humanity is failing to make key improvements to its infrastructure as it make widespread increases in demand on both the infrastructure and the surrounding environment.

Family farms and foundations as well as all sorts of laws and programs which support varied forms of community striving to be viable in a complete way must be successful  participants in the change we need. We must include the right kind of input from the groups which can reward respect for the slow and precious values capitalism ( and many other systems) can only destroy unless they are kept in check by other values. Those values must be supported by the institutions which are able to act within a structurally secure position within society.

I am hurrying to get this post published because of the early partial posting. That is making it hard to do justice to the four parts of the title. Yet I am also more determined than usual to keep that early title.  That is why I may have to revisit parts of this topic sooner than I would have chosen to do under different circumstances. It also means that I want to state clearly ( and using my typical lists) the basic concept behind this posting.

1. The era we live in focuses more on society as an institution than on family or community and to a degree that is not desirable. Yet ironically we  also deemphasize society too much compared to the concept of the economy and the drive of personal gain. These are important things but are often excessively prioritized in this era.

2. I have reached the point where I am openly working to help usher in a new era. I am encouraging others to take more or less pronounced actions to help bring us into a new era. This is not a position to which I have applied myself as directly and for as long in the past although I have worked for several transformative causes.

3.We will need constitutional support for the structure of families and communities within a more intrinsically stable society.   

So this is an effort at the post I would have written if it had not been prematurely published.  It is not exactly that post. Like everything one repairs and reworks it is not the thing it is when it was new, nor the thing it was when it was in most need of repair.  On the other hand it is not an entirely new thing either. That is how both America and the international order of things would be after being revamped and brought into a new order.

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.

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

We really are facing a dangerous period of opportunity.  Could there be an American Revolution? If so how could it play out and what might its outcome be? I think that we have reached a point where more than few crises will slip out of control unless they are addressed in the relatively near future.  For me as an individual person the idea of seeking and pushing a particular form of constitutional transformation is well justified.  There is enough desperation in my circumstances and history to make me unquiet for a long period of time.

But Revolution is a strong prescription. There are varied levels of the dreaded opportunity our founding fathers called the “State of Nature”.  Remember they did not seek to overthrow the British government or dissolve their own colonies. They simply sought to exclude the British from the governance of the United States and to transform the quasi-state colonies into states. The Constitution they drafted allowed not only for amendments but also for a constitutional convention which would allow for the most low risk possible way to pass through a grave crisis. This would be sort of skirting along the borders of the dreaded state of nature. I think a serious and honest scholar of the period would have to conclude they would have hoped we would achieve many forms of political development we have avoided before undertaking many things we have undertaken. Now we reach the part of this essay which is the most risky and dangerous for the writer. In describing a proposed revolution one should be able to describe some set of relatively large and even shocking changes desired and possible under the new regime which are not possible under this regime. So, either in this section I will discuss what my ideal new America  would be like in terms of almost all its map and in terms of the Congress of the United States and the Electoral College.

I.  The Map and Congress: First Level of Revolutionary Change

However, I will get to those larger and more distinct looking changes much later than this sentence or paragraph.  I will start with those that most closely flow from my last comment. I will focus on the map and Congress. The new House of Representatives  should be made up of 800 seats and representatives exactly. The number of people in a district in a State would be constitutionally set at the variable A (apportionment number). The non states would have 53 seats not apportioned by population: The District of Columbia would have three such seats, a federation of all lands not in Constitutional Jurisdictions (which is what States, Territories and Possessions would be called together) would have two seats. The allotted State legislature representatives of all the Colored Districts in the States would hold an electoral conference every two years and select three of their own members to serve in the House of Representatives and have authority to expedite an election to fill their State legislative Seats. In addition each of the 14 Territories would have two seats serving the Territory as a whole regardless of population and its apportioned seats. Each  of the 17 Possessions would have one seat representing the Possession as a whole and its apportioned seats. Then all military bases of the United States militaries would be made into districts electing representatives. Military people would have two votes in this way– they would keep their home constitutional jurisdiction vote and gain additional representation in the Congress and Electoral College through their base-district votes. Each Territory district which is apportioned by population would serve 1.5 A people, each Possession district apportioned by population would serve   2 A people and each military jurisdiction.There would be 747 seats apportioned by the new council of Censors — as with the States now none ould include parts of more than one Constitutional Jurisdiction.

B. The United States Senate

After the Addition of the State of Puerto Rico there would be no new States added without a Constitutional amendment. There would also be the one additional Senator for each State elected by the State Legislature and serving a longer term.  That would bring the total number of US Senators to 153. These Senators would serve for all purposes of Law, Procedure, Equity and Normal Business. They would be the only ones allowed to vote when the Senate considered such matters. However, there would be a number of additional members  of high office and some elected by the Censors and Tribunes to serve in a Senatorial Constitutional  Assembly entitled to vote on the amendments to the Constitution. The current Congress of the United States numbers a bit under 550 and the new Congress would number a bit under 1000. This would be more in line with our revolutionary heritage. 

