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.

A Nation's Treasures

A Nation's wealth is the life and promise of its people - across all our generations.

My people, as we emerge as a Republic in our ages, before we are burdened more and more with the responsibility of material wealth - I want us to remember the simplicity of our happiness in this picture.

It is commonly said that one ought to find one's happiness before doing anything so that anything one does shall be of good profit to the self. This is true.

But lest the world anymore complicate it, this is true only if one can keep one's happiness in the soul and keep it there - present and abiding as a joy in thy spirit - without anything else.

So that in knowing this, we shall always know, as we together undertake to further progress our journey of Country, Earth from Sky - the bounds of our reach and the reach of our limits - where the freedom of Man ends and the Freedom of God begins.

For our freedoms
shall always be our bounds,
our happiness shall to each of us
always remain within their reach
appearing as limitless to our hearts as the Sky
only as far as their limits are known to us here on Earth -
therefore, to transgress the freedom that keep us real
is to distort the happiness that keep us free -
as the gravity of material things tend to do
to remind us of responsibility.

Let us always remain with the truth - we are a spiritual people and therefore, when it comes to our dream of happiness - simply, a simple people.

Everything we need is within each of us - from this unity, God-helping, we shall confidently build.

Now, let us carry on - into the morrow.

Salaam. Shalom. Peace.
---<--@

We are to be wealthy first before becoming wealthy.

An Emerging Republic

The next time you hear, "third world country"... THINK.



Whenever I hear a fellow Filipino refer to our Republic undertaking of Country as "a third world country", I think of the mindlessness of such talk and shudder at the thought that many of us may still, for lack of a better working model, thoughtlessly accept this concept of a three world global order based on perhaps, a most narrow and unfair definition of national wealth.

Too, there is something implicitly prejudicial about the concept...

We are NOT a "third world country". We are an emerging Republic - just one of the many undertakings of Country (Republic or otherwise) cast upon a World afloat in a vast temporal ocean composed of Nations unevenly spread, under the unfathomable dictates of the Providence of God, upon an area of earth, sea, air, space, and spirit that comprise in all its sum (at the time of this writing), only a single planetary whole.

We exist, a Nation among Nations, growing great through our labors of Country as Trees exist, growing together in a Garden of Many Trees.

We (1) emerge to belong, (2) we belong to build, (3) we are built to become, (4) we become to belong, and (5) we belong to be one with the One - for these are the Five Ages of Country.
---<--@

We are, therefore, we must.


The Ages of Country

Salutation #175

Money is but a means to obtain wealth.

Brothers and sisters of the Promise -
if money and the mere count of all worldly things
were the ultimate end of our coming together into one nationhood,
we should realize - here and now - that we should be
the most unfortunate gathering of souls
in all of God's living creation.

For the devil has his crushing evil lies,
and the angels their quicksilver blue wings,
and the LORD, His glorious, golden Eternity -
But alas, my poor nation! we shall have nothing
if we do not learn, God helping, to multiply our means
not by selfishly obtaining for ourselves the mere number of their count
but by making - in behalf of the All of ourselves - even the merest of means count
so that every generation will have something that remains
to build upon and to hold dear.



(On Eagle's Wings)

Truly,
every nation has its wings
endowed to lift unto the sky of Heaven
the burdens of the earth-bound feet of Man.

But to do so,
We must realize that we, who are but one in our community,
should always look to the least, to the weakest, to the lowliest -
ever to the ones closest to the heavy and difficult ground of our earth
and know that we can not lift up our nationhood with its own wings to fly
IF we can not together uplift the lives of the poorest of the poor
in and amongst ourselves.

The power of our release from the gravity of our earth
we acquire from the presence of the poor - and we shall always have them -
(because the poor is, by measure of time as a whole, none other than the All of us)
for it is they - who are, at each moment, among the least among us - who give to us
- as a nation among nations - ever by the grace of the LORD, our King,
the constant opportunity to fly and to ascend to our completeness.

Remembering now the 4th Cause -
(which is the key to wealth generation in this new age
and the threshold that leads unto the other three Causes)
Indeed, within this Republic undertaking of Country
under heaven upon the earth - each of us -
who become rich becomes rich indeed
when we learn how to make each other rich
within a labor of Country borne ever aloft
by an economy of matter and grace.
---<--@

Our Divided Pond

"While the tree craves calm, the wind will not subside." This is a proverb the PRC media frequently quoted last year when commenting on the rifts between the PRC and the Philippines over the South China Sea.



Our only fault is not having a credible air-sea military deterrent to enforce our core national interests concerns within our territorial waters as well as the primacy of our economic interests within our own EEZ's alongside our international legal obligation to keep these outlying waters secure from piracy and free from lawlessness.

I always come back to this weakness in our own national defense when I ponder on the bilateral equation between the PRC and the GPH.

We did not unilaterally draw these lines on the map, we accepted them from the community of nations. We accepted them along with the rights and responsibilities that our nation must undertake along with them.

We did not harass the Chinese fishermen (PRC) in Scarborough shoal in April of last year, we were enforcing our maritime laws as we should - not because "we can" but because as a Republic, we must.

After all what is a Republic without law but a sham against the people and a lie against the nation it is commanded by God to shepherd.

But what is law without the truth? For the former arises out of the latter and drives it constantly against its limits, not to destroy it but to make it perfect.

But what is the truth? It is - in its ultimate form - certainly not a thing that Man may create for himself, else all law become void and the universe itself unmade.

