Franksummers3ba's Blog

Catholic Identity, Contraception, Life Ethics, Abortion, Presidential Politics and the Collapse of American Civilization
by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Saturday, March 10, 2012 at 9:57am ·
I
t will not be a big surprise to most of you who know me that I am on occasion quite an angry man. There is a great deal that I find to be angry about in this world. I have little reason to hide that fact and am much more likely regret the times I have not expressed my anger than the times I have expressed it when I look back on my life thus far. In terms of reasons to be angry I have no shortage of such things. However, I am ready for a chance to reflect on the uncertainty of the situation of the Catholic Church in America. Penn State assisstant coach Jerry Sandusky’s apprehension did not lead to careful discussion of how the male only world of College football locker room inevitably leads to homosexual pedophilia. That is in stark contrast to what is often said when a Catholic priest has committed such crimes. There are many coaches and teachers in the secular systems committing criminal acts against children which will never come to light unless the systems that protect them are breached. We live in an age where outrage itself is not always clearly in the right place:
I think pedophilia is disordered but there are many levels of disorder. I think pedophilia is morally wrong but morality and its breaches have levels of gravity too. There is a long video on the web today which is publicizing child abuse on a large scale and if you get to watch it maybe you should do so after finishing this note. Here is the link, if any links do not work you should be able to drag them to your search bar and make them work or copy and paste them there:

There are many questions I have about the events described in the video. But even if their point of view about the LRA is mistaken in some way or another it is still clear how much better off those particular kids would probably be in a fairly well run occupied colonial system or in slavery in a relatively good society. The evil chaos in the world is an ongoing story we do not focus on very well. We have destroyed the fabric that holds things together and replaced it with free operation for chaotic elements. I have made similar comments about calamities that have occurred among North East Asians and Caucasians. It is not that I think race is not relevant to understanding famines in the Horn of Africa, the genocide in Rwanda, the horrors of the LRA and the horrors of their enemies in the government in Uganda. I certainly think having a head of state who identifies as a member of the black race in the United States is a very bad thing for our country but the race issue is not the principal issue here. The principal issue is how all of modern society values mere avoidance of responsibility by punishing organized groups and power structures for smaller faults and feeling very little responsibility for the evils that grow up in structures without aspirations to civilization. In so many ways we live in a Viking age. Like the Vikings that gave Barack Hussein Obama a Nobel Peace Prize. We live in an age of highly complex and technical savagery and not a civilized age.

Many Americans who are unaware that the world is collapsing into savage idiocy believe all sorts of ridiculous crap about the Catholic Church. The Church is a real religion which many of them have become unable to deal with or understand. Because of this fact of it being a real faith they think it is equivalent to some reactionary anti-intellectual religious community of Protestant Fundamentalists. The sad truth is that these secular intellectuals are themselves more often than not fundamentalist hate-mongering ignoramuses promoting a secular religion they do not intellectually understand. First, it is tragic that some people think that the Roman Catholic Church is today not an intellectually formidable institution. This is the most rich human artifact one can find. For those who really may not know what the attitudes of the Catholic Church are to science and learning I highly recommend spending some time with the websites I have listed here which are a truly miniscule percentage of the total Catholic infrastructure of and for higher human knowledge.
http://mv.vatican.va/

Home

http://nd.edu/

Georgetown University in Washington DC

The contraception issue that has just been in the news has brought up questions of American Catholicism and how Catholics will vote. I think that there can never be a time when I will not be interested in how the Catholics of the United states relate to things politically. Do I think that Catholics have a special poilitcal sensibility or that they should have one? Yes, I do think so, on both counts. Most American Catholics who are sexually active use, or have used or will use contraception regularly at some time in their lives. Many of them believe the Church must change its official position on the issue over time. However, many of those who use contraception, believe the Church must change its official position over time and have been involved in some way in spreading that viewpoint do not want the Church to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They do not want a church that allows their children to grow up thinking a pregnancy is a disease. They do not want their young men to grow up believing it is perfectly normal to have sex with a young woman he is not committed to and have her believe she alone is at fault if a pregnancy occurs and that marriage ought not to be considered. They do not want teenage forgetfulness to provide a huge boon to abortion mills. They do not want young women to separate motherhood entirely from their sexual drives and fantasies.

Some Catholics of the type I described above think America is a pretty decent place. Some think it is an increasingly irresponsible moral sewer. Some found the Clinton affairs reported to them much more a matter of being grossed out at the tawdriness of our head of state than being shocked by his moral lapses. Sex without flowers, furtive hotel rooms and many other signs of ilicit affection were enough to make Monica Lewinski fall in love. Many of the other women seem to have felt closer to being raped and perhaps in the case of the Flowers scandal there was still a bit of humanity left over in the whole thing which only barely emerged in the case of Lewinski and was absent with Jones and others. Many American Catholics know beyond all shadow of a doubt that American culture is no place to turn for moral guidance. So moral teachings of the Church provide identity for Catholics who may not agree with exact formulations of doctrine and even reject their moral validity as a matter of conscience. Then, as Americans, these same people believe that America was a place where citizens could find moral guidance in traditions outside an all-coercive state. If there were any reasonable political discourse I think those in it would see that our system is largely insane and morally depraved.

