Poverty in the Nation

The poor of the earth has always remained upon the earth since ancient times. The Lord Jesus Christ said in Matthew 26:11, "the poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me."

There is a kind of poverty inherent in the human condition.

We each came to our life in pain of death; the most feeble and vulnerable of all of God's creatures. For all men and women are born to this earth stripped of our original freedom.

As babes, none of us can even make the choice to live. Somebody had to make the choice for us. In this way, every human being upon this earth begins life poor.

This is the poverty of our human condition.

It is an evil impressed upon the memory of our beginnings as a characteristic of our exile.

At its roots, it is a physical and not a moral evil.

There is also a kind of poverty inherent in the human social condition.

The kind of poverty we must live through from our birth and the kind of poverty we live with in and among ourselves as we go through life though distinct proceed from each other.

Both of these are evils rooted in the physical characteristic of our exile and are therefore, in their basic forms - transient by nature.

In ideal national conditions, as each of us grows into bodily and spiritual maturity, we gain in wealth what we shed in poverty.

This is so because our Nationhood itself is intended for the purpose of providing adequate means for our humanity to transform the poverty of the human condition into the Wealth of Nations.

To think therefore, that somehow poor people causes poverty in the Nation is erroneous.

(Neither my citizenship inform me through my humanity nor my religious conviction inspire me through my faith that this is so...)

The poor is not the cause of poverty in the Nation.

To unravel the evil of poverty, we must begin again along the lines of a new thinking - and accept that there are poor people - millions of them - in this Country.

Accept that poverty is a moral problem that is national in scope.

And that the poor of this Nation neither caused this problem nor desire for this problem to persist.

Furthermore, if we are to perceive poverty in the Nation as ugly, then let us think it ugly not because of what many others see as repugnant in the physical evils abiding with the lives of our Lord's poor.

For these evils are but an indication of a deeper moral question rooted in the spiritual maturity of our culture. Indeed, more ugly and repugnant is not to address this issue.

So we pause for doubt.

There are poor people in the Philippines. Of course, there are!  

There is also crippling poverty in the Nation. So much so that the Republic itself finds it perplexing how difficult it is to move our poverty index up even a slight notch.

So much so that many in the Nation have seen and considered the widespread phenomenon of poverty in this Country to be a grave concern of State, able to affect matters of national security.

There is poverty and there is poor people in the Philippines.

The poverty is a large part of the problem. The poor people are not.

In fact, the poor are fundamentally part of the solution.

Poverty as a moral evil is a social justice issue. 

As with all issues concerning Justice, it is not the presence of evil that is the problem.

To fail to act on it is.

Poverty that persists in the way that it does in the Philippines nowadays feels unnatural. It is seems in no way an evil that is transient any longer but one that seeks to dwell with the people.

From the evil of poverty arise many other evils that cause more misery and suffering among our people, most especially in the least of our people...

Evils such as human trafficking and other criminal trades that exploit despair as well as violent forms of dissent that in turn cause more weakness, bitterness and discontent in the Nation.

This in itself breeds conditions not suitable for the larger successes Country must aim for.
---<--@

2015 is the Year of the Poor

Reflection on the current state of poverty in the Filipino nation

Every President of the Philippine Republic after the Commonwealth period from Roxas to BSAIII has been engaged in poverty reduction and national stabilization efforts.

To be fair on all of them, it must be said that each of them had worked to address the problem of poverty in the Country and contributed in varying degrees toward durable solutions meant to address the same.

While some Presidents were more successful than others, to honor them all as their lineage within our Republic will profit us most in this reflection.

If we were to look closely at the lineage of our Presidents from Roxas to BSAIII, it shall be worth our while to notice significant efforts have also been made by previous administrations toward national stabilization right alongside poverty alleviation.

This is so because our internal divisions directly coincide with our poverty rates. The more fragmentation we suffer as a Nation and as a Body Politic, the more persistent the poverty among us tends to become. And the longer this divided state of affairs persist, the worse off the plight of the poorest Filipinos tend to likewise become.

Our nationhood can endure a lot of ruin. In the sense that our capitalist economy, faithful to its original form, may absorb many failures in favor of even only a few successes in behalf of giving opportunity to all but war makes us poor indeed. This is what I have noticed.

