Category Archives: Sex

Christmas Story: The first chapters of a working draft of my New Novel of Jesus’s life

An image showing the basis of all this Christmas celebration.

An image showing the basis of all this Christmas celebration.

This has to be read in linked portions or it might crash this site. Here is the first chapter.  Then the second  chapter, the third chapter  and the fourth chapter as well as the fifth chapter are here in links. This is as you can see a bit of Christmas longer than this little passage. If you are still reading then continue with the sixth chapter, the seventh chapter, the eighth chapter, the ninth chapter, the tenth chapter and the eleventh chapter. You will becoming in for a long home stretch now with chapter twelve, chapter thirteen, chapter fourteen, chapter fifteen, chapter sixteen and chapter seventeen. Merry Christmas and Happy Feast of the Epiphany.

My niece's early Christmas can be remembered but not recaptured.

My niece’s early Christmas can be remembered but not recaptured.

Features Of this Blog: Part One, the Glossary

I want to take today’s post to comment on and improve the accessibility of some of the features of this blog. I am not sure how logical that is as this post will be buried in posts more quickly than the features themselves but here we go. I will start my little tour:

I have a glossary which is important to the  subjects discussed in this blog. I have the first page linked  earlier and also three more pages . This glossary will define many terms and proper nouns which would not be familiar to most readers.

While the  glossary is only four blog pages it is as long as a booklet if printed out.  The formatting on this post is not the formatting used in the glossary. It differs in that I have used the quotes feature to expand the margins and thus lengthen the column. But otherwise this is directly lifted from the glossary. I hope to use two of the definitions as examples of what you might find there:

Zouaves  Here this almost always will refer to the Louisiana Zouaves of the War Between the States although the French Zouaves do enter a bit into the historical interests of this blog as well.  Zoavisme was a movement brought to Louisiana from France by an odd hybrid of military drill instructors and actors who toured Anglophone, Acadian and Creole regions of the State before the war. Yankee or Union Zouaves played a role in that great struggle and there were a significant number of of other Confederate Zouave units. But the Louisiana units are the most famous even in a history which often ignores Louisiana and are often called Louisiana Tigers by a variety of people . Unlike most Federal Zouave units, most Confederate Zouaves were not autonomous “regiments”: Louisiana followed this trend  or started it and these men  were often companies within larger units. The cognomen “Louisiana Tiger” is a venerable term  which dates from the Mexican War although Acadian fighters were sometimes known as gamecocks, crocodiles, alligators, Les Loups, and other animals Louisiana’s fighting animal was mostly the Tiger  and  the term refers to any Louisiana state trooper LSU athletic teams but all this has little to do with Zouaves. None of the Mexican War Louisiana “Tigers” were Zouaves for example.  The earliest, and most famous Louisiana Zouave unit was Confederate officer  White’s Company B (the “Tiger Rifles”) of Major Chatham Roberdeau Wheat’s First Special Battalion, Louisiana Volunteers, aka “Louisiana Tigers”.

This can be confusing because Lee’s Tigers is a term correctly applied to all Louisiana soldiers that served in the Army of Northern Virginia. These are not to be confused with the Louisiana Zouaves  who were the “Louisiana Tigers” or “Coppen’s Zouaves.” These names have been confused with “Louisiana Tigers at Gettysburg.” Coppen’s Zouaves were at Gettysburg, but they were not then known as “Louisiana Tigers” in any way related to the unit although they may have been called Tigers in a broader sense.  Captain White’s Company B, “Louisiana Tigers”, of Major Wheats’s First Special Battalion, were not at Gettysburg, having been disbanded after Wheat’s death at Gaines Mill in 1862. There are two other Zouave units of company size for which I have little documentation but believe existed for a small part of the war.

This one comes at the end of the alphabet and has its limitations and challenges that are unique to the word and its history. Here is another example from elsewhere in the glossary, in this case I have three definitions that fall in order here:

Post, here means Lauren C. Post This is the writer of an important little book on the edge of serious scholarship called Cajun Sketches. It has photographs and writings about the Acadian people of Louisiana.

 Pontalba, Madame Celestin Pontalba, Baronesse Micaela Almonester de Pontalba was the wealthy investor and patroness of architecture who helped her  architect to redesign the decaying Place de Armes in New Orleans into Jackson Square in the center of the old city and French Quarter. She was the successor to charitable, commercial and public building projects organized by her Almonester ancestors.  By the time she built The Pontalbas (as the whole project is known) she was bo longer the rather beautiful woman she had been she had one lung, a rotting finger and little left of the others on one hand and one of her breast was mostly a prosthesis. She also had metal fragments left in her chest. All these physical ailments came from being shot by her father-in-law the Baron Pontalba. While she and her husband later Celestin Barone De Pontalba seem to have ended life both separated and in love their marriage is a rather horrid tale of conflicts between the greater property rights enjoyed by women in Louisiana and the lesser (almost nonexistent ) rights of women to property among the European Nobility — in this case Napoleonic Imperial French Nobility. In the state she is rumored to have had an affair with Andrew Jackson for whom she named the Square. Except for naming the Square for him, them both being alive at the same time and capable of consideration in such matters and   her being rather independent and a Louisianian all things seem to be against this. All time lines seem wrong to me. Who knows what is possible but it does not seem possible they were together in the right ways and times.