I think that we have to deal with the issue of identity as human beings. Humans are not intended to identify themselves only as humans. People are not conditioned by their genes or natural propensities to exist only as humans. It is also not absolutely clear what and how the other identities are designed to work in human society. However, mother and child, siblings, marriages, families, faith communities,race and various types of states and nations are among the entities with which humans identify that matter to and shape people. One of the things that humans value is their identity. This is a very universal thing and I hope that everyone who is not Catholic nor American who may read this Facebook note will still be able to relate to many aspects of what I am discussing here. In this note you may find some illustrations which you can interpret for other groups. In Addition Catholic Americans are an important group. I am also going to briefly discuss both Protestant and Jewish American political identity as they suggest themselves for discussion in this note.

I think that this is a year Catholics in the United States are dealing with issues of identity as Catholic Americans. I have heard repeatedly that Rick Santorum has failed to win the plurality of the Catholic vote in any state’s Republican primary so far and has often received fewer of these voters than non Catholics like Romney and Paul. Gingrich is a convert to Catholicism. I do not know where Gingrich has won the Catholic Vote.

I have lived in many countries that were not in any sense Catholic countries as well as in countries that were Catholic in one sense or another and where people were discussing and disputing what that Catholic quality of their country meant. I think that in thinking clearly about Catholic identity in America one can reach a better understanding of many other important issues. There is a great deal of horror for me in American life and society. In fact I rate the horror thing high in my total sense of what is going on in the world. In fact it is increasingly most of what I feel. However, it is not a simplistic horror. I want to discuss some of these issues here. In this context of American Catholicism there are many historic events which cannot be easily forgotten by the very knowledgeable and a handful of events which are very well known. John F. Kennedy’s campaign and Presidency were certainly very much aware of and in the shadow of Al Smith’s campaign for president which had a great deal of importance among the Catholic Boston Irish and some of the other ethnic groups made up mostly of Roman Catholics in the Democratic party in the states of America’s North East. However while Smith running against Prohibition may have galvanized many Catholics, John F. Kennedy and his family loomed larger in American Catholic politics than anyone else ever has. Some Catholic Cubans may have wished he was more supportive of the Bay of Pigs and may have wished him harm for coddling Castro. Some Catholic Acadians and Creoles who disliked the Jim Crow Segregation system may still have resented his enforcing the madness of court-run integration which was sure to be an unsound and insane combination of social engineeering policies which could not but succeed in ruining the country and their own piece of it. Yet in these communities, some of which may have wished the President and his brother great harm, it might be hard for an outsider to understand but almost all of them accepted Kennedy as a real and in a sense useful symbol of Catholic, American political identity. Why was Kennedy so well accepted as Catholic politician?

There are some very unfortunate things about the Catholic identity politics of our own exact era. These things affect us all in our political identity and behavior. One of the problems we have is that our country is in need of many remedies from within the Catholic tradition. Yet the Catholic church is less than effective in providing to our society the remedies which it needs. John F. Kennedy was from a family which had contributed a good nit of money and talent on its own to Catholic churches and entities which in turn provided healthcare, education, eldercare and foreign aid where it was needed — my guess is Catholics still favor that idea and practice in pretty sizable numbers. John F. Kennedy had a sense of attachement to an extended family and through that lense connected to the larer society and thus resisted the tendency to tie society to a model of the individual and the State alone — my guess is Catholics still favor that idea and practice in pretty sizable numbers. The Kennedys had a devotion to and knowledge of both American history and the the history of their own roots as Irish Catholics that was fairly impressive — my guess is Catholics still favor that idea and practice in pretty sizable numbers. The Kennedys had, in the person of JFK, the good sense to marry a young woman who brought the sense of style and panache to the White House which were apropriate for a great power. Many Americans worried that Kennedy would take orders from the Vatican. However, what in fact the Kennedys did was to take the United States a few baby steps in the direction of making the secular grandeur of the USA’s executive a credible “second sword” competitor to the “first sword” voice of the Church even if it is as grand, noble and magnificent as the full splendor of the Roman Catholic Church — my guess is Catholics still favor that idea and practice in pretty sizable numbers.

So despite all the diversity and variety among American Catholics there was a sense that the Kennedys embodied certain qualities that a Catholic Head of State ought to have. Other Americans were attracted to Kennedy for other reasons. Some were attracted to him for some of the same reasons, but he did bring some things to this country which are both fairly subtle and yet more than subtly Catholic. Political consciousness among Americans and American Catholics is a more difficult subject than understanding the political consciousness of most countries. Understanding political consciousness anywhere is difficult.

Today the Catholic church as a public institution capable of inspiring political activity is most associated with the issue of abortion in much of the United States and now with the issue of contraception in the context of Catholic charities being forced to pay for contraception by government mandate. That is the way things have turned out. Even the most pro-life person should be able to admit that there are isssues of privacy and subsidiarity in our tradition and canon law which make dealing with abortion much different than dealing eith other forms of widespread killing. The educted should know that there are lies about formal automatic excommunication which have been widely publicized. The cynical should know that not everyone in the pro-life movement cares about any life ethic at all. a sizable minority have very bad political motives that go against all Catholic teaching. The Church can influence politics but it is not authorized to become a spasmodic cheerleader for an idiotic single sight police force of liars and sometimes that would be fair characterization. I believe abortion on demand is toxic to our culture, bad for women, rotting at our social fabric and that America’s descent into moral idiocy is hastened by it. However, I do not think the Federal government is the right place to ban all access to abortions. The states for one thing do define which kinds of killing are civil torts, negligent and reckeless crimes and which are murders. The States usually decide which killings are excusable and which are justifiable under law. The law is only a crude aproximation of morality. The fact that none of these issues resonate with either side is evidence of how depraved our politics really are. It is ridiculous to assume the noble motives of freedom and preserving innocent life which either side calls out for means a hill of beans in why they use the approaches they seek. The truth is that there are mountains of evidence that laziness and hate have more to do with the method than the causes they claim to have such paasion for. There is a great deal of unfreedom and a great deal of innocent killing which are beyond controversy that most people on either side feel little need to address. I believe this is just one of many areas where our structure is broken.