Most of the present Aquino administration's efforts at curbing graft and corruption in the Republic are also efforts directly connected to poverty reduction. Kung wala ngang kurap, walang mahirap.

This platform is clearly laudable to a great extent of our people but not uncommon to the lineage of our Presidents, one in which President Noy has been modestly successful - if not for the current state of our politics.

The political atmosphere of the Philippine State is stormy and uncertain during most days. I will not blame the President alone for the current state of our formal politics in the State as he too is wont to endure this weather of our own making...

Our political culture is something I think we all are responsible for. But the burden of our politics must always fall upon the shoulders of all worthwhile political parties in the Nation who consider themselves loyal to Constitution and State - to lead the change for the better.

In the political sense, the work of climate change in 2016 here in our Philippines is to make the climate within our Republic Sky more certain of itself and less a reflection of the uncertain climate patterns that now persist in our external world - we all have a stake in it.

That the ball may be carried forward from this administration to the next with greater efficiency.
---<--@

Yaya Meals

Would you serve Kim Chiu a yaya meal?

Political correctness has a tendency to go overboard. Nagigi tuloy OA minsan - over asserted. Overacting.

One does not preach to the choir unless the choir itself has forgotten the song.

I think yaya meals are a novelty of pop culture. Essentially harmless. That is as far as it goes. We'd be fine if only our thoughts as a nation about the matter is not as shallow.

Kasambahays, katulongs, helpers, drivers... etc. These are all working class Filipinos. They each have and possess their own common dignity. Under our Republic they are already contributors to the common good. Each of them share equal citizenship with all Filipinos.

My sister and I had two dear yayas growing up. Yaya Delia who was from Cagayan up north and Yaya Cherry who was from Leyte. I can tell you, so many years after, that my love and appreciation for them can only grow in time. We ate what our yayas cooked and it was usually for everybody. So if each yaya meal included kiddie meals at a discount, you know, I think that would be a great.

There is nothing malicious about yaya meals, I don't think. Creative if maybe misinterpreted. It is another economic choice on offer. One we may all freely accept or decline.

However, if it becomes an imposition on our liberty rather than a free choice.

That's another story.
---<--@

Would you serve Emma a yaya meal on her birthday?

Capitalism is a national proposition. It is not a class predisposition.

It has everything to do with material liberation and human happiness. It is not either or. 

It is both supporting both.

It is human enterprise arising from the depths of the human condition; happiness as a personal pursuit in the context of a common national ambition.

It is capable of improving the spiritual condition of the human being in the citizen through economic progress and the advancement of temporal means inclusive to the common weal of the free State.

It is through Country a means toward better means and invincible ends.

Greed had nothing to do with it from beginning to end.

The Nine Common Human Needs: Security of Person and Property

Uncertainty is a root cause of fear in Man. This fear before our Exile was a Fear of Certainty. Both of these fears preserve in them the original intention that Man is to be - as the Angels, a social creature - a loving and faithful keeper to each other.

The former, which is a fear of the unknown - is manifest in each of us as an abiding and mortal fear of our impending temporal death, and exists as a consequence of our Exile.

The latter, which is the Fear - of the God Who Is - the Ultimate Truth - is a holy, loving, and awe-filled reverence that abides in the hearts of those who seek after Him - whom He calls unto Himself - in order to more perfectly love Him, and serve Him, and know Him.

The latter inspires us to freely strive for Peace and Human Community. The former bends the will and the spirit towards an understanding of the latter. The former must lead to the latter and the latter must enlighten the former. That the burden of our civilization may be light. One leads to safety, the other to freedom.

For the LORD, our God and Creator, is a God of Community - the LORD of hosts. He dwelleth in Unity and this Unity is Peace.

One of the main reasons that spur our human civilization forward is our need of a common relief from this fear of the uncertain. For it is painful.

The human spirit itself is driven by a universal thirst for a more perfect understanding of that Fear, which leads to Wisdom, and that Wisdom which is an understanding of the Truth - Truth that to our souls is Peace.