Prince Camille de Polignac This man was a French Prince and Confederate General who fought in Acadiana during the War Between the States. Since that time Liaison a la Maison de Polignac has been an office in the Maison de le Roialso seated in the Tout et Rien. This person is supposed to a De Polignac.

I am always correcting some typefaces, improving spelling and getting translations more accurate. There are no footnotes and I do check websites of place I have worked, Wikipedia and my own files regularly without being perfectly professional in the use of those sources. For these and many other reasons I call this a Glossary of Terms Casually Defined. But I think it may have some helpful information.  Check it out, it may be a bit better than these quote the next time you look at it.

 

 

Population Issues and America’s Future

In many ways the policy sheet you are about to read here is virtually unimaginable. I am sensitive to all the things that seem offensive to some and less than ideal to almost all. However, I really believe in civilization. I think America is till aspiring to true civilization. It is vital that those who are willoing to kill and die and do unpleasant things can lead a civilization forward or else it will surely lose all its civilized qualities soon enough. I believe our situation is already precarious and the paths to survival are not apparent to most of those in leadership and authority. In order to justify the time you would spend reading and trying to understand this post which outlines policy for an institution that does not yet exist and will probably not exist you should have some idea of America’s population situation.  Here is  a set of links which will give you some idea of what is the situation now. They do not tell you all that much but they will put you on the path to some kind of understanding:

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

I will simply state that this is part of the larger model for remaking the United States as a society, country and union. I had written a paragraph about the model and several other paragraphs that I lost somehow so this will be shortened by my weariness with things.  In the model the DIG is the Direct Imperial Government. State Governments would continue to exist, the US Congress and Supreme Court would be reformed but continue to exist. However, some new things would be created and one of them would be a set of lands ceded to and governed by the Direct Imperial Government as the DIG lands. This is the population policy proposed for that as yet nonexistent institution. States would have a renewed sovereign autonomy over many issues related to this policy because of their  authority over domestic regimes and institutions. But there would still be a limited leadership inherent in the DIG. 

Population Policy of the DIG

I. New General Initiatives The regime would take a very serious view about human life, filiation and population which is distinct from what is the norm in the rest of the world. That will be one of many reasons why America will have to transform its foreign policy. There will not be the consensus based on lies and half-truths with which America currently functions in the world. 

A. Record Keeping

There will be a great deal of investment in records and record keeping in the DIG. The power generated by such records will be offset by empowering other institutions but the goal will certainly and unmistakably be a newer and more powerful system of more coherent government in the Direct Imperial Government leading the way in many specific ways. 

1. Two Levels of Application

Those subjecting themseelves to DIG jurisdiction will be more directly and quickly integrated into the records policy. However, the DIG will work with other authorities to achieve similar goals over time.

2. Life Accountancy

The most important part of this whole policy in many ways is a comprehensive system of cancelling birth certificates with death certificates and requiring people to register at 18, 50 and one hundred years of age. Real data on births and deaths of a really high quality will gradually emerge that will drive other policies.  

3.Marriage Certificates and Related Documents

All marriage certificates and Contracts of Liaison and Placement for Certified Mistresses will be attached to birth records, will record known sterility and will be used to get an idea also of trends merging in the popultion.

B. Marriage, Family and Domestic Regimes Government Support

1. Taxation and Withholding for Family Kinship and General Population Fund 

There will be a variety of revenue streams for non-residents of the DIG lands to pay into the General Population Fund. One percent of all the net income of DIG residents will be collected for and go directly into the General Population Fund. In addition part of the revolutionary remaking of the union would be some requirements imposed on all jurisdictions. One of the principal most important and most radical of these would be that all citizen-subjects of the Federal American Empire of the United States would belong to at least one family association and no more than three. The governments would collect a minimum of one percent of net income to be paid directly to these associations. The Family Associations would pay a small annual collection fee to their tax collectors.  The programs outlined here would be funded through these funds and not general treasury funds.  