So what are my personal opionions about the entirety of the contraception contraversy? They go far beyond what I will get to in this note but I can at least start to lay out the scheme and shape of these ideas here.

1. There must be an understanding that America is in deep political crisis for this situation to emerge as the conflict that it did. However, given the loose and irresponsible ideas that prevail everywhere it is not surprising. Thos ewho know me no that despite feeling very little exuberance about my life or achievements I do have a high regard for my own opinions.

2. Sex, pregnancy and childbirth are very important for civilization, for individuals and for families.

3. Population is an important legal and social issue.

4. America has a tradition of a Federal government with very limited powers of personal coercion.

5. Under the political theory in which our country was founded this would be a domestic issue which was for the States only. However, this system is so profoundly corrupt in this country that there is not much use discussing this theory unless we have a huge constitutional movement.

I will just leave these ideas unrelated and unresolved. It is not my goal to predict which party will win on this issue in the coming election. My own political circle may be among the most diverse in the world and as a result of that may have little to do with what happens in our election of a President. I myself am an independent.

In the development of the American future there are many issues of ethnicity, religion and sex which are relevant and cannot be ignored. Jews and Hebrews (two groups with great overlap which are not identical) have contributed an enormous amount to building this country and this country has been vital in the process of rebuilding the long destroyed Israel which can help to heal some real wouds in Jewish and Hebrew identity and culture. If the truth is not admitted that Jews have been adveresly affected in some ways by thousands of years of mistreatment of varied kinds then we will no0t understand one of the influnces on our culture. Nothern Europe and much of the West has long accepted a caricature of the jews which still determines how their culture is understood. The Jews have in various ways often adopted this horrific and toxic identity. America is a place where a truth about Jewish identity can spread. American Protestant often despite themselves have preserved a real appreciation of the Hebrew, Greek and even hated Latin contributions to Christianity and civilization they have no idea how vile the real thinking of many of their correligionists is not only about Judaism but about so much of culture. Those who are true Nothern European Americans will have to learn some of the self criticsim their ethnic group avoids so mightily and ridiculously in their homelands.

This is not a federation of super nice people. This is a federation of real people. This is a federation approaching cultural bankruptcy. We have a limited time to come to grips with this. The same car one can drive for decades is able to be completely destroyed in afew seconds of bad driving. One thing Americans need to understand is that our Pope (who is not a man who inspires me as a fan because mostly of his country’s activities for a period of twelve years when he was a child) speaks in a way which emphasizes moral consciousness that is a different langauage than the language of secular law. American Catholicism is owed more by this country than it can even calculate. But America has a long and proud tradition of not paying its moral debts. I will say that I was pleased by the number of Protestant ministers and Jewish Rabbis who supported the USCCB when they objected to the abuse they felt in this matter. I wish I could believe that this solidarity was enought to lead to a better future, I do not. But it was a bright and shining moment.

I have at one time or another dated courted a significant though small percentage number of women who are now on my Facebook list and more who are not. I have never been the paragon of sexual or romanitc popularity but among the many reasons I am increasingly isolated myself is that I think sexual custom in the broadest sense in this country is a bit of a train wreck. That is not going to be openly admitted by many men. But that does not mean that no ther men find our sexual environment fairly toxic. For every man who finds it a bit like having sex in a train station at ruch hour their are probably a hundred women who feel that way. Not all Americans find the “no nonsense” view of sex in our government and media not to be nonsense.

Like many of my notes this is more the subject of a book than a brief essay. Like all other cases I will just stop writing.

War with Iran and Other Fun Things
by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Thursday, March 8, 2012 at 10:34am ·

I think that America’s President has helped to put us in a position where we are building down our forces while pushing back against China in the Pacific, antagonizing Russia and experiencing some kind of conflict commitment in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, Libya, Egypt and Iran and I believe he is doing this because he is working hard to destroy our country which he hates. When we think of war with Iran we have to think in that context. In seeking to destroy us he has many fans in Europe like the good old boys who gave him the Nobel Peace Prize. Our policies and President are bent on our complete destruction. But make no mistake the conflict between the United States and the Muslim world did not begin with President Barack Hussein Obama and it cannot end with him. Electing Barak Obama was a catastrophic tragedy of the type many civilizations cannot survive and ours may not but he is not coming out of nowhere. His father the Afro-Communist Muslim was not coming out of nowhere either. The Muslim Maphilindo recruiters who made veiled contact with him in Indonesia when he was a child were not coming out of nowhere. The “God Damn America” Black church he attended did not come out of nowhere.

Islam is a religion of struggle. It is a religion of war and conquest with the Non Muslim. It comes from the depths and basic fabric of the religion. Yes the Sufis turn the Jihad inside to perfect the self but the usual course for this is after all non Muslims have been killed, converted or expelled in given country. Obama is deeply rooted in a religion where many believe it would be a good and holy thing for a man to be a sort of Christian, to lie and deceive and to help create the downfall of a civilization which would lead to a Muslim regime. There is Islamist extreme republican Islam which is so toxic itt is hard to describe. There is the more noble Islam of royalist regimes like Jordan, Qatar, Oman, the UAE and Brunei which have a very hard tiome not remaining intrinsic enemies of the Christians, the West, the Buddhists. There are countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, para-state Kurdistan and Kosovo where an ethic of tolerance and diversity is enshrined in many ways but more often than not finds itself struggling against Islam not with it. There is Turkey by itself which is so bad, so noble, so intolerant and visious, so tolerant and enlightened that it cannot be discussed in any brief essay coherently but it is never a safe and good place nor non Islam.