Aspects of this interior seeking universal to all Men and to all Women remain common to all our Sacred Remembrances; a spirituality of Peace therefore, remain as a common teaching in each our most cherished and honorable religious traditions as well - particularly, within our three Abrahamic faith traditions.

And so, in spite of the long shadow of War, we as a people remain yearning for Peace. It is more certain to us than War - in ways we often fail to readily understand.

AT THE VERY LEAST, in the sense that we are all equal partakers of this yearning (for Certainty) in our Nation (and in our world), we hold to an expectation as citizens that each of us may - in common - enjoy, security of person and property -

THAT dignity of each individual human life and the safety of its promise - from conception to natural death, along with each our respective right to private ownership - as a natural right and as a public trust - be duly preserved by the Philippine State.

The value of Sacred Life being already well defined, to further expound on the right of private property, I shall take from a teaching in Catholic Morality (excerpted from the book, Catholic Morality by Fr. John Laux, M.A.)

4. Duties Concerning Material Goods

a) The Right of Private Property

1. Ownership defined. - Not only spiritual goods, but material goods also have been placed at the disposal of man by God. But whilst the goods of the soul and the mind are accessible to all and do not diminish, no matter how many partake of them, a material good can, of its very nature, belong undivided only to one person, and the oftener it is divided, the smaller becomes the portion of those who use it. The right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of any material good for ourselves, to the exclusion of others, is called the right of private property or individual ownership.

2. Private ownership rests on the divine law and, taking man as they are, is necessary for the individual and for society -

a) the Seventh Commandment forbids theft as a violation of the rights of others. If private property were theft, as the French Communist Proudhon calls it, theft would not be a violation of the rights of our neighbor, but the right of the State. But God does not forbid theft as a violation of the right of the State, but of the right of our neighbor individually. In the New Testament parables such as those of the sower, the vineyard, and the fig tree pre-suppose the right of private property.

(As regards to plunder of the public coffers, it is the individual tax payers' right of representation, direct as well as indirect, in the official affairs of the State that is violated.)

b) Private ownership is founded on the nature and condition of man; it is a natural right. Nature imposes upon man the duty of preserving his life, and hence it also gives him the right to exclusive ownership in those things necessary for the preservation of his life.

c) The individual has natural duties to provide for the material needs of his family and the education of his children. But he can not fulfill these duties without the right of accumulating and retaining a variety of these goods. If all men were perfect Christians, then the difficulty would be minimized. But we must take men as they are.

d) Without the right to private ownership there would be no incentive to work and consequently no progress in the arts and sciences.

e) God is the true Lord and Master of all things by the right of creation. But man also, the image of God, can mold and modify things at his pleasure. The fruits of his labor bear the stamp of his personality; and thus becomes their true lord in a limited sense, as God is their absolute lord in an unlimited sense.

f) Under a system of common ownership (Communism) the distribution of labor and of the rewards of labor would destroy individual liberty and make all citizens slaves of the State. Under such circumstances, peace and order are inconceivable.

(As regards the peace process with the NDFP, it is not condemnation of each side our Republic whole must seek but a re-calibration of interests leading towards the beginnings of a common ground vision pursuant and compatible with the reality of the Philippine State, a transformation of the nature of the conflict, and ultimately a reversal of the mindless tides of prejudices and cessation of the cycles of violence that have consumed this Nation for several generations now.

In short, we must together make this Republic of ours work - and, in an imperfect world, labor for the common good of all. Upon our Peace - one, whole, and complete - much depends.)

...

4. Whether we possess much or little, we must always remember that we are only the stewards of what we possess, not the absolute masters, and that we must one day give an account of our stewardship. For as God never gives up His dominion over the gifts of life, so He never relinquishes His right over the gift of material goods.

The fruit of this vision 
in the reality of the Nation is -
An institutionalized, civilian Policing, 
Public Safety, and National Security Service.
---<--@


The Nine Common Human Needs

Salutation #190

Of the elements of Country, there are three -
the Nation, the Responsible State, and the Common Market.

(On the Country of the Philippines)

The Nation that we are, my people,
is founded on a Covenantal obligation
between God and the Children of Mankind
which is the Covenant that the LORD made forever
with all of the Nations of the Children of Mankind
that our God inaugurated in time
through Noah and his sons.

