Salutation #199

The right to rule is a sovereign authority.

The right of rulers to reign among the nations is an expression of the authority of their rule.

The rule of kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers, and all chiefs appointed among all the human peoples scattered across all the lands of the earth is a power to govern the nations of mankind.

The right to rule is a sovereign in authority because it is a Divine authority. Every rule sufficient to govern the nations must itself be invested in an authority which is sovereign.

Rule and the authority to rule is sovereign only when they are one and the same.

Only the LORD,
the one Sovereign of all nations
possesses in perfection forever 
both Sovereign Rule
and Sovereign Authority.
---<--@

(The Flaw of Human Government)

The rule of human government is sovereign only in authority inasmuch as the lawful rulers of mankind recognizes in the one Sovereign of all nations, the Source of their rule and its authority.

That their reign may be as wise and as faithful as their rule is just and humble.

No human ruler, from their every time and place, true to his or her appointment may lay claim to a perfect rule. Whatever form of election there may be in them, whether eternal or popular, all human government regardless of their particulars must share the burden of this reality.

All forms of human government is intrinsically flawed from the very beginning.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in pondering about human government:

"Government that governs least governs best".

Because government that governs best governs not at all.

The flaw of human government is that it exists. And it exists because it is necessary to exist.

The flaw of human government is that it is human. And that government must exist among the nations is the question the State must address, each in its behalf, and according to its own particulars.

The cause of the State is the flaw in human government. The purpose of the State is to address the question of rule. All States thus, are flawed. But the most flawed of States exists only to rule without question.

The cause of the State seeks the State to be just. The purpose of the State causes it to come to a knowledge of its own virtue.

Vigilant Trust. Faithful Authority. Faithful Rule.

Rule is the fundamental language of States.

No State emerges in time and upon our world fully armed and fully mature. As thus, the State is ever an incomplete expression of sovereign authority, to be expressed faithfully - in every generation, in every nation. The State is answerable to its question, and exists to be interpreted - the cause of politics.

Politics is neither the cause of the State nor its purpose. It is and shall continue to be while time is time, an accident of the State.

When necessary to the well-being of the State, effective politics provides for moments of necessary sufficiency within the State which through the auspices of human government creates betterment in the souls Providence has peopled in the nation and fulfills the power of human government upon the earth. Politics that is unnecessary and extraneous to the State serves it not by need of its accident but by its own independent design.

There is no good or bad politics, only effective politics. It is the art of the real.

The politics of the State is not flawed in and of itself alone. It is the science of human government.

Politics however, inherits the flaw of artless leadership in the government of the State. Where the flaw of human government is only human. Flawed politics is not. It is less than.

Politics is never apart from its reality integral to the common good of the State. Whenever and where ever it is meaningfully expressed to its nation, it is faithfully expressed as a service to Country. In the government of the State, it comprehends duty. In the communities of the people, it comprehends honor. It is never beyond its science, and is never away from its art. What it loves forever is to make our society better than ourselves.

A good politician is skilled in effective politics. More than that, he or she is a civil servant with a genuine heart of service to the nation; the living communities that together form the being of our peace, the very soul of our nationhood. Love of God and Country is not an obscure ideal to him or her, it is a principle he or she is able to bring right down to the very soil of our people, from up the loftiest places in his or her soul of citizenship -

as a service to the nation that gathers us all - across our generations -
unto the peace of one belonging - endowing us as a people
with a common identity, a living memory,
and a shared spiritual heritage.

An edifice of corruption arises from a culture that agrees to its monument. 

Corruption through collaboration, ignorance, or indifference will invariably permeate the climate of Country, turn our Republic Sky into another unfamiliar, unfeeling, unseeing darkness. It shall as the night invite the unhappy heralds of the Adversary of all our nations - war being the first herald, the first of four. 

Sovereignty is the being of our nationhood realized in time and in the truth.

The formless spirit of nationhood that is our timeless, changeless foundation proceeds as flowing water from generation to generation - with every present generation tasked to realize a living and a present remembrance of the national account, commanded by God, that we may bring constancy and form to our citizenship, and make sovereign the presence of our labor Country upon the world we must as nations rebuild together with freedoms anew... ever as nations dreaming together this time.

Where this realization is weak, citizenship loses its potency. It becomes a corruption of itself. It becomes a malignancy that shall lessen what is sovereign and true in ourselves, and bring unto the bones of our people a weakness that prevents not as our laws prevent (to make a necessary social passage for all of us safe and straight) but only prevents to block our strength from rising from its very marrow.

As thus, a bad politician is the corruption of all the things a good politician is. He is a victim first, a coward later, and a criminal last.

Evil has its own gravity, as war does. Evil intent where all other choices are taken away soon become relative to our Liberty, and the freedoms we must keep absolute lose their sacred value.

Soon enough the rights we keep equal unto all men and women before God through Country shall lose their responsible power to shelter in safety the principal foundations of our democracy.