C. The New Constitutional Jurisdictions

The cost in lands would not fall on all States equally to create the new  Constitutional Jurisdictions and the Federal Government would be required to provide some lands of its own to the process.

Territories:

1.The Territoryof the Federated Aboriginal American Nations of the North Eastern States

2.The Territoryof the Federated Aboriginal American Nations of the South Eastern States

3.The Territory of the Federated Aboriginal American Nations of the South Western States

4.The Territory of the Federated Aboriginal American Nations of the North Western States.

5.The Territory of the Kingdom of Hawaii

6.The Territory of American Samoa

7.The Territory of Guam

8.The Territory of the Aleut, Inuit and Eskimo Peoples of Alaska

9.The Territory of Creoles of Color of Louisiana

10.The Territory of the Creoles of Color of Puerto Rico

11.The Territoryof the Creoles of Color of the US Virgin Islands

12.The Federated Territory of the Mestizos of the Western Half of Spanish Borderlands

13.The Federated Territory of the Mestizos Eastern Half of the Spanish Borderlands

14. The Small Federal Territory of  token Micronesian, Filipino Other American Imperial Communities

Thus 28 not-by-population districts in the House.   

Possessions:

1.The Negro and African-American Possession in South Carolina

2.The Negro and African American Possession in Mississippi

3.The Negro and African American Possession in Florida

4.The Negro and African American Possession in Alabama

5.The Negro and African American Possession in Georgia

6.The Negro and African American Possession in Louisiana

7.The Negro and African American Possession in Texas

8.The Negro and African American Possession in Virginia

9.The Negro and African American Possession in Arkansas

10.The Negro and African American Possession in Tennessee

11.The Negro and African American Possession in North Carolina

12.The Negro and African American Possession in the US Virgin Islands

13.The Negro and African American Possession in Puerto Rico

14.The Negro and African American Possession of Federated Districts in Kentucky, Maryland and Oklahoma

15.The Negro and African American Possession of Federated Districts in the Union States of 1864

16.The Negro and African American Possession of Federated Districts of the Pacific States and Territories

17.The Negro and African American Possession of Federated States of the Greater South West

Thus 17 not-by-population districts in the House.

D. The Compact Zones

Each constitutional Jurisdiction shall yield a small zone of land to the direct governance of every compact it belongs to — no Compact Zone will be larger than four square miles and shall vary by the size of the Constitutional Jurisdiction.  There shall be major Compacts and minor compacts. Generally, the Major Compacts will receive larger zones.

The Major Compacts:

1.The Thirteen Colonies Compact

2.The Original Constitution Compact

3.The Compact of the Louisiana Purchase

4.The Compact of the Hartford Convention

5.The Compact of the Spanish Borderlands

6.The Compact of the Confederate States of America

7.The Compact of the Union States of the Civil War

8. The Compact of All Jurisdictions West of the Mississippi

9.The Compact of All Jurisdictions East of the Mississippi

10.The Compact of All States

11.The Compact of All Territories

12.The Compact of All Possessions 

Each Major Compact will receive a rebate of half of one percent of all federal taxes collected in every member jurisdiction as well as a half of one percent of all revenues raised by each jurisdiction. The Major Compacts shall also elect an elector for life who will sit and vote with other electors for the President and be seated in the Compact Council. The Compact Councils shall reserve most of the seats in their lower chamber for those elected from the Compact’s Roll of Kindreds. Every family association must belong to at least two Rolls of Kindreds and should contribute one percent of all its revenues to each Roll of Kindreds it belongs to up to four percent. After that if it elects to belong to more it shall simply divide four percent of its revenues equally among all Rolls. The Upper Chamber will be a Council of Nobles.  The Compacts will have the right to petition both the US Congress and their member legislatures. They shall each maintain a cavalry Honor Guard.

The Minor Compacts

The Minor Compacts will be institutions authorized and chartered by the United States Government to co-ordinate a basic set of long lasting concerns. Like the Major Compacts they will have independent constitutional funding but their governance will just be a set of uniquely chartered institutions not fully part of the federal grand plan for the society. I will not attempt to list them all but will give a few examples: the Compact of Louisiana, The Compact of Hawaii  and The Compact of Puerto Rico.

II. The Electoral College: Second Level of Revolutionary Change

A. The Election of the Chief Executive 

Every four years as today a person would be elected to many of the duties and roles of the current President of the United States. Each Jurisdiction would elect as many electors as it has members of its total Congressional caucus as today.   However, there would also be eighty-two Electors for life from the eighty-two Constitutional Jurisdictions and twelve  Electors for life from the Major Compacts.  These would be of less importance than ninety four new electors added to our five hundred because of the expansion of Congress and thus popularly chosen electors. The Electors for Life shall form a council with the only real direct oversight power over the Censors in drawing up the electoral districts. They shall meet to certify these districts on year before each Presidential Election. No one shall be declared President until the full electoral college shall have voted. Popular electors shall be bound as robots on the first vote but free to change their vote if there is no majority in the Electoral College on the First Ballot.