2. Birth Bonus paid to mother

About a third of all funds accumulated in the General Population Fund would be paid out in Birth Bonuses to mothers every year. The bonuses would vary year to year by the amount of money on hand and the number of births. Mothers having babies on rich years with fewer babies would get mor money. The value of a birth bonus is represented here by the variable x.

a. Cumulative scale:   Every child starts off with x determined by monies available in fund

i. The following add monies to the bonus:

.5X First child, .25x child one to three, .35x above average health child at birth, .5x parents married in recognized high or monogamous marriage,  .25x parents joined in plural marriage or certified natural filiation relationship, .2X mother between the ages of 22 and 40 years of age , .2x White child, .15X child whiter than mother, .15X Aboriginal American Child and .1X Aboriginal American child largely White, .07x Old American mix child, .1X one or both parents are certified geniuses and 1.5X father dead in service of Empire or polity federated therein.

ii. The following deduct monies from the bonus:

-.11x child four to seven, -.14x child eight or higher, -.19x ilegitimate child under law, -.22x bastard under the law, -.08x mother is a felon, .-12x both parents are felons, .-15x child less White than mother,  -. 04X mother has been divorced, -.4 both parents are not citizen-subjects  and -.3X child is born of known case of adultery to one or more parents who are young married complainants.

3. Mother’s Christmas Bonuses

About ten percent of funds in the General population fund will be paid out mothers of minor children equally each year on December 10 regardless of religion. An additional ten percent will be divided among mothers who have a child turning one, two, five, ten, fifteen or eighteen years of age. These bonuses will have a formula but a simple and more equal one. Children committing juvenile felonies will receive a modest reduction. Otherwise, the mothers will receive on tenth of the child’s original birth bonus, one tenth of the average birth bonus given out in the years since the child’s birth and  an equal share of any remaining monies among all recipients once the first two amounts have been awarded. 

C. Empress’s Bureau of Women’s Affairs

There will be a major institution that is under the authority of the Empress and will have standing in most cases involving first impression issues relating to women and shall have funding and other things. This bureau will have the authority also to undertake and co-ordinate many projects and initiatives to benefit women.   

1. Motherhood Initiative

This will be  a nest of programs to promote quality mothering and family experiences and a progressive maternal culture in the Empire.  The approach will be more positive than one of policing infractions or failures. 

Items 2,3 & 4 are included because they are part of the whole policy but not explained because they can be discussed elsewhere and are not as central to these issues.

 2. Wives Initiative

3. Cottage Industries and Gardening Administration

4. Girls Sport Administration

5. Sex and Fertility Education Agency

All girls will be educated in detailed natural family planning classes certified by the Bureau in secondary school. We will be committed to a brief explanatory course for boys but not of the same depth or quality.

http://www.contracept.org/symptothermal.php

http://www.nfpprog.com/how_nfp_works/symptothermal.htm

6. Liaison to Women’s Religious Communities

Working with women who can find religious meaning in infertile lifestyles or mostly unfertile lifestyles to achieve the highest social good thereby.

7. The Ladies Alliance

Working with women of the nobility and titled gentry to deal with population issues an other issues affecting the Noble ranks of society. I do  not mean that this is mostly a population  agency but it is likely to deal with population a great deal.

II. Population Directed Programs and Agencies 

The Emperor will have a number of programs designed to deal directly with all the issues of population which would confront the Federal Empire of the United States.  This will be a theme woven through a great deal of policy rather than a cluster of poorly focused initiatives and ill-defined objectives.

A. Emperor’s Minister for Integrated Population Study and Management

This minister will be in charge of forging a coherent population policy throughout the government. He will work with relevant institutions to improve the population impacts of their work.

1.Liaison for Fertility 

This liaison will work with many diverse elements of the government to monitor and address issues of human fertility.

2.Liaison for Human Habitat Expansion

This liaison will work primarily with the agencies and ministries which will  focus on human habitat expansion. Therefore he or she will be primarily a sort of single customer official.  

3. Liaison for Foreign Affairs

This liaison will work to promote marriage and sound filiation policy, girls sport, sound fertility education and every other imperial value in the limits of Foreign Policy restrictions as well as to focus these values on the very slow population growth we see as the ideal demographic pattern for humanity as a whole.

4. Liaison for Immigration

This  Liaison will work not only with direct Border Zone related programs but also all aspects of the government that relate to both immigration and population. We live in a world and country where this will always be very challenging.

5. Liaison for Monasticism and Near Monasticism

Dealing with tradition in which not having children is incorporated into a larger lifestyle and a religious ideal.  This liaison will work with the Chaplain and other religious ties of the Emperor. However, the liaison will also work with all qualified groups in the Empire including the non-Christian  entities. 

The large remaining portion of this outline in numbers 6,7 & 8 has to do with the making of a society which can realistically chart slow and real population growth indefinitely. It is not a simple matter as each Liaison will work keep this goal in view for the government. 

6. Liaison for Waste Policy

7 . Liaison for Population Density

8 . Liaison for Reward Efficiency

 B. Imperial Cryptkeeper General 

The Cryptkeeper will be in charge of making the Death of those who die for the Emperor or Empire and his federal partners as glorious as possible. In the Empire a certain budget of young and glorious deaths is part of overall social  policy and it is admitted that this includes population policy.

  1. Liaison to the Imperial Chaplain

2. Liaison for Tombs and Monuments

C. Court Physician’s Office for Meaningful Medicine Minister of Population

1. Sub-ministry for Hospice

This ministry will acknowledge the precious and sacred character of human life. However, he will also be charged with assisting the Court Physician with spending relatively more resources on people who can largely recover and not spending enormous resources on people who remain sick, dying and expensive to care for indefinitely. This includes having death benefits, counseling, burial support and other resources in the sub-ministry at his command.