Liberty that is dim is also narrow of light and short of sight. But it is a fullness and a vision that has ever been ours from the very beginning; perfect freedom reborn forever from a Liberty that is perfect. 

The further away the rot of corruption takes us from what is common to all our good, least to great, the less and less we become in love with our journey of return to an Eden rebuilt as nations in exile. 

The less and less we understand a clearer vision of those things we must behold in our love, the more difficult it shall be for us across our generations, past, present and forever, to emerge triumphant into our ages in time as Country.

But the more we hold fast to what belongs to us. The more they shall cleave, truth unto truth. And we shall experience the pull of another gravity, an ascendant brightness - simple and easy and light. 

Remembrance that is right does not suffer evil to enter into the living memory of the present time.

---<--@

Politics is an accident of the State. Civics on the other hand, is integral to the State and its political custom.

We can not all be relating to each other politically all the time since we are neither just numbers nor abstract ideals floating around in space...

We are a real people.
---<--@

When non-state actors detain individuals, do they adhere to international laws?

When non-state actors detain individuals, do they adhere to international laws? That question needs more research, argues Bruce Oswald. (United States Institute of Peace) http://owl.li/nwEVd

 

Sovereignty emanates from the will of the international community of nations, who in turn, in our will of recognition of each other, must likewise recognize in each other - each other's sovereignty.

This enabling sovereignty then is a common trust, shaped and defined by how each our nations, in reciprocity of this trust, wield it from within - in order to establish - on behalf of all our nations as one family - a just and lasting order among each our peoples.

Sovereignty then is all about peace (entrusted to each other) and the good will that MUST proceed from peace (as a common trust) - both within as well as without.

The prevailing of this good will then is that which makes any human community sovereign. For all sovereignty emanates from the people inasmuch as the reality of each their nationhood is alive and aware in them and the remembrance of their generations dwell in greater harmony with the peace of other nations.

Because the truth that is essential to the spirit of all that which is sovereign - which is also the only fruit fitting and proper to it - is peace - peace tempered and refined and translated from spirit and will unto matter and form - peace a priori manifest as truth in the heart of all nations forever and peace as the labor of the life and good will of each our nations, each arrayed in time and across all our generations as each our own particular undertaking of Country, each in our own particular Ages in time, each in relation to each other - and - All in relation to the one God of All Nations.

Nations and their Responsible States belong to each other in this relationship of mutual trust in behalf of all our nations who recognize each other through a sovereign bond of a common and universal peace.

Governments do not only have their respective elections, but just as importantly are also possessed of each their particular mandates to the people - both of which truths are necessary for the Responsible State to faithfully carry out and fulfill their functions effectively as well as efficiently - toward those true and human ends for which all earthly governments are raised, each from among their nations, by the will of Providence.

Non-state actors do represent a sovereign will and therefore, intrinsically lack the authority to act on its good behalf and so transgress a particular sovereignty when detaining a citizen of any particular nation when the detention of said person is an act intended absolutely, as an end, and not merely as a means, in order uphold the higher law of the nations.

My answer here is a resounding NO: Non-state actors not only transgress the rights of human individuals by unlawful detention of any of their peer in creation, they offend the sovereignty of All Nations.
---<--@

To each nation, a particular state -
these two components of Country
fit like lock and key... to succeed
or to not succeed
inasmuch as they belong.

To all nations, a particular way -
upon this way all are gathered together
through our knowing one another
and in our choosing to belong
in the Truth.

Salutation #143

(From Star to Star, One Whole Sky)

According to how
a constellation is recognized
upon the sky
are our nations seen
upon the earth.

First
by its primary stars
- our own first magnitudes.

Indeed,
leadership matters,
the brightness
or the dimness of it.

According
to our first magnitudes,
we are enlightened, empowered,
and further led to the unfailing brightness
of the fullness of our timeless remembrance
as a people upon this earth.

According
to our national leadership,
we are led to our own completeness
without losing either
freedom or common humanity
ever as those individual stars above -
each of us sufficient for being
ourselves as ourselves
and from least to greatest.

By our completeness,
our nation becomes a sovereign whole
and power then emanates from this one whole -
the power to awaken the Republic vision,
the power to preserve and advance the peace,
the power to realize the national destiny
for all Filipinos
and for all nations.
---<--@



Leaders beget only leaders,
ever as stars empower only stars.

View in Review 20120511

While there are other note-worthy articles I should like to include in this Review, for today, I am going to delve exclusively on the one issue that seems to loom in the horizons of my mind - Scarborough Shoal.

(I initially did not expect this incident to become so protracted...)



Scarborough Shoal is NOT a population center.

It is an economic resource.

For what else is it?

There is a difference here, a subtle but significant one.

- selah -

Sovereignty lies chiefly in the nation - in the reality of we, the people who under God and before our laws and constitutional ideals are ordered and arrayed (in time and dimensional space) as one nation.

And from the nation extends to those spheres proper to our Republic undertaking of Country.

