If you have been learning with me about politics,
you must now be able to agree
- with conviction - with me - and with each other
that
our politics is an authentic human right
and therefore, a duty - expressed in our freedoms,
particular to each of us as citizens
integral to whose calling it is (within our Republic)
to be able to articulate and profess it
freely and accordingly.
(Politics and Violence)
The National Politics,
our politics,
is not the rarefied domain of politicians.
We each, as citizens of this Republic of ours,
have a right and a duty to express our own politics.
Where politicians are our political thought leaders,
and very important to the vital workings of our Country -
they are only so because, we the people,
must think politics.
And we must think politics to become convinced
- first and foremost,
that they're truly ours -
more so than to convince others (that it's theirs).
Our politics must make us convinced citizens
and convinced citizens are
citizens with conviction.
And these convictions
should make
our politics clear - to each of us
for
civic clarity and
moral decisiveness are its first fruits.
- selah -
We do not as a Nation
possess in ourselves the National Politics
to argue endlessly about necessary matters
that involve the living life of our national communities
- at all levels across our fullest entirety, seen and unseen -
but to lend to these matters
substance and
popular weight
first and foremost - steadfastly, purposefully, and certainly
so that by sheer weight of our independent convictions alone
no matter how radically different they may naturally be
the Nation's priorities are accordingly and practically arranged
according to their constantly changing and dynamic realities -
from the ground (the very soil) of Country upward.
(And those of us who are formally called to be our politicians
by their vocations are the shepherds of these national priorities.)
For in politics,
we shall always have healthy disagreements
but we must - know and recognize - these disagreements
in the first place, by bearing the first fruits of our politics -
first -
for these disagreements are like the natural bends in a river that flows,
futile without the water that must first agree on a direction forward.
Political disagreements are a natural consequence
of our common freedom of political thought and expression
and can not first exist without mechanisms of political agreement
for these disagreements are a consequence only of our much thinking
(of the things that the water seeks to avert and avoid at the river bends)
and are not by any means the fruit of meaningful political participation.
It is a strange feature of the realm of political thinking
that agreements - to responsibly own up to our Republic Vision -
must consequently lead to disagreements - but, brothers and sisters, they do -
for the strength of our will of politics must be constantly tempered and refined
by the disagreements that give itself sincerely as fuel that serve to fire the flames
of the vital national processes that lead to the betterment of our own convincing
so that in knowing where we stand across the political spectrum that define
the totality of the near infinite reach of our own Republic Vision -
we are reminded by our own freedoms - where we agree in principle -
and that
our politics can only be strong - in as much as they
shall agree
that within our Republic, under the sheltering skies of our Peace,
there is a season, a time, and a place for each and every good thing.
under heaven.
We who know our politics
know we implicitly agree on something -
that
we are.
And that from these agreements must proceed,
even without resorting to any formal debating and/or open discussions
just by our standing still and embracing the reality of our citizenship together,
the challenge to further agree -
over and above our disagreements -
because
we must.
And therefore,
like Jacob and the Angel,
with every present generation,
come prepared for the necessary battle
of winning together from Providence,
our Republic Vision.
- selah -
Citizens who know their politics
never sell them out -
neither are their votes for sale nor do they vote on mere whim.
These are souls who walk the ground of Country with
gravitas and purpose
and breathe from the very land and air and sea of our people,
our sovereign spirit.
And so,
when, we the people, should think of -
our politics -
we should not think that the National Politics is somehow dirty
or beyond the capacity of us lesser mortals to understand
(and give its intended victory without challenge
to the unversed, the uncouth and the pretentious)
we think - we are - and therefore, we must.
After all, my fellow Filipino compatriots,
are we not all commissioned by Providence Divine
to be citizens of this exact place in time?
- selah -
With an eye
toward the upcoming Barangay elections
this October 28, in the Blessed Year of our LORD, 2013
- in the Third Millennium of the Common Human Era -
I should like to be able to articulate another truth
about our politics - and one which proceeds
from the thoughts we have outlined above.
Violence (of the physical kind) and
our politics
are like oil and water -
tubig at langis.
They are two immiscible realities -
to mix them, my brothers and sisters of the Promise,
without stirring against the peace of our national communities
is impossible - one is a break from the other,
each takes different paths that lead to different outcomes.
It is said, my brothers and sisters,
that politics is a contact sport, this is true -
but it is not a sport of brutes - as brutes would like it to be -
the battle of our politics is played out in a human arena
and is a contest, because of the magnitude of its inherent good,
that must always and everywhere inspire the nobility of human beings;
spirit, virtue and truth are its ultimate measures -
and we enter into it because,
we love.
Truly, political violence is ruinous to the Nation - to any Nation -
(we may feel this at present at the sad plight of the one Syrian Nation).
For as we are a labor of not a few - or even the many
but a labor of the millions across our generations -
far into forever -
an inspired work of the citizenry - and a labor of enlightenment,
unto the very last of our generations - unto the Last Day,
we exist for the continuance and preservation of Sacred Life
as a Pledge not on behalf of Humankind's final defeat
but of the ultimate Triumph of our Cause to exist -
in the everlasting fullness of the Truth.
Violence - it's existence, outbreaks, and continuance -
and the harm it inflicts upon the dignity and promise of Man
-
is - what our politics must always and everywhere together oppose
within our Nation and between the Nations within our Family of Nations.
The politics we must profess must unanimously consider violence as evil
unless in order to prevent its own demise, violence itself is deemed unavoidable
and thus, becomes a lesser evil undertaken to save the body politic.
This
always holds true
in the case of those outbreaks of armed conflict
- that only becomes necessary -
when the existence of the Republic itself
comes into terrible and mortal danger of War
as an unavoidable duty of the Common Defense
and anywhere violent forces willfully breaks into our reality
against both our sovereign will and our deepest wishes -
as an integral part of our civic responsibility
to universally defend and preserve the National Peace;
a fact that was clearly recognizable just quite recently
by the crisis at our beloved City of Zamboanga.
(The craft of all nations is Peace - therefore,
not all wars must be fought - for not all of them can be just.)
Outside the manifestly ethical considerations expressed
in the duty of the Common Defense and the integrity of the National Peace -
All forms of political violence shall always be the sport and hidden recourse
of those adulterous brutes who have slept in their hearts with the Dragon of War
and shall always and forever - and everywhere - as far as our Nation is concerned
be considered for what it truly is -
an abominable crime -
a crime against all Nations.
---<--@
Fuel for Civic Thought
The question here is,
as we are cut from the same cloth as the American Republic -
(and can learn from their expression - if we are wise, God-helping,
to better express our own expression of Country):
Where and when will this revolution become an evolution?
This is not just a circle.
Let us not forget that this is also a spiral;
an ascent
into the summit of our completion (or a descent).
For there are
endless forms of Abundance
(once the material veil of these things
have been successfully breached by the national culture)
and all of these ultimately lead to absolute freedom
and ultimate forms of happiness.
BUT there are also - upon this world -
endless forms of Bondage
(the existence of which is the exact reason why we are a Nation -
for we are meant to strive against it - not bow to it - or appease it).