2. Sub-ministry for Natural Family Planning and Registered Condom Programs

This sub-ministry would seek to create culturally authentic programs that recognize the many real challenges of fertility management and seek to address these challenges at a level of wisdom and class not really available to disparate small entities. The programs will mostly be outreaches of the ministry.

3. Sub-ministry for Risk Integration

This will seek to recognize how activities that people choose to engage in and which shorten life will be integrated into an evolving society so that not everyone has to aim to live to be a hundred years old to affirm the value of human life. 

 III. Special Category

A. Death Penalty

Using a wide variety of offices and programs the Emperor and DIG will promote relatively cheap, easy and swift administration of the death penalty where allowed  by law elsewhere and within DIG jurisdiction for Murder, Agravated Repeat Incident Manslaughter, Agravated Rape of a Child and Felony Assisted High Treason. In the transition to the new regime it might be necessary to execute people currently set free to re-establish an understanding of what justice systems will be like.

B. Dueling and Vendetta

The new regime will have a fivefold nobility. Three of the Noble types Ordinary, Sword and Games will be expected to use the Office of Ritual Confrontation relatively frequently to resolve disputes. The programs are designed to make peace and preserve honor. However, there will be an acceptance of a number of deaths of valued people in these programs over time.

C. The Absolute Person

The Emperor can be resisted in persona so long as the force and means are less or nearly equal to those he brings and their is a real threat and the proceedings are personal and the intent is to survive, in such cases there is no treason. Flight from an angry Emperor is also not treason under similar limitations. However, the personal wrath of the Emperor effected by himself with weapons he can carry has no legal recourse — neither civil suit, criminal prosecution nor equitable injunction is allowed as relief to the victim.  In his own person the Emperor can do no wrong. The exceptions are constitutional and do not embrace physicalities no matter how great the harm to a person. Resistance and flight provoke an investigation as to whether the alleged victim committed a Misdemeanor against the Court, Low Treacherous Acts or High Treason or whether the Act was Justified. 

Some thoughts about marriage in America

The US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker has held that Proposition 8 which outlawed same-sex  marriage was unconstitutional and that this  is because heterosexual couples and same-sex couples were identical.  The judge ruled that the ban on homosexual unions was simply a kind of persecution which is at once entirely unmerited and simply cruel. There will be a lot of controversy as this goes through appeals and makes its way to the Supreme Court. But it does raise issues related to marriage and particularly polygamy that I wish to discuss here. I am going to point out a couple of my own posts where I have touched on issues relating to marriage, sexuality and the varied crises and have in one of them at least touched upon polygamy. However, the issues covered in this post do not require a close reading of these posts.  

 1. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/why-i-dare-to-advocate-radical-change/

I start with this post above because I think that it is vital that we recognize how far away from any ideal of marriage that has been proposed by the Christian faith in it its most idealistic and monogamous we really are.  If polygamy could be achieved for a portion of the many who are having children and expressing their sexuality with no reference to that ideal then it would be progress in terms of social and cultural nearness to both the spirit of Christ and the life of the gospel. That does not mean that there are not real risks and nothing that can be lost which is valuable and precious.

The link below is one in which I have discussed both the nature of human sexuality and also how it relates to social development and royalism.  We must find a way to address sexual reality. That is especially true for those of us who have the kinds of ideals that relate to humanism, Christianity and Judaism. It is imperative that we become conversant with reality again.

2. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/monarchy-and-royalist-culture-in-america-past-present-and-future-part-3-3/

I am a Christian and Christianity has never been the most polygamous religion. However, it has never been as completely anti-polygamous as it currently has almost entirely become. The Roman Catholic theologian Tertullian argued against the common and theologically supported practice  of priests (some of whom were celibate even then) commonly marrying two wives and especially sisters. When Tertullian was later disciplined for other reasons it is possible that in part it was because of the portion of the church which believed polygamy was an important part of the Christian tradition for some men in leadership both royals and some clerics especially. But there were few Christian royals (not none) in the third century. This is just part of the picture: Charlemagne who was able to add the filioque procedit   phrase to the Western version of the creed was an open polygamist as were all of his sons. 

One issue that I think has to be discussed if one is going to discuss polygamy at all reasonably is that one has to begin to visualize it in order to understand it and discuss. Where it has been so universally illegal for so long it is not so easy to visualize. I want to include some film and television references that deal with varied and complex glimpses of polygamy and make it possible to see where the institutions of plural marriage have found their way into American viewerships and audiences.  Here are some worth watching:

1. One Night With The King: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430431/

The first link is to a film that tells the Biblical story of Esther.

2. The Other Boleyn Girl: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467200/

The second link is to  a film telling the story of Henry VIII and his women.