B. Other Elections

Should there be more than a single National Election ( today we have only the single Presidential and Vice Presidential ticket) then in these new elections the Electors for life would also participate as a primary organ of those elections.

In Part Four of this posting I will discuss the most radical outcomes of the proposed American Revolution. Outcomes more likely to be off-putting than any discussed so far in this essay.

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

In the United States today well over ten percent and something less than a quarter of likely voters currently identify themselves when asked about party membership as members of the Tea (or TEA, i.e. “Taxed Enough Already”) Party.  These people include some decently high number of folks who are willing to speak about an American Revolution such as the one we had two hundred years ago. There are tours going across the country as the Tea Party Express. There are rallies, conventions and town hall meetings. While many discount the potential of this movement in this country they represent the largest and most potent movement of their kind in a long time. I am doing a four part posting on the potential American Revolution as it might be abd as I would like to see it.

Revolutionary Iconography is part of the TEA Party experience...

There are not two constitutional transitions or transformations which are or ought to be about the same things.  Whatever the greivances and causes may be which are to lead to a real set of basic changes they should both honor the heritage of  the eighteenth century and recognize the differences between the current situation and the situation that confronted the revolutionary generation, the strivers for American Independence and the founding fathers framing the Constitution.  I do not think many of hthink the British Monarchy is on the top of our target list as foes of our development now whereas that is how things ended up in those days.  America will have and does have it troubles with the UK but that is a relationship worth trying to improve at this point. The same analysis would have been entirely defeatist in the first revolution.
The Current Queen of England and Scotland's United Kingdom with Eisenhower

I don't think any two constitutional changes are the same. The British Monarchy is not our target here.

 There are  in addition to these people I think of Americans like my old college buddy Andy who ran for governor of a state other than mine in 2008 as a Libertarian. His principal slogan was “reboot the government”  I believe.  Andy is of course a computer guy — one of the real ones.  Glen Beck is featuring a regular segment in his show called “Refounding America”.  Mr. Beck’s show is really quite popular and successfull. Of course President Obama himself was elected on the slogan of  “Change You Can Believe In!” There is the fact that Massachussettes elected its first Republican Senator in a very long time. It might be the case that America is ready to look at real change as a possibility.  It is always at least  a little scary when a large and powerful country reaches the point where real change is perceived as necessary. That is even more true when the geopolitical order and social order of the times is such as ours is today.   Sometimes it is very scary indeed.

I am also aware of the huge crowds of Hispanics who not so long ago marched in the streets protesting imigration policy and the sense of persecution growing among Mexican Americans as they perceive the policies of the United States.   If one factors in our vast national debt, huge production of waste, decaying infrastructure,  rates of incaceration, porous borders, fiscal crises in so many places and many other woes it seems clear that we are in a place of real crisis and that some sort of revolutionary transformation may well be necessary.  I think that this change will have to come from other places than what is the mainstream of our current social order or else it will only make things much worse.

Above all there cannot simply be a struggle between shrinking government  and more entitlements of all residents to all kinds of government services. America is soul-sick and not on a path that can lead to the places America needs to reach to have a real chance of socio-political survival and the level of progress needed to support the survival of its people over the moderately long term. With a society such as hours there is a bloating and softening of the social fabric before the really big shocks to the state and the national structure take place.

I thin that America has begun to take notice of its social decay in movies like “The Blind Side” and “Precious, Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire” which have attracted an audience and will be discussed at the Academy Awards tomorrow night. It is possible  for America top address many of its problems while still honoring its traditions and not tearing itself apart. But the time to act keeps running out and the chances of choosing the path we need to choose is not a very likely chance.

What will not work is the color blind, impersonal, nondiscriminating, cowardly and crime-loving concept of justice which our courts have imposed on the nation and the States over the last several decades. I believe that relatively radical action very soon can produce a real chance of justice.  This reconstitution of America should create family associations with many privileges asssured by law. Such  associations will take over some of the responsibilities of a federal budget with greater austerity measures than have been seen for a long time. These associations will also support autonomy and wellbeing for women who want to support and build the strong families that make society strong.  There shall also be a transfer of lands into new jurisdictions and a reworking of the system of apportionment and representation. We can stop pretending that Guam and American Samoa and Puerto Rico have representative governance when they don’t. We can stop pretending that millions of ilegal aliens are not both unfairly treated and a grave threat to this society. They need not be our enemies for us to make that admission.  We also need to create compacts between groups of States and other jurisdictions which are similar to the the Tennessee Valley Authority in some ways but are larger and are able to do more to promote regional welfare and interests. Then there some facts about military reservations and the District of Columbia which need to be addressed. We will need to rework the Congress and redraw the map a little bit. That will include a viable and vital constitutional future for existing American Indian nations.   All of this will be made much harder by years and ecades of pushing a destructive and poisoonous obsession with calculator democracy in its simplest form on to a world that has often suffered from it. The military in the US is not perfect but it is one of our greatest assets. We have to find more of a constitutional role for this social institution in our socio-political regime. WE HAVE TO ADDRESS MANY VERY SERIOUS PROBLEMS.