It seems to me that when the truth is made to be arbitrary, as it is with Beijing's insistence on keeping all claimants cornered, regardless of the avenues of international legal remedy, it all will boil down in the end to raw force and in this regard, the time is late.

We have to accept responsibility for what we presently lack and build upon it in a way that is befitting the necessary and the real. And we must do this not for anything else but our own true sense of well regard for this Republic undertaking of Country of ours and our love for our nation as a whole.

We have to be firm in the right. Defend where we can and get our own act together as one Republic whole. The elections this year affords our people a chance to act upon our national longings, one of them being to live in the safety and security not only of our own peace but also with the peace of the nations in our region, their strength added to our own and ours with them.

We do not want to make an enemy of the PRC. I myself as a citizen of this Republic do not believe in enemies, for as a nation, it is my conviction that we must only believe in friends and potential friends. Not because we are weak for this is not a time to be weak. Now is a time for strength.

We must always be ready to answer to questions regarding matters of peace, whether they are of our own creation or is a thing created for us by circumstances within our world or through the dynamics involved in our necessary relations with other nations for we have constitutionally renounced the use of war along with all its potential for abuse.

This is not to say that we will not defend ourselves, this is to say that we must make it clear that our heart lies only in our defense and that we are answerable to the answers we as a nation have determined to allow for ourselves about these matters.

The real question is, has the PRC already made an enemy of us? Who is the tree and who is the wind?

Where there are more questions than answers, the truth is valued. When there are more answers than questions, there is no certainty.

The Code of Conduct, as I foresee it, being a document largely defined by the economic nature of the issue as regards the South China Sea-West Philippine Sea, must answer for our region - the question of wealth - is not peace and friendship between the nations in our region a form of wealth in and of itself?

Did not the Chinese also say that the angry can be made to be happy again but the dead can not be brought back to life? Indeed, not unlike this saying, I also place a high value on human life. This is why I place a high value on peace. For in its most complete and absolute form peace is truly over war.

Never must this issue take away our common hopes for a better Asia and from our Asia, a better world - for all nations... dreaming together this time.
---<--@

War is not the test,
O nations of the children of Mankind -
war is the tutor!

Peace is the test -
and to pass this test brings success.

Salutation #164

The real answer
to the question of poverty in our age
may not be more but BETTER forms of prosperity.



(The Question of Wealth)

Wealth,
darling Starshine -
what is it?

- selah -

"What is wealth?" -  beloved,
is a question we should each know
how to ask the citizen in each ourselves.

For the recognition of wealth -
its forms, orders of value, real purpose in time,
generation, preservation, conservation,
and ultimate possession -
is the central question being sought
(to be sufficiently grasped and understood)
by each our answering - in our own times and places -
the collective call of each our own undertaking of Country.

The answers - that each of us are -
whose completeness in the ascent - as a whole -
(like stars finding their way together
into every new morning of every new day
unto the completion of our Country)
drive forward the economy of our generations.

Indeed,
the singular - temporal - pre-occupation
of every nation (of the children of Mankind)
is how to adequately understand
the question of wealth.

Truly,
it is important to understand this question.

FOR
how one nation understands the Question
directs its timeless energies unto the answer...
even... precious starshine, all the way.
---<--@



Ask yourself:
is money - by itself -
wealth enough?

Money
can be good.

- BUT -

Money
can be bad.

Why?

Starshine,
what (or who) makes it so?
---<--@



Questions ask, answers answer.

Salutation #156

You can not see love
yet you feel it when it's near
and even more so when it is far...

The spiritual soul
implicitly understands this.

But to the unspiritual
this only brings confusion.



(Rich in all things, Rich above all things)

Starshine -

Is Mankind 
truly experiencing 
an awakening in the soul? 

We can feel our way
toward an answer to this
by how we learn to come to love
what we can no longer see.

We can not see virtue
but we can understand its worth.

AND if this love of the spiritual
overcomes our love for the material,
far from nullifying our national prosperity,
it will cause our people to become rich indeed -
rich in all things, rich above all things.

Reality is that our Reality is
99% invisible to the human eye -

   We can not see Country
   but we hope to understand its worth.
   For what is essential is formed in formlessness.

We are seen more than we can see.
And loved more than we are able to believe.

---<--@

Salutation #153

Prudent stewardship of the temporal order does not disincline the wings of the soul to flight for a rightful love of the things of the earth is one that does not diminish the appetite of the spirit for virtue and truth.

Material prosperity is not undesirable, materialism is. 

For materialism breeds greed and greed is the real dirt.

Therefore, one must guard not against matter but the spirit for it is this dirt that soils the soul; it is this dirt that buries the spirit.

(Nation vs Materialism)

SIMPLY PUT,
economic prosperity
depends on two things:
matter and spirit.

THIS is why materialism
ultimately destroys national wealth.

- selah -

Virtue is currency!

The rich need the poor, the poor need the rich
for each may only prosper with the other
and this relationship, by it's own virtue,
sustains the middle classes
which is the surest foundation
of a strong and steadfast democracy
providing safe shelter - for all:

A community of striving souls
standing for a just and lasting peace
where freedom is nourished - for all -
and peace, though imperfect, is yet
strongly believed and understood - by many -
as an ideal to be perfected in practice
in vision as well as in mission
- in thought and in act -
as an expression of the good will
of all citizens - least to great,
past, present, and forever.

A society of citizens
living in a just equality with each other
where every and all opportunity
though offered and received in unequal parts
by each individual citizen quantitatively
becomes a quality in the nation
that creates wealth equally
for all.
---<--@

Of Virtue and Vice