3. King David: http://www.amazon.com/King-David/dp/B000JGD264/ref=pd_vodsm_B000JGD264

The third link is to the telling of the story of King David which is extremely important to both Judaism and Christianity.

4. Big Love: http://www.hbo.com/big-love

The  fourth link is to a fictional family trying to restore and modernize Mormon polygamy. It is complex, muddied by multiple perspectives at times but I think it is a good show nonetheless.

Then I want to show some examples of contracted relationships between Americans in our history and present.  These are real lives past and present that matter to those who live them quite a bit. As a committed son of Louisiana I am pleased to discuss one of the institutions that expressed polygamy in a new and workable way tied to old traditions. Take a chance to look at this and I may return to it later and have actually touched upon this before in other posts. Clearly the social realities of the quadroon ball are very far from where we are now. But if you take a global perspective it is entirely clear to me that  they were often superior values and ideals from which we could still benefit some day.

The Quadroon Ball:

I. http://www.frenchcreoles.com/CreoleCulture/quadroons/quadroons2.htm

II. http://www.nathanielturner.com/livesandtimesofquadroons.htm

I also wonder how it would feel to be this young woman in the next video and be aware of all that is disastrous in our sexual realities in the world and still have one’s lifestyle just barely outside the criminal. I think it is horribly tragic.

Modern polygamy in the Mormon tradition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANXeiyGx7To&feature=related

It is to be remembered that if you are reading this blog you are reading the blog of someone who wants to change and reform the government and not either escape or limit it into insignificance. I think that governments of the States of the Union and of not yet existing institutions I have proposed would have a vital role to play in making any polygamous domestic institutions work.  It is not entirely clear to me whether the current king of Thailand can be said to ever really have entered into plural marriage. I have not confidential sources and the public sources that I have seen indicate all sorts of contradictory things. It is perhaps a powerful sign of anti-polygamy in the United States that the only true Oriental King to have been born to the rights of an American citizen is part of the possible complete dismantling of an institution so valued in Thailand. However, it may be that it has been a slightly concealed part of his life. To see something about the history of the royal polygamy of Thailand see the next link:   http://www.1stopchiangmai.com/articles/dara/

One thing to understand that is really vital is that those of us who would rather not lie, murder slaughter innocents wholesale or proceed blindly into the future have competitors and opponents who would  like to have all these thing happen routinely and others who would like most of them to happen often. We can still recognize that polygamy is something less than the best and highest forms of monogamy and acknowledge it has a role to play in the survival of anything that can be called civilization.

I will make on of my personal revelations here in this post. I have been married only once and to only one person. Although I am involved with Christian ministry I am not a regular churchworker and not reaping rewards that would cause me to greatly limit my romantic life on that basis alone. Given the actual realities of my life I think it is true that I have had a very limited sex life outside of the seven years of my marriage. However, I have dated a lot. I have sometimes had more than one girlfriend who knew each other. In a few of those instances I have dated two women who were lesbians and attached to each other. I would not flatter my self so much as to say that had polygamy been legal I might have married those gals, certified one as a covenant mistress and one as her maid or whatever else. But it has been an issue in my actual life. I am getting old and tired and mean and in every way less eager to marry but I feel personally that  I have been harmed as well as in the lives of my friends.  

There is so much more to discuss. Polygamy has dark potentials and sides that must be resisted and that is why government has a role to play. I am not interested in persecuting homosexuals but I do think commitments between wives or ladies and maids in royal harems meets the needs of those who really need commitment and maintains marriage between a man and a woman.  I do not want a world where all monks and canons are presumed homosexual. But I do believe homosexuals who care for each other can find civilized happiness as part of such groups. We must find ways to embrace sane civilized options that are imperfect and build again. We live in a world where ruin and deliberate evil  combine to threaten more than most people can imagine. Life will not be improved by further simplifying a too simple society nor by pretending same-sex couples are capable of marriage to each other as heterosexual couples are  capable of contracting such unions.

The Direct Imperial Government in the New American Regime: Part Three

This is my third post on the Direct Imperial Government in my proposed new regime. In this post I wish to cover two agencies of the proposed DIG. I have done a lot of posts in this blog on healthcare under our current political order.  Here are two of them:

1. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/healthcare-lessons-from-fdr/

2. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/healthcare-bill-passed-by-the-senate-finance-committee/

The others that I have done should be searchable. However, the second of the two links I have provided above would more or less indicate the operations of the Imperial Wellness Agency which would do approximately what the proposed National Wellness Agency would have done. It would of course be stronger and more effective than the NWA because it would have a fixed base of two percent of all DIG funds to add to its revenue streams. It would be a large constitutional anomaly as will all of the major DIG agencies and ministries but it will operate in a well-defined and circumscribed sphere of action. It will consist of a web of specific exceptions to the normal way of doing business. The taxes it receives that I really drew up for the NWA should stand even though they are less appropriate for the DIG than for the federal program I proposed.  This intrusion will be modest if this regime actually emerges. One must remember that this would be a revolution that leaves the vast preponderance of resources in a slightly altered set of institutions that have evolved within a republican structure.  This is a very American approach since America’s 200 and more republican years have merged from a relatively slightly modified version of British and Arcadian-Acadian royalist regimes mixed with Iroquois Chieftainly confederated mixed government  seen through the lense of Greek Classical political science and the Roman republics emergence from the Kingdom of the City of Rome. In the tradition we now would move like Rome from Republic to Empire. However, the American enterprise has never been a purist enterprise and this is not a purist’s proposal.