The Noahide Covenant
binds our generations to the freedoms
that ensure the preservation of sacred life
- the whole spectrum of it - that upon "our world"
   (as a realm apart from "the world" of the fallen Nations of old),
water shall never again consume the life of the Earth -
but shall through the life of our Nations
be nourished and sustained by it.

For we are through bonds of water and blood established.

Sacred Life is our sacred obligation -
and its preservation in ourselves and therefore,
throughout all of lower creation - is -
the fire that animates our spirits.

This "world - as our world"
that we are each as Nations is commissioned
to build together for all of the Children of Mankind
   (as God's own human peoples - arising from lineages apart -
   from the inhuman and irreparably corrupt spiritual lineages
   of the fallen Nations of old who sinned with the pride of Satan)
upon the Unknown Earth - which is likewise -
God's primary command to all the Nations of Mankind
   (including those fallen Nations of old
   whose life He utterly destroyed during the Great Flood,
   whose spiritual lineages the LORD disowned,
   and irrevocably unseeded in them)
is what we call the Inhabited Earth
that Crystal Blue Sphere that
   (it is blue because it is immersed in water)
from the spiritual realm
is a wonder for all
to behold.

This is our Covenant
- the Covenant of the Children -
and we are never free to break it.

To preserve the dignity and promise of Man - in all our Nations - is -
to do Justice to the image and likeness of Man - reflected upon the life of the world
and make it, "our world". Thus, making the Earth to the LORD, "very good".
Because to do Justice to the sacred life of this world - from the person of Man
right down to the very least of all of Man's animals and Man's plants
is the fundamental reason we are called to exist as Nations.

The existence of life in our world
- is - the soul that gives our Nation breath,
and the living up to the very wonder of this life,
along with the most profound existential questions
that specifically pertains to the mystery of life
and to the living of this life in this world,
- is - the spirit that is our breathing -
the truths of life's Salvation and its Redemption
is the fire that animates both our water and our blood.

The preservation of "the all" of sacred life
in this way - is the mission and the commission -
entrusted to all National communities of the Earth.
It is our Peace and the Goodwill of our Peace.

For the Universe
is not created for Man
Man is created for the Universe.

We as the Children exist for the labor.
Everything else exists for the glory of God.

- selah -

As a National community -
we are called of spirit and of blood born.
However, it is from water that our lineages upon the Earth are established.
For it is from the formless - that - the form of our citizenship
constantly renew itself and arise: Our truest citizenship is in our soul.

And from it proceeds the spiritual truths
where from we derive the first principles
that shape and define our Social Contract.

This Social Contract establishes - our labors as truth -
and - our truth upon the Earth - as a Sovereign Presence
before the LORD and the Assembly of the Nations before God
both in Eternity - and also upon the Earth.

This Social Contract is known as Democracy.

- selah -

We - as human beings -
do not practice our freedoms in a vacuum.

Freedom is a profoundly spiritual reality in Man.

Where in the life of lower creation, freedom is but a physical act,
completely reliant upon the nurture of freedoms ever greater than theirs,
our freedom is beholden to a spiritual dimension - because as human beings,
we implicitly know in our hearts that we must reach out to the only other freedom
reaching out to us, the freedom of God - in much the same way
that the life of the Earth reaches out to us.

The universe was not created for Man.
Man is created for the universe:
We belong to its labor
   (as common laborers upon the Master's field)
and only to its labor we belong -
particularly as Nations of the Children.

For example,
a dog whom we love or the plant that we nurture
- in the most immediate and real sense -
belong not to us.

For is it not also true
that it is Providence that speaks for its life?

We belong to it - or more specifically speaking,
to the labor of making it ours again.

And so inasmuch as we quicken our souls
to the work that we owe to the life in ourselves and to the life of all of lower creation -
in God and with each other, they become ours and they awaken again and learn our voice.

Else, this world - above the din of all other things that seek to confuse us -
will roar in silence deafening: For this world will never speak its secrets to our hearts.

And we will never know of it as our First Parents did intimately know of it
and so remain - very uncomfortably - strangers to the wonders of our own living Earth,
- trespassers and invaders to the varied realms that lay within our own Human Habitation.