Many Americans including people like David Duke who used to not reek of cowardice even if you disagreed with them believe publicly or secretly that if Israel were gone we would not be in conflict with the Muslim world. The truth is if Israel were gone, Islam would simply be free to unify its forces on other targets around the globe more easily. World conquest by force is the very heart of Islam and so is lying about that fact.

I believe the Muslim world is basically my enemy. I use the word basically however as though it actually means something. Sometimes I may have a common enemy with a Muslim and we might fight together. The situation can change in a place and time and friendship can break out. Their can be reasons for sustaining peace in a region but basically the Muslim world is my enemy. War with an Islamic power is usually good in my view and simply brings about the inevitable. Probably there is no path to what I would consider a decent future unless the powers that can do so wage many wars against Islamic powers.

If I were dictating policy by magic fiat in this country then I would do somethings that would encourage better relations with the Islamic world and some which would not. I would insist on the rights of a variety of peoples and Holy Places in Israel but never without taking the opportunity to remind the Islamic world that most countries at their near worst are better places for Christians, Jews, Zoroastians and varied pagans to live than most Muslim countries at their best. But Polygamy need not be evil, their royals need not be treated as commoners, their art and poetry need not be ignored in much our studies and their military traditions and exploits need not be forgotten in our histories. For those who wonder what I would do if I were President under the system we have now — I am not running. For those who wonder what system I think we ought to have see the long document at the end of this link: https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/major-themes-of-this-blog/new-model-constitution-of-the-united-states-of-america/

But all the possible reasons to reach out to the Muslim world will not resolve the conflict. In the end the must be met with a will to resist which will not exist for centuries perhaps. A resolve to retake formerly Christian countries like Egypt, Turkey, Libya, Chad, and others and run them to suit the reform of the religion and to allow the preaching of the gospel and to kill Muslims who kill or try to kill converts. Islam cannot be contained. A thousand years of pushing back must begin but we will not be ready to face those facts for centuries. For now there can only be coexistence with the horror and enmity and lies of most Islamic politics and an armed struggle for survival. So for that reason I am in basically in favor of a war with Iran. But it may not be an easy war.

It might be fun to have a war with Iran — or it might not be. Iran is a big-ass country not in the sense that these people have unusually large assemblies of gluteal muscles but in the sense of contemporary speech which indicates that a thing, place or people in bigger than usual. This big-ass country is just a tiny bit smaller than Alaska and is the eighteenth largest country in the world. Iraq is about twice the size of Idaho and is ranked in the fifties among countries by size. Afghanistan is a little smaller than Texas and is ranked in the forties among countries in the world. Vietnam was ranked in the sixties among nations arrayed by size and was a little larger than New Mexico. South Korea is about the size of Indiana and North Korea is about the size of Mississippi. So they would be our biggest opponent since World War Two in terms of invading someone’s geopgraphy. In addition we have got some kind of bubbling engagement in Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Libya which might be affected if it came to a land war with all of its inevitable miscues and complications.

Another fun thing about Iran as a place to invade is that Iran has about eighty million people. This ties in with their strong trade relationships with Europe, Russia and China. So they have eighty million people supplied better than Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya may ever have been and hard to compare with our wars with Vietnam and Korea. There is no country as nearby as China was to Korea and Vietnam. However, we are unable assure ourselves of the degree to which forces in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine and Egypt as well as places we are not currently at war with will be galvanized by these forces.

We must find a way to resist Iran but we must know that Iran has a right as a sovereign nation to escalate any such attak into a full-blown war. They in Iran have something to join others in that struggle. There will never be real peace unless a foreign power imposes a constitution in Iran where the 2% of Non-Muslims are allowed to increase and have at least 5% of votes in one section of the legislature and the Muslim sections of the constitution are pressured to evolve. This policy would not be strong or harsh as you probably think it would be. This would be a wonderful tolerant and free breeeze blowing into the Hell of Muslim political politics. As for revenge itself someone of my heritage has an almost infinite cause for revenge against Muslims but I am willing to take only such opportunities as are almost forced upon me and I am willing to believe that in time by supporting minorities in Muslim countries that have non-Muslim minorities, by working with great Muslim Knights and Sufis we can have an idea of coexistence with Islam which is not suicidal. But our current view of coexistence is suicidal.

I have never fought an Islamist army in person and I feel plenty of shame and guilt about that. However, I am braver and have paid more dues than a lot of people will ever know. That is simply the truth. This is another simple fact. Islam is the enemy of most non-Muslims whether they admit or not. It is better to seek a custom of chivalry and honorable war than to fill yourself with the lies and crap of loose talk of peace. We better find a way to see the fun in war with Islam for centuries or we have no chance of seeing much of anything survive. Once they do not have to compete with other cultures they will really get toxic I think.

The BP oil disaster has a new chapter. There has been aprivate settlement of private claims authorized by the courts.