I will not discuss the details of the Imperial Wellness Agency here except to say that it would support a web of Community Clinics, employ most law and medical school students for a few days in their career, offer token pay to volunteers and track them, recycle surplus pharmaceuticals, rely in part on taxes on migration and dangerous activities from abroad. It would offer sponsorship networks and support emergency response to common disasters. There would be a kind of token insurance program and it would provide some level of available care (much inferior to the very best available) to everyone for little or  even no cost  in a way which demands from but does not destroy private market care. It will also create incentives to control cost which no current system employs well.

The last agency I will discuss in this little series is the Government Liaison to the Imperial House and Household. This agency will seek to ensure that all DIG programs and actions tend to support and enhance and not oppose or curtail the Imperial House and Household’s civilian and military agencies. There will be a Women’s and Family Division which will make sure that the Imperial Wellness Agency and Rolls of Kindreds as well as ordinary organs of governance support the Empress’s Bureau of Women’s Affairs and the Mistress of Ceremonies’ Office of Liaison’s and Placements. It will have an Enforcement Division which will support the integration of the MC’s Office of Ritual Confrontation, the House’s military, the Ministry of Protocol and GRIHHA regulations and proclamations into the law and law enforcement. It will have a Habitat Division to support integration into IWA (Imperial Waste Authority), the HHEA (Human Habitat Expansion Agency)and the local governments all related Imperial House work. Lastly the GLIHH will have the Personal Ministry Division which will assign people to see to the needs of House members discharging DIG functions or interaction in any official way with the DIG

These four agencies are not everything that there is within the DIG. However, they do set out a picture of all that the Direct Imperial Government would and would not be within the new regime. That should make it easier to see what the costs of establishing the new regime would and would not be.

Really Becoming an Empire: Some Aspects of Transforming America. Part Four

This is about the Arcadian-Acadian heritage, people and Tribe. I have mentioned this subject often in this blog.  I recommend that you read the rest of this post first and then come back to the links to other posts in this blog. Here are some of the posts and a page where Acadians or their institutions are  mentioned are represented:

1. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/louisiana-in-the-proposed-reconstitutionalized-american-union/

2. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/monarchy-and-royalist-culture-in-america-past-present-and-future-part-3-3/

3. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/thinking-a-new-thing-a-competing-american-narrative/

4. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/see-you-later-alligator-after-a-while-bobby-charles/

5. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/images/photographs-in-vermilion-parish/photographs-reproducing-mommees-paintings-1/

To show how Acadian experience is relevant to the question of how Americans govern themselves and have decided to do so in the past I will quote one of my own post in this blog at length this post in turn has links to longer and very worthy sources that can help one to understand how all of these historical issues are interrelated.

“The first really key point is that the real roots of the American Revolution occurred in a larger colonial context.  I am going to recommend a book that does not declare ( as I do here and now) that the Acadian expulsion (loosely described in Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline)  were a principal cause of and stimulus to the American revolution.  But it does show the connections of this event to the revolutionary ferment in a broad contest. In this regard I recommend Leach’s book.  http://www.amazon.com/Roots-Conflict-Colonial-Americans-1677-1763/dp/0807842583#noop 

Secondly, I want to show that the destruction of Acadie was a large and significant act. That it had everything to do with creating a British profile and character the Americans could distrust and that in their early history the Acadians had both elements the Americans were eager to restore to their experience of the British Constitution and also the chivalric and aristocratic values which I argue that we need to restore today. In which regard there is a recent book by John Mack Faragher:  http://www.amazon.com/Great-Noble-Scheme-Expulsion-Acadians/dp/0393051358  to understand the British view of how great and wealthy a land the Acadians had created and how eager they were to have its wealth for themselves.  The Acadian experience is deeply tied to the American experience as a whole.”

However, in this post I cannot really describe the Acadian people or experience. The best I can go is outline their role in the proposed new regime. I will focus on doing as I have done with other parts of the proposed regime.  I will fill out a portion of the Constitution’s demands so that perhaps there can be some light shed on the things they represent. There must be eight hundred forty members of the Acadian Electoral Delegation in the Conclave. I will set out to identify these eight hundred forty and let the rest of the Ethnos Arkadios be seen by that little revelation.