If we love anything in lower creation - in the Truth,
they - like the Truth - become our possession forever. 

This is a freedom no animal or plant possess.

And it is never practiced like animals and plants practice their freedom.

It is never practiced in a vacuum.

And so
from Covenant proceeds Social Contract
and for us, my brothers and sisters of the Promise,
this is simply all about - Life and Liberty -
and so specifically - we are - as a Nation among Nations -
a participatory, constitutional Democracy;
a people brave, and free, and fair.

- selah - 

Why participatory?

Stronger freedoms require Liberty that we may exercise rights that exist to make our personal freedoms strong and also guarantee those same rights commonly preserved for other citizens not unlike ourselves.

Weak freedoms fall prey to any number of dangers and calamities, and the labor that we must fulfill is not easy.

If we do not hold on to our Nationhood, or worse - if we do not know how - it becomes impossible for any of us to build up the Earth.

Everything that in exile time progresses in Time without the Truth shall appear as an unremitting retreat into a devouring darkness - as the world gets darker and darker - meaninglessness becomes bitterness, bitterness turns into despair of self, despair of self becomes despair of others not unlike the self, and so - as the years become empty of their substance - Country will seem as nothing else but a madness that devours, and what once was in our common humanity precious as our hopes for all sacred life become abased into a sheer tyranny of beliefs founded in falsities and illusions.

The gravity of these things we must fight against - it is not our way of return: Ours is an Ascent in Time and unto the Truth.

We were never free to not fly upon Eagle Wings. For the LORD God saith that saying of the Nations, not of individuals. So when you shall sing to thy soul the popular song, "On Eagle Wings", make an effort to see that song as dedicated to Nations entire and not merely to individuals.

Our Nation, my beloved people, is one of those Nations. In this Nationhood, we are impelled to participate. We are therefore, we must.

But we can not build the right world with the wrong values.

- selah -

Why constitutional?

The Nations of the Children of Mankind is one great Peerage before the LORD.

And indeed, we are each - as human individuals, a peer to one another - through our personal and individual distinctions, equally - a keeper and a friend to our common humanity.

We all have - and have forever possessed - a basic, human citizenship.

Our communities too, are such as we - a Peerage of the Nations, for unequal each Nation may be in spiritual maturity and material strength, but as a Plenary Global Community - being as one Family of Nations - we are each enabled to equally overcome that we may together prevail against this world, and make of the Earth, our home away from Home.

For we are all here for a reason exclusive only to the fulfillment of a dream of happiness, and it is not even our dream, it is God's dream for us, and it is wonderful beyond wonderful indeed!

The authority to govern our peers whether from within the Nation or from among the Nations themselves is not a human authority, but a Divine authority.

And this authority is vested in a Responsible State and the structure of this State, as it applies to our Nation, is established in our prevailing Constitution - this binds us - in spirit - to a particular undertaking of Country that is in form - a Republic - and which therefore possess in itself - a very specific spirit.

We move like a Republic moves.

However, it is our personal freedoms that determine its Ascent - into its ages in Time - from emerging, developing, developed, and mature - and our Right of Ascent is likewise determined by the rightness of these freedoms.

Each Nation only has one Right of Ascent, each Country only has one freedom or Way of Ascent - all else falls into the gravity of the unveiling of the darkness of the desolation - and Democracy as a whole - is the Social Contract we specifically have - with each other, that we owe - for each other, and that our generations owe - to each other - that we will secure for ourselves and our Posterity this Republic, and it's Liberty.

It imposes a Burden
   (which we shall also expound upon very soon),
because our freedoms are neither cheap -
nor are they ever free.

- selah (pause and think) -

Now we come to review the Engine of our Economic Progression.

For to liberate our souls to pursue those spiritual freedoms that is our happiness,
we must first liberate our minds and our bodies from the physicality that in material weakness
mires us individually and prevents our communities from securing for themselves within the Nation,
our Republic Vision (as it arises from the Maturity of our Love and Remembrances together).

This engine is human enterprise Capitalism,
and it establishes upon our Common Market within the Nation,
a Free Enterprise Market structure.