Lent, Election Years and Why I Am Not Pretending to be Happy
by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Saturday, February 25, 2012 at 10:57am ·
I had begun this note before I got an e-mail from Senator David Vitter’s office relating Ash Wednesday and Lent to Political and governmental matters. Yet, despite that e-mail it remains a rare thing to do. Christmas is a holiday more woven into political life in this country than Lent by a factor of several thousand times. While no Jewish holidays enjoy the legal status of Christmas or Easter I would say that both Rosh Hashanna and Chanukka are much more part of government and political life than Yom Kippur is — while Lent and Yon Kippur are quite different but both have a them of making oneself a little uncomfortable and seeking to set oneself in better order with God and one’s fellow man through certain spiritual and moral practices as defined by tradition and community. Ramadan is a Muslim holy month which in reality was inspired by the Christian Lent as much as anything else and yet is less like Lent than Yom Kippur is but more like Lent than most other things are. The Native American, Indian or most correctly Aborigional American religions have a diversity of customs of warrior discipline, fasting, sweat lodges and vision quests woven into a whole set of varied time frames that yet more distantly relate to the values of Lent. In Buddhist cultures the beautiful and ornate monasteries and temples are nonethelss places where people often go in a variety of customs to spend times of varied lenghts and frequency in aesthetic practices, seeking after spiritual enlightenment and trying to decrease on’e ties to forces which disrupt spiritual harmony. In Louisiana and some other Catholic places the season of Lent follows the unofficial carnival season. This season which begins at the end of the Christmas season on Epiphany’s evening or Twelfth Night is only one of several blocks of ordinary time in the official church calendar. But after the Magi visted Jesus and the Holy Family they went into pagan Egypt for a time. So the Catholic Community has preserved a sort of unofficial sojourn into the pagan heritage of Christian people prior to the sobriety of Lent. This makes the contrast of Mardi Gras and the following Ash Wednesday much more stark than ordinary time does. Our country could probably stand quite a bit of sober reflection right now. Lent is not a bad symbol for the processes we need to engage in more often than we would like for several years.

Christianity has been largely wiped out in many of the countries where it achieved some of its greatest cultural advances and benefits which is in itself a sobering reflection for Christians to engage in during this or any other season. Antioch in Syria was the first place where the word “Christians”, in its original multiple languages, was used to describe the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. I have seen a variety of images of children and babies shot to death. I heard the last interview with Marie Colvin when it was first sent from Homs and broadcast by Anderson Cooper’s CNN program. She was dead within hours. Clearly there are real crises here and people are deeply suffering. Clearly innocent people are suffering in this early cradle of my faith. Yet I am equally concerned about the horrific record of Islamists, militant Muslim Arabs and almost every other likel political power block as it relates to the many people likely to be killed and dispossessed over coming decades and centuries should the rebels win. Our government has rejected and destroyed every posssible enlightnment and tradition that would define democracy correctly here and everywhere else it can reach and now exports a load of ideological crap with no basis in anything but a naked calculator and ballot box and calls it democracy. Then a country which risks being driven out of Afghanistna by the Taliban and mobs angry over a Koran burning actually has Secretary Clinton threaten bloodshed against Russian and China for vetoing resolutions against the Syrian regime. We are drunk, mad and careening out of control. Sadly, there are no simple solutions to most of the problems a great nation faces and we are becoming a nation which can only produce simple solutions made into vastly long and complex treaties, bills and protocols by the basic imbecility of the way they are structured. We are in real trouble which we avoid bringing to a head by constanly digging in to a more exposed and deluded condition. Seldom do we do or say anything which is not colored by at least some language which threatens the very structure of civilization of any kind.

We have cut human intelligence forces, rejected establishing responsible and relatively democratic client regimes, constantly knocked down power structures and built nothing lasting in their place. When we finish doing all of this our options are mostly bad ones. So it is time for us to look at Lent and a little self-improvement. It is time for America to sober up. Time to learn something about responsibility and self-control. We need to really denounce the draft as a last resort in my view but if we are going to do that we need to spend time, money and talent encouraging martial culture. Helping also with citizen diplomacy and the Peace Corps. We need a larger and more complete body of CIA field officers, we need to enlarge and enhance our Foreign Service. We need to support and foster junior and regular ROTC and recruiting programs of the military. All of this rather than being a lot to do is in my view far short of what we really need to do but it is a small start thet may keep us alive to make bigger changes.

Christian citizens need to support and foster the best misiionary work in the most risky places which come throught their mail, church pulpits and web searches. We need to support our Christian brothers and sisters in predominantly Muslim countries in every responsible way we can afford. Clearly the post -Saddam Iraqi regime for which many Americans have fought and some have died is in great trouble. Clearly the violence is almost endless there. Yet clearly things are far worse in Afghanistan. We need to think soberly about this. It is time for some Lent.

I am trying to live some Lent. Probably not so well as I should. It is now Lent which is a less celebratory and festive season than Carnival, Christmas or Easter in the Calendar I live by but it is not a season intended for sheer gloominess either. The start of the season was not such a bad day. I went to Mass and to receive the ashes. Then I went to the Vermilion Parish Library. There I checked out some materials, read some others, did some work online and then went to the Congressman Charles Boustany Town Hall Meeting held there. It went on a bit and then I came back to Big Woods and among other things I watched the Republican Presidential Debate. It really and truly was not a day typified by enormously negative aspects or occurrences in any of the events. Ash Wednesday like the entire season of Lent s not intended to be Catholic Misery Day. It is a day of sobriety and starting a season of repentance and wisng up but it is not a big festival of unhappiness. The unhappiness I felt this Wednesday and before and after it or woven into the general way I feel and it is an unhappiness not required by my religion although I do feel it at a fairly religious level. I am not very happy. Really not. I thought I would write a note on Facebook about that.