THE 840 MEMBERS OF THE ACADIAN ELECTORAL DELEGATION

I.  The Acadian Peer- Electors

A. Les Princes de Grand Familles representant pour vie et tout

1. The Second Heir of the Boulet Principality

2.The Second Heir of the Theriot Principality

 3.The Second Heir of the Broussard Principality

4.The Second Heir of the Mouton Principality

5, The Second Heir of the Leblanc Principality

B. Les Presidents Herediteurs  Haute Chefs et Condes de los Acadianos representant

6. The First Heir of The High Boudreaux High Chieftancy

7.The First Heir to the Melancon High Chieftancy

8.The First Heir to the Hebert High Chieftancy

C. Les Chefs Medi Herediteurs des Acadiens

9. Le Chef Medi Boudreaux Bas

10. Le Chef Medi Thibodeaux

11. Le Chef Medi Breaux 

D. Les Chefs Bas Herediteurs des Acadiens

12. Le Chef Prince, Le Roi et Basile

13. Le Chef Fontenot

E. Autre Chefs Herediteurs

14. Le Sous Chef Herediteur Theriot de Bayou Lafourche

15. Le Sous Chef Herediteur Broussard de la Paix Attakapas

F. Institutional Peers

16. Sheriff of Vermilion Parish

17. Head of the Francophone Studies at the Universite des Acadie

18.Head of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the Unversite des Acadiens

19. Head of the English Department at the Universite de Acadiens

20. Highest representative securable by treaty at St. Anne’s University

21.Head of the French Immersion Program  at St. Anne’s University

22. Bishop of  Houma-Thibodeaux

23. Sheriff of Acadia Parish

24, President Elective de la Federation des Comites de Vigilance

25. Superior of the  Sacred Heart Sisters Community of Grand Coteau

II. Bouletherion Delegates

1. First President of the Bouletherion Elected by the Council of Chiefs 

2. Second President of the Bouletherion Elected by the Council of Chiefs

3. President of the Bouletherion appointed by the Basileus  Deceased

4. President of the Ladies Councils in the Bouletherion Elected Thereby.

5. President of the Ladies Councils in the Bouletherion  Appointed by the Basilissa. 

6. Le Chef Guidry Herediteur des Garde de Soir et Noir des Roi et Reine.

III. Les Sous Presidents de Conseil des Armes

1. Le Premiere SousPresident de Conseil des Armes

2. Le Sous President Ouest de Conseil des Armes

3. Le Sous President Est de Conseil des Armes

IV. Le Conseil des Droit

1-3 Les Plus de Toute des Lois

4. The Chaplain

5-9 The Assistant Chaplains

11. The  Chief Genealogist.

V. La  Premiere Maison

1. -10. Highest Ranking Acadian members of the House not Disqualified.

11.-21. Ready list of the Basileus Deceased

22.-32. Ready List of the Basilissa

VI. Chiefs of the Auxiliary Councils

1. Chief of the Metis Auxiliary Council

2. Chief of the Creoles of Coleurs Council

3. Chief of the  Advocate Council High Ranking Acadians without High Last Names.

4. Chief of the Black Race Auxiliary.

5. Chief of the Ethnic Auxiliaries Federation.

6. Chief of the Auxiliary of Royal Descendants.

VII. Delegates of the Revolution and Restoration

1-72 Seventy-Two Delegates of the Congres Mondial

73-144 Seventy-Two Delegates of the Action ‘Cadien

145-217 Seventy-Two Delegates of CODOFIL

VIII. Random Seventy-Twos

First, the Seventy-Two Acadiana Acadians

Second, the Seventy-Two Acadie Acadians

Third, the Seventy-Two Sympathizers of La Rochelle

Fourth, the Seventy-Two Willing Greeks of Arcadia

Fifth, the Seventy-Two UL Alumni

Sixth, the Seventy-Two Alumni of Our Lady Of the Oaks and St. Charles College.

25 +6+3+11+32+6=83

217 + (6 x 72)=649

The remainder of the 840 seats after subtracting 732 is 108. There would be 54 seats on a yearly rotation in a  twelve year cycle of the Couples serving as family and kinship coordinators. There would 27 seats at random from the guards assigned to the late Basileus. There would be 27 seats assigned first to the late Basileus Harem and if he had fewer than 27 consorts to his Roll of Friends not otherwise seated.

Using these terms and names one could search though my blog posts and piece together quite a bit. This is not the last time the tribe will be mentioned but it is where I will stop for now.

Really Becoming an Empire: Some Aspects of Transforming America. Part Three

I am afraid that this series is going to be a four-part essay rather than a trilogy. I hate leaving that boundary behind. When I outlined this post I thought:  “This post may be rather long but I am going to try to cover both the Imperial Harem and the Ethnos Arkadios as symbols and expressions of the new regime and as measure of its effect upon American culture. The Ethnos Arkadios would have to be discussed to some extent if this was in any way to be a complete and  serious proposal. I have discussed it in many places fleetingly and so will rely on those discussions to justify the brief discussion I will give in the latter half of this post.” However, it soon seemed clear that I would be grossly unjust to anyone interested in either topic if I tried to squish them into a single post. 