It is the Engine naturally compatible with our Democracy and its sheltering Republic,
driving its Progress forward, against the flow of exile time, that we may secure - at the helm -
for all our generations to the last, through an Economy of matter and grace,
the wealth of our Nation - which is wealth already established in us
being in everything already dedicated as our possession forever.

The full breadth of the Vision of human enterprise Capitalism is to perfect the drive of human enterprise and liberate Man from the poverty and the humiliation of the human condition.

It creates material wealth as a means to secure and obtain - in the Nation - for each and every individual, the freedom to individually pursue a happiness that is fully and completely human - so each Man may know to be free - to learn to be happy, even in this world - securing and obtaining for himself or herself true riches - from perishable means to imperishable ends.

The full breadth of this Vision does not create more poverty. It makes the poor wealthy and the wealthy truly wealthy and leads all and involves all in the Real Economy of the Nation.

Furthermore, Capitalism is - a National proposition - and therefore, may not exist to serve only the interests of a few citizens, particularly in a Democracy. Else it should falter and fail - to the everlasting regret of all.

Also, as it serves a primordial need in Man's own being - to be truly free and truly happy, Capitalism - as an Engine of Economic Progress - must naturally possess a spiritual dimension. It's promise of happiness never was a material dream, for its dream of happiness is an invincible one.

People drown in riches because their souls can not be filled by gold alone.

Greed has no part nor place in a free enterprise Market.

And as ours is such a one - our free Market structure must naturally react to expel greediness - as tares are beaten from the wheat.

Indeed, it must be intrinsic to our Economic structures and strictures that inordinate wants and the many lusts that support them are not only counterproductive but also counter-intuitive to our National Economy and run counter to our economic good as citizens - being usually not only corrupted but criminal.

Truly, truly, virtue is currency.

Greed in our Economy is like having termites in the wood of our tree.

All of that which places the value of Man's things over the things of Man give nor possess no value and only exists to take from Country; it shortens the length of our days (making it appear to our hearts we're getting nowhere fast), is useless to the fostering of our sovereign freedoms, and is quite destructive to the labor of securing the National wealth.

We can be as rich as we want to be in our Economy, provided it does not make any of us filthy - but only truly happy.

In fact, in the most ideal sense - everyone should own capital, multiply it, and have a successful business so that we should all be billionaires, rich with good things besides, and wealthy at the same time.

A Capitalist does not value imprudence in the use of material resources and despises greed because greed is reckless. Greed is narrow and selfish and suffocates both human creativity and personal initiative. It is the saw that ultimately saws off the branch it is sitting on - calamitous to the Market it preys upon.

Capitalism values not how much money is in the bank but on how much capital enterprise is in the works, it values chutzpah, and rewards honest, dedicated and inspired work, no matter how small it may be, seeking to succeed not on how well and how bravely one runs from business - but on how well and how bravely a business is run.

The capital in capitalization, and the exclusive proprietary rights of those who own the means of work is only the result and not the source of the capital in capitalism. It is a myth that Capitalism is prejudicial to workers' rights; a legend propagated by the greediness of a few.

The human capital is crucial to the success of Capitalism, so that it's betterment - both in the labor force and in the management corps that serve each proprietary trust - in business and other market venture entities - that comprise our Free Market is vital to the success of our Economy.

But the value of the human element may only be as valuable as we recognize it. Fairness is what makes our Markets free. Therefore, a degraded economic identity in our citizenry will - and shall - imperil our Market Freedoms. When honesty in the small seem to count for nothing when the truth is that honesty can never be measured by any material dimension. Honesty is honesty in all persons.

And this in turn shall slow or even stop the many human gears that drive forward the popular engine of our Economic Progress. It will produce disparities in the way we view wealth and poverty, polarize it into an unnatural state of division - so that wealth and poverty are no longer connected - in both our minds and our hearts.

(That wealth and poverty as they exist - exists not harmoniously but are inimical to each other - like hydrogen refusing to bind with oxygen to make water.)

Indeed, there is now in our Nation, and perhaps also in other Nations not unlike ours, that selfsame unfamiliarity; a sense of unbalanced imbalances that seems so unnatural to the Economic evolution of any free, fair, and brave enterprising people - and one that prevents each our Country from taking wing, leaving us all earth-bound - below the clouds, under the darkness, out of sight of the stars and the skies.