There are many reasons to feel that life has not conspired to make one happy. I suppose that the lack of clarity of national puropose is one of those least often articulated as a reason. It is true that I believe many people are made unhappy in countries where the country is trapped in an aimless malaise. However, most of those people do not recognize this as the reason for such unhappiness. I do not pretend that the situation of our country is the main reason I am unhappy. My love life, finances, health and social situation probably all depress me more than the nation’s politics.

I know Santorum is the most openly and robuslty Catholic presidential candidate in terms of identity in my lifetime. I will not vote in the Republican Primaries but I do hope he has some of the insights of Lent in his political life. I hope the other candidates do too. There are times in life and social development when wild-eyed optimism and self-esteem are good states of mind to cultivate. I do not think that this is such atime for America. Our nation could use some Lent right now. We have alot to do, are over-extended, corrupt and often misguided. This is a good time for serious and purifying thought. If we all engage in such an exercise we will not agree and there is no guarantee that we will come through this well. But the chances of a bright future coming out of deluded recklessnes are very small cances indeed.

Realpolitik, Real Progress, Religious Liberty and Natural Realism
by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 2:39pm ·
I am thinking about the United States of America on this Sunday before Presidents Day. It is typical of my thoughts over recent years that I am mostly thinking fairly gloomy thoughts. I have always had a mixture of happy and unhappy thoughts but the drift towards unhappy thoughts has been pronounced in recent years. I think of how this political system began with a bit of nostalgia perhaps: ”
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

‘In the course of human events” is a simple phrase but shows in its own way belief in natural law which is not highly restrictive but is sincere. Then the document recognizes both historic peoplehood and the national and state functions of society as separate but real and authentic human goods. There was a belief that each people’s national and state institutions must be responsible for itself and the legal status of its inhabitants. Then there was a belief that nonethless formal recognition of international law and custom should be observed and that in the context of a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. This international process was to establish the national sovereignties in which almost all the real work would be done. When I hear us spouting endless litanies of criticisms and requirements at the leaders of varied countries such as China I wonder where we draw our political will to behave as the jackasses we make of ourselves. All political interaction between sovereign nations has to occur in a certain framework.

The real truth is that America has many fine institutions of higher learning which attract some of the best minds around and do at least a competent job of educating them. America has a fairly professional police community at all levels which keeps order in most places most of the time without starting a new bloodbath. America has many hundreds of thousand of miles of roads and sewers and power lines which work above the international average. America has good food safety, abundant clean water at the taps and plenty of decent shops. All of these things are to be applauded and they make America a good place to live in many ways. They also make it hard to change the country as they should since they remind us of how much is going right and could be worse. Yet I do desire a good bit of change and have my reasons for wanting these changes. Therefore I am going beyond these obvious good factors to consider the rest of the truth about this country.

Aside from the role the Acadians played in the roots and origins of the conflict which became the American Revolution and the War of Independence the Acadians also helped turn France to ading America and that was decisive in winning the conflict. Then in addition, during the revolutionaty period Acadians had already begun to found the New Acadia in Spanish Louisiana where their Catholic Majesties acknowledged their special rights and leaders. In 1779 some of these Acadians fought under the Spanish Flag as allies of the United States against the United Kingdom of Great Britain. As members of the St.Martinville Militia they conquered Baton Rough in British West Florida. This also ties the histories together. But what we have today is a dismal and unenlightened view of our national past and destiny with little color of right or honor.

The time has come to continue my plod into the dismal revelation of the reasons why I believe that only a particular set of radical changes can save the United States of America from a dark pit which surpasses most others into which great powers have fallen. This comes from someone who admit that he holds to a higher standard than what is accepted by most of the world as relatively respectable and yet I am saying that by the standard of the world as a whole we are in a state of existential crisis. This reminds me of why we have the US Constitution we currently have. According to the document itself: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Notice that the constitution applies to the Congress and the people they represent rather than to the whole world and to their posterity. I and my family do in fact descend from these people but even if I did not I have other lines of descent clearly protected. It clearly extends to me and to other descendants of the previous inhabitants of the Louisiana Purchase territories by the language of the Treaty among other means of transmitting those rights. Thus, ” The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible according to the principles of the federal Constitution to the enjoyment of all these rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States, and in the mean time they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the Religion which they profess.” These are not the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but specific rights of citizens and in the case of those from the Louisiana Purchase these rights and liberties could differ in degrees as proper in th old meaning of property. We go around today with little consciousness of what lawful liberty entails. I am not saying that no new persons can achieve rights and protections from these documents but the tone has to be one of realism. I am saying that we have fallen for out of the path for which the Constitution was established. I am certainly slipping from a position of critical and protesting misery to something darker and more foreboding in my views about life and society around me. We have a false universalism attaching to this country which is toxic and insidious. The Louisiana Purchase Treaty among other things assures that French ships will forever receive most favored nation status in ports found in Louisiana Purchase Territories. Distinctions, history and merit are part of the making of American liberty in Law.

Acadians and many others from this region of Louisiana also fouht in the Battle of New Orleans which has been diminished in history but was the most crucial battle in securing American autonomy because in it the British were soundly defeated in a large and well-respected force by a group of Americans in the broadest sense who had no support from a European Army or Navy. The long and hard -earned struggle for a precious independent liberty was marked by many of the ame families and peoples with a number of new additions who had become part of the growing America.
I do not like the fact of the shrinking space program, I do not like the way we relate to many of the other countries with whom we interact. I do not like the way we approach everyone with a truly infinite list of things we wish to change about their country while our strength, dignity and credibility continue to plummet.