 There are many reasons why one might fail to discuss or avoid discussing the formation and modus vivendi of an Imperial Harem. However, I have chosen to discuss it. There is an element of truth to the idea that all these discussions come to me much more easily than they might have come to one of the Upper Nobles of Poland or a Spanish Hapsburg in the days of the Holy Roman Emperor.  The extreme divergence of my ideas from the flow of politics in my lifetime makes it easier to be honest because I take no risk of endangering a clear and well-marked path to a   future in which these ideas or embodied and made politic. There is no high probability route and so therefore if one is inclined to honesty and clarity one might as well be clear and honest as one blazes a path through the pickets of improbability.

Polygamy is a very complex subject. Royal Polygamy remains a very broad and complex subject in itself when one excludes other form of  polygamy from the discussion.  This is not really a discussion of polygamy but only refers to the broad subject occasionally to make clear the discussion of the proposed Imperial Harem itself. The Imperial Harem as it would exist is part of the essence of the Imperial House and its role. This institution communicates and shows forth many aspects what the transition to and transformation into Empire would be all about. One thing that this proposal will not decide is whether the proposed Harem would be small, medium-sized, large, grand or epic. Almost certainly it would not be epic. However, to the Western world today even a small harem would seem very large because people are lunatics as regards sexual behavior in many societies and in our society lunacy is really doing well. An Empress is the  wife of a polygamous sovereign  in the West but she is not part of the Seraglio or Harem or City of Women. She is outside and above but not entirely cut-off from it. A small Imperial Harem would mean that the Emperor should have but might not have an Empress, must have a Mistress of Ceremonies and then no fewer than five other consorts. Thus seven would be few not many. A medium size Harem would be between seven harem consorts (nine or ten total) and fifteen harem consorts (sixteen or seventeen total). A large size harem would be between sixteen harem consorts (seventeen or eighteen total)  and twenty-five harem consorts ( you should know about the other two by now). A grand size harem would be between twenty-six and two hundred harem consorts. An Epic  size harem would be any number above two hundred harem consorts.

I. Issues Related to the Empress

While the Empress is not part of the harem she is not unrelated to it. When an Emperor is elected who is under twenty-seven and has never been married to a fully legitimate wife then he would  have to promise to marry such a consort in the next seven years.  When he is over twenty-seven this must be done within the next four years. Failure to comply with that promise shall create automatic procedure for Forced Abdication. However, once an Emperor or Heir or the man who became the Emperor has been married in a public ceremony recognized by the laws of a state, which has the status of a putative marriage in the Catholic Church at the time this proposal is being written and then had an established  household with that putative wife for four years then all his obligations to marry are discharged under the constitution and laws. If his marriage is annulled or if his former wife dies he may be urged and exhorted to marry another to become Empress but he has no obligation whatever to do so. The Empress who divorces or is divorced from an Emperor loses that title and all its privileges and powers and receives other lesser ones instantly. However, she does not vitiate or call into question the legitimacy of offspring nor the rightness and certitude of acts issued under her Imperial Royal Title. One divorced who would have been Empress receives the titles of a divorced former Empress with a minimal reduction.

When a man is elected Emperor who has been married for less than five years and has no established mistress licensed by the Office of Placements, Liaisons and Alliances then he shall reign monogamous for one year and at the end of that year he will take a Mistress of Ceremonies and her Maid but no other consort. At the end of his second year he shall establish  a harem proper.  If he is married for more than five years in a fully monogamous relationship it shall be as above except that  the intervals shall be halved to six months and one year respectively. In both cases these movements into polygamy are not optional but required.

II. Issues Related to the Condition of the Emperor

The  Constitution and laws may exclude an epic  or a grand harem but nothing smaller. However, it is not in the spirit of this regime to do so but would rather be against its spirit and structural theme.  However, not all Emperors are in every way equal. No man made Emperor who is older than thirty-five at the time of becoming Emperor may ever have an epic harem. No Emperor who is older than forty  at the time of becoming Emperor may ever have a grand harem. Nor may any Emperor  that did not score at least average in his field of Heirs on the physical parts of the evaluation and the Trials and Ordeals. The Founder would be theoretically exempt from these laws but they would be guidelines for him as well.

An Emperor who is found to become entirely  sexually impotent or primarily homosexual (in the sane and not lunatic sense of having ejaculatory events with other men rather than women)  for a period longer than a year before he turns sixty-two  will trigger grounds for Automatic Forced Abdication. Disability from wounds received in battle will be a defense but will reduce his term to ten years from the date of the disability. Disability from injuries received in other service will be the same but for a period of seven years. Should such an excused Emperor rcover very well in the period dictated it will become permanent reinstatement. But he must prove his recovery over a period of  a year.

No other sexual conditions or diseases will have the effect above. Medical and health security are a priority but failure of such measures has no constitutional effect.  The Imperial Harem is