This is not a deficiency in our people's virtue and good. There is so much bravery in a magbabalut or a fish ball vendor, or an honest taxi driver or airport porter - or any enterprising Pinoy who invests in the smallest of seeds - his or her citizenry - to dream of a better life - in this Nation - it is this spark that we should be looking for... 

(The author also has a specific proposal to make common for all Filipinos - the practical means to enter into our National Economy and strengthen our City's common ability to build up the National wealth which shall also be posted in this blog at a later time.)

For it is this spark that we may use it to jump start our Engine back to life - it is found in the here, there, and everywhere, just raring to go - in each of us, because all of this is - in the heart of the Filipino - and - in the soul of our Nation.

And Now is our Time.
---<--@

As regards the question of the National Wealth, should the Government exist to serve the needs of the poor or the rich?

As regards
the question of the National Wealth,
its recognition, creation, conservation, transformation, and ultimate possession,
should Government exist to serve
the needs of the poor? No.
The rich? No.



Government exists to come to the aid of all of its citizens
that they may - rich or poor - be able to dwell harmoniously together
in order to effectively meet their common human needs -
WORKING together to secure both the dignity and promise of human life,
serve and defend the national peace, enrich their sovereign freedoms,
and to be better and better able to guarantee for their common posterity,
a Republic that - with each generation ripens - for the good of all generations -
in virtue and maturity - in time and in remembrance.

The material betterment that Capitalism promises
is founded on the truth that all citizens must first of all, regard each other as such -
as human beings to each other - being variously but consistently sympathetic
to the poverty and humiliation of the human condition and thus,
willing to work freely with each other under God
to continuously co-create and prosper
the National Wealth.

Upon this singular moral condition is founded
the ethical safeguards that are necessary to preserve the societal certainty
of its central ideals of entrepreneurial competition and market freedom.

Businesses that come to possess a superior management
stand to outdo those that consistently fail to acquire it.
And proceeding from this first ideal (i.e. authentic human entrepreneurship)
in a free market environment (i.e. one that is possessed of authentic market freedoms),
products (and services as products) that are better made consistently stand to gain
a better share of the Common Market (as a whole) - but -
only inasmuch as it is a consequence, direct as well as indirect,
of the first ideal -

An enterprise driven system designed to create and multiply both capital and industry
by inclining citizen-consumers to be citizen-producers, and provides for these ideals accordingly

a Free Market System - purposed, structured, and therefore, expected to faithfully function

(1) to encourage the maintenance and practical evolution of good business practices,
(2) reward both dedicated management and dedicated labor with a positive workforce culture
and (3) effectively transfer all of its variously intended benefits to the intended good of the citizenry
who by being able to - freely and equally - participate in the creation of both supply and demand
maintains his or her essential responsibility as an active participant in a Capitalist economy
both in the consumption of goods as well as in the promotion of the pertient commercial good
thus exercising free choice as regards the nature and direction of the Common Market.

(Materialism 
confounds these ideals
and places the merit
as well as the burden of virtue
on the Market itself which
can neither possess it
nor become possessed by it.
Citizens get enlightened.
Corporations do not.)

For indeed, everybody
must enter into everybody's labor
and everybody's labor must be aligned and directed
toward the ultimate end for which all human labor must be purposed
which is a just distribution of this world's material goods within the Nation
as a reality proceeding from an equitable appreciation of the National Wealth -
which is always more than just the material component of "being rich".

This is the kind of Capitalism
I should like to subscribe to -
an economy of matter and spirit. 

We are, as a Nation,
to be wealthy first (and recognize it)
before we become wealthy (and realize it).
For there is only one direction toward wealth
and that is to become truly wealthy - for everybody.

Virtue is currency.

Not the rigid, materialistic, purposeless
and therefore, at times, quite cruel and inhuman system
- divisive of rich and poor and therefore, ultimately hostile to both -
an economic system that has lost its ability to steer itself
with the progress of the Nation whose existence
guarantees it own success.
---<--@

What makes you happy does not always make you rich. 
But what makes you rich must always make you happy.