This is another gloomy and depressing note mostly about the shape of things in America. It is coming from someone in a state of greater than usual isolation from the mainstream of the country’s development and place in the world.
Iran appears to be proceeding in its plan to complete an atomic arsenal with all deliberate speed. This is happening as we withdraw from Iraq and build down in Afghanistan and as we see the Muslim Brotherhood leading the parliament and government in Egypt. Persian Shiite Muslim power is arrayed for a new contest and set of challenges even as the Arab world undergoes a set of tensions and transformations. President Barack Obama’s late morning appearance in the White House Briefing Room a few Fridays ago to discuss contraception and religious charities was one more event in this country’s long struggle with issues of religious liberty. However, there is very little sense of how liberty has beeen achieved and maintained and by whom. The son of a seemingly lost American white woman and an African Muslim Communist cannot be expected to hold the same affection for our constitutional struggles as many Americans do. However, the truth is that our country as a whole is thinking that liberty and free governance magically appear based on universal forces we just make up.

America is in so very many ways caught in a state of sever delusion. This is not unusual in human history, However, it is tragic. It was never a perfect country, never as exceptionally good as all our leaders are required tro say it was and is. But it was for a long time a place where people knew the struggle for liberty and justice as the costly and enduring process it is and found it worthwhile anyway. Increasingly now it is and has been a land where everyone can tell we are sprouting off nonsense we do not understand about matter to which we have no real right to opine except whatever right our aircraft carriers can give us.

If we can do the hard work of our own lawful liberty we will find we can share a bit with others. If we think it falls out of the ther we will neither kee ours nor help others to build theirs effectively. George Bush’s views on Democracy were amazingly naive and yet he may be remembered as the last toughminded constitutional President of the United States. Louisiana is a a State where Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Jackson all had some of their reputation made long before our only President — Old Rough and Ready, Zachary Taylor. Yet today those stories don’t carry the weight they once did for we do not really now what liberty in law is all about any more. We do not know how it comes to be or how to preserve liberty here or abroad.

This entire note is reproduced from my Facebook profile:

As we discuss the Presidential election and the party nomination by the Republicans I am not a member of an early contest state nor a Republican but I pay close attention. Louisiana is entitled not only to its normal share of delegates by general formula but to an additional bonus delegate for having Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, another bonus delegate for having Senator David Vitter as a Republican voice. Further Louisiana has a bonus delegate because the House of Representatives in the Louisiana State Legislature is majority Republican. Frankly, I am not sure if the Louisiana State Senate has a Republican majority, nor if the Louisiana delegation to the House of Representatives has a Republican Majority but Louisiana may be entitled to other bonus delegates there or not. All these details and agreements and distinctions show how tied the Conventions are to the whole struggle of either party as well as to our Federal Constitution and our political theory. The desire to call forth and create a nominee of either party after Iowa and New Hampshire has been part of the campaign of treason by large television companies. These powers are ivested in showing the importance of the big television buys and excluding anyone who cannot make big buys from being considered a candidate. WHen given broadcast spectrum the large networks take on public trust. They should be forced to uphold public trust and pay for the spectrum of frquency and they should have been prosecuted for treason. Remember Dan Rather calling Florida for Gore? That was the tip of the iceberg. The trason they have long perpetrated has been an attempt to play the role in our elections which the Communist Party played in Soviet elections in the seventies. There is still a popular vote in such systems but its meaning has been taken away. America tells other people how to have elections but our own system has very little legitimacy. the party conventions are supposed to nominate after elections and caucuses in all the States.

The Networks have a tradition of treason and used to call the election night before California polls had closed. The media as a whole still disenfranchise military and overseas voters. We3 have an electoral college and a long delay that would cover such matters. It may be we cannot afford such delays but then we should admit that we cannot afford constitutional government.

I write as a bitter person whose life in many ways is worse than he could ever have imagined and therefore clearly my view of the country is more bleak than most. But most countries would have shown vastly more outrage if their perogative had been assaulted the way ours have been all my life. It is madness and outrage met with smiles and tolerance.

I live and am a registered voter in the State of Louisiana in the United States of America. I am registered in the Parish of Vermilion with my Parish Registrar of Voters. I am not a Republican. I was once registered as a Democrat and I have been registered as an Independent for a very good while now. I usually vote in all elections for which I am eligible to vote although there are exceptions. For decades now Louisiana has been a largely open primary state although there have been races in this current period when one or more parties (most often the Republicans) have managed to to close their primary. I have not verified whether Louisiana will have any particular type of primary in this Presidential election. I am writing about the Republican Presidential Nomination Process more as an American Citizen.

I think that there are times for most people when one’s own life seems to be going against the trends for other people and society as a whole. This can be as brief as a sad even on a holiday or an inescapably happy event on a day of national tragedy. The wedding or birth on the sad day or the death of a loved one near Christmas or Thanksgiving simply must be attended to and one is aware of the contrast. Then there are larger trends. In States like Louisiana the rising price of oil and natural gas often boost the economy while the same process slows the national economy. One could go on listing such instances for a very long time. However, there is another sense in which each of us is tied to the welfare and fortunes of our own countries, civilization and the world as a whole. There is a real sense in which we are tied to the destiny of those large institutions and structures which shape our lives and world. We are all part of world in which transitions are noted by many. It may be that Obama will be President next term no matter who the Republicans nominate but the purpose of the nomination is to prepare for a large change.