Why is it then that in the issue of Scarborough Shoal we are becoming so willing to undertake with China (PRC) burdens proper only for the defense of a population center?

Sovereignty has degrees just as equally as defense has depths yet sovereignty in all its places must be equally well-defended.

How we undertake this defense - against War, against each other - lies chiefly in how we must succeed in its conduct.

If we do not succeed in a diplomatic course of action as history has always been so eager to point out, we shall have no other recourse but an armed confrontation - a low-intensity conflict, as it were.

In this particular outcome, if we allow it to be, we shall be in control with China (PRC) only of how much damage we shall each be willing to sustain, for in this particular outcome, all parties would have already lost even before formal hostilities will have already begun.

We can not subdue China (PRC) neither can China (PRC) subdue us.

In this particular outcome, the longer view of things both obscures itself from our vision and denies itself from our foresight.

For we certainly could pursue the Scarborough Shoal issue through to its military means but to what ends, my fellow Filipinos, to what uncertain ends?

So instead of going into that exercise in sheer futility that in this particular case is armed conflict, it is to our common benefit with China (PRC) to find a way to share the advantages as well as inherent responsibilities of maintaining a common marine area as a mutual resource meant for the peace of both our peoples.

There is a middle ground to be found here. War shall not avail us anything.

And this middle ground has got to be found, recognized and commonly agreed upon through the use of an innovative approach that seeks to let go of old and antiquated ways of thinking... for the times are truly changed.

My personal position here (in support of President Noy) is to clarify, communicate, compromise, recognize, coordinate, legislate, and conform - exhaust every means, take every opportunity to transform this unwanted incident into an achievement of good worth to our nation (with armed confrontation only as a means of last resort in the conduct of the defense) - all for the greater good of our common regions in Asia, for the good of our Asia, and from our Asia to our needful world so much in need of respite and repair.

Moreover -



Scarborough Shoal is well within our 200 nautical mile EEZ or Exclusive Economic Zone (a compensatory advantage of our Archipelagic nature) and its continuing and responsible maintenance as an integral part of our territorial seas is sanctioned by UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea).

Of the substance of this truth, lettered in international law, and witnessed by many of our kindred nations, we may indeed constantly rely.

It is more costly, in terms of the national wealth, for the PRC to do what our naval forces and maritime law enforcement agencies must be able and indeed are able to accomplish in these waters. This is to maintain the law of our Republic and extend forth the sovereign peace of our one nation into this maritime territory - not to make it ours - but to preserve it as a resource for the good of our nation.



The PRC's over-extension (inherent in its claim to the whole of these waters west of our Republic) is also a cause for concern among other Countries in our world whose vital interest it is to keep those international shipping lanes within and beyond our EEZ free; whose nations need assurance that these sea lanes are kept open and available as a common trust of all nations.

However, the law by itself is troublesome if we ignore the fact that that the PRC is laying a claim to Panatag or Scarborough. This is why it is important to meet the PRC in the middle and preserve not only the dignity of both our Republics but also the viability and value of the shoal for the use of our future generations.

The US commitment to our defense may only be as strong as our own commitment to our own defense.

We must be able to take this in principle: Our primary defense in the context of the common defense and in concert with the mutual defense of our allies is always our responsibility.

We must be a friend to our friends and they shall be a friend to us.

The old mold of our ASEAN, however tenuously, may still understandably prevail.

That our ASEAN of late may still feel itself a random and accidental falling together of unrelated interests within our region instead of that purposed, principled, unified, Providential gathering of kindred nations into one focused and decisive regional force for collective peace and human community within our Asia may be evident in the uncertain stance that our own region is now taking here in our own region.

Therefore, we, as a defense partner with the United States and as part of the one ASEAN Neighborhood, must take both of these vital considerations arising from this unwanted incident as an impetus to spur forward the transformation of our Republic as well as that of our region with ASEAN and recognize its potential as an integral part of our diplomatic initiative.

We must do everything in our power to amicably resolve this standoff with the PRC.

Mabuhay! God be with us all.
---<--@

The Human Cost of War

Indeed,
my fellow Filipino compatriots,

the first ones to suffer the pains of War 

are ever the weak and the vulnerable.

- selah - 

Not our politicians,
not our able soldiery, 

not our middle classes,
not our wealthier classes, 

not even the criminally inclined, 

it is our small fisherfolk 

and their humble, hungry families 

who bear the brunt of this stand-off.

People whose minds (and stomachs) 

dwell furthest off of this brewing crisis!

We must bear in mind and heart 

that the human cost of this deadlock 

begins with them and is now counting...

   (Indeed,
   War will not cease
   until all of us
   - from least to strong -
   are made weak and vulnerable.
 
   For the spirit of War is a devourer of peoples!)

If we who are able
do not consider their plight 

to lend to our sense of urgency 

a deepening sense of justice, 

we might find ourselves taking stands 

on the wrong foundation.

---<--@