Right now we still have resources to deal with these problems. That will not always be the case. Soon there will be no chance to solve them. Part Two of this posting will deal withhow we have to try to understand our constitutional and revolutionary heritage more clearly and effectively. Part Three of this posting (should I get to it) will discuss how we might make those changes which can at least address all of our major problems and preserve the best of our revolutionary heritage.

Britain’s United Kingdom & America’s United States: The Special Relationship

This is likely to be a very brief and hurriedly thrown together blog posting. I think a good number of very long and serious books could stand to be written about this subject and many good books touch on its themes and questions.  What is the nature of the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom?  How much does this relationship matter?  What should the relationship be like? I want to discuss that however inadequately in this blog.

1. What are some common geopolitical interests of the UK and the USA?

WELL, THEY ARE SERVING IN THE SAME AVOWED CAUSE AND FIGHTING AND DYING TOGETHER IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN.  THEY ARE BOTH MEMBERS OF NATO. BOTH ARE PERMANENT VETO-WIELDING MEMBERS OF THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL. BOTH COUNTRIES FOUGHT ON THE SAME SIDE IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR. THE QUEEN OF THE UNITED KINGDOM IS HEAD OF STATE OF THE COUNTRY WITH THE LONGEST BORDER WITH THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

2. What is the history and nature of our relationship with the UK, here in the USA?

EXCEPT FOR SOME UNSURVEYED, UNSUPPORTED LINES RUNNING DUE WEST FROM THE ORIGINAL THIRTEEEN COLONIES OF THE EASTERN SEABOARD MOST OF THE UNITED STATES WAS NEVER UNDER BRITISH RULE. FRANCE HAD REAL TREATIES WITH AMERICAN INDIAN NATIONS AND GEOGRAPHICAL BOUNDARIES FOR THE MIDDDLE SECTION OF THE COUNTRY INCLUDED IN THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE .  THEY ALSO HAD SOME SETTLEMENTS AND EXTENSIVE TRADE RELATIONS WITH THESE GROUPS AND IN NEW ORLEANS THEY HAD A CITY AS GREAT AS ANY THAT EXISTED IN THE UNITED STATES WHEN THE CITY ENTERED THE UNION. MOST OF THE WEST CAME IN DIRECTLY FROM SPAIN OR THROUGH MEXICO AS DID FLORIDA AND ALASKA CAME FROM RUSSIA. HAWAII WAS A BRITISH PROTECTORATE BUT AN INDEPENDENT POLYNESIAN KINGDOM AS WELL.  THOSE SETTLING THESE LANDS WERE AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PEOPLES, SPANIARDS, GALLIC AND LATIN PEOPLES, ALL BRITISH GROUPS INCLUDING THOSE NOW ASSOCIATED WITH THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND, SCANDINAVIANS, GERMANS AND SLAVS AS WELL AS AFRICANS, MEXICAN MESTIZOS, CHINESE AND JAPANESE AND A VARIETY OF PEOPLES FROM THE MIDDLE EAST.  FURTHER THE BRITS IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES FOUGHT TWO BLOODY WARS TO DISTANCE THEMSELVES FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM AND   THE OLD COUNTRY UK BRITS ARE STILL THE ONLY POWER TO HAVE BURNT OUR CAPITAL CITY AND BUILDINGS.  THE OVERWHELMING PRE-EMINENCE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM AS OUR NATIONAL PROGENITOR IN HISTORY AND EDUCATION IS FALSE, DESTRUCTIVE AND DISEMPOWERING.

In addition to these two ( and for me pre-eminent) questions to consider Americans must recognize that, with both the Commonwealth and the European Union to concern itself, with the UK cannot place American interest very high on its priority lists.  The United States has long been a soft target for every cultural agent type of statecraft and espionage but no country has benefitted more and more cheaply from America’s arrested cultural and social development than has the United Kingdom.  I believe that America has reasons to develop good relations with the UK.  However, if our country survives our downward spiral and finds a future it will need to be a future in which we are really ourselves growing and developing as we ought to and building on what we do have in common with and stand to gain from the UK.  Then we can also offer them the hand of friendship when that is desirable.