I am writing this note in part as my first lengthy comment on this particular Republican nomination process. However, the note has a much broader topic as well and also discusses the primaries and caucuses from a particular point of view. I for one am willing to say that I think elections are a good thing. I will probably write more about this election as time goes on. I recently began my process of commenting on these electoral events here on Facebook with the following status:
“Well, it is an ongoing struggle for the Republican Nomination. Santorum won Iowa, Romney has won New Hampshire and Florida and Gingrich has won South Carolina. I hope to post a not with my thoughts on the primary as well a video I am working on of my family’s recent doings. But I respect all those who continue to contest this race and believe Hillary and Barack did the right thing in fighting it out last term. It is not decent in our society that so so many modern nominations were decided so far before the conventions. It really has not been decent the reasons are multiple and obvious… But I hope to write about them more soon.”
These feelings that the process is still worthwhile do not come without effort and cost when I express them. I am in many ways deeply disillusioned. Yet so long as the process continues it does many good things for our deeply troubled country.

I believe that our processes, an indeed the processes of all governments are important. In fact it is an effort to have a good process which is much of the defining quality of good government. I may feel our government is in part a wreck and that some parts of it have been blown to bits by recent trends and that it was neve perfect. Yet, much as my own imperfect and troubled life has not led me to commit suicide as yet, I do not believe we can abandon the struggle to perfect and preserve our government. There is a great deal left to the tiny remnants and wreckage I am choosing to write about in this Note.

When Parliamentary Parties have a leadership election and then contest a general election all the members must be leceted and then form a majority to elect their party leader as leader of parliament. But under the treason of our television networks most people have no voice at all. They have no conscious and are profoundly corrupt. Part of our problem comes from their desire to imitate Europe. But they o not understand Europe. I am not entirely cut off from European and British politics. I seek to stay aware of them as they seek to stay aware of us. However parts of each system cannot be easily interchanged and mixed and matched.

This has been a topic I have begun to discuss elsewhere as well:

It is not in the manifesto

Frank W. Summers III says:
January 30, 2012 at 1:35 pm
Loed Norton,I am sure you are aware of the very nebulous “platform(s)” of American Presidential politics and congressional politics and how they compare with the relatively fixed and specific manifestos of British Parliamentary parties. Which, however vaguely worded one can pick up in hand and say — “This and no other document is our specific manifesto for this current Parliament”. This phenomena relates to larger issues. It is tied to a certain view of governmental technique and expertise. Although Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, now President Barack Obama, John McCain, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have all written books — none of them have a history of writing, editing and publishing books and short documents on the technical and political aspects of governance — Newt Gingrich does. Should Speaker Gingrich be elected President then I think, for the first time since Wilson, the British and the top tier of European governments and parliaments will be dealing with an American administration which is at the top their equal and peer in technical,legislative and theoretical matters. Of Course Woodrow Wilson was no great success in the end. I am speaking merely of professionalism in the broadest sense.
I am not endorsing nor pointedly failing to endorse Speaker Gingrich. It is too early in the process for me to do either but he is more akin to your own milieu from a technical point of view than even such a well prepared president as George H. W. Bush, a “wonk” such as Clinton, or the highly intelligent Carter. He would represent a profound shift in the national attitude towards governmental expertise. This has not much been reported but is really significant.
Reply
Lord Norton says:
January 31, 2012 at 4:38 pm
Frank W. Summers III: Indeed, I am aware of Newt Gingrich’s background; not that much is made of the fact of his PhD (or the topic of his thesis). I am also aware that he is fighting as an outsider despite being an experienced insider.
I could not help noting that he took great offence – regarding it is wholly inappropriate – to be questioned about his attitudes to marriage and infidelity, a stance I note he did not take when President Clinton was being challenged on the matter!

Reply
Frank W. Summers III says:
February 1, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Lord Norton,I am pleased but not surprised to see you are staying abreast of these matters…
It is a time when civil disobedience, lawsuits and other matters may be rquired to save and restore our constitutional tradition. That is why I am not as cautious as I would otherwise be in worrying abolut copyright and libel concerns. Liberty has been assaulted all my life in dulcet tones and shiny lights. I will raise my small laptop screen in its defense while I can. I recognize that things can change. In fact I have advocated change in large measure using a constitutional convention. But even that change I advocate is within the parameters of our constitutional traditions.

I am writing this Facebook note in part as to discuss what constitutional free elections may entail and signify, using this particular Republican nomination process as an instance. However, the note’s broader topic of what government, liberty and constitutionalism mean continues to demand far more space and time than I can include in this effort. Perhaps during this season I will return to these matters and discuss one or another of the primaries and caucuses from a particular point of view that shows how federalism, democracy, justice or constitutionalism affect or are illustrated by one or more of these contests. I for one am willing to say that I think having most of these elections effectively and truly contested is a good thing. Much of our Constitution has been stolen and defiled but this process shows that it is not entirely dead.

1. My functionality on this blog has been in decline for a long time.
2. I am in general unable to post almost any nontext materials,
3. It is virtually impossible to edit texts well now.
4. I have also diminished my outreach in several other areas of the web.

For all of these reasons and others I seldom bring new material to this blog and only visit it occasionally. If these facts were to change then hopefully I would remember to post notice of that change here. At the moment such a change seems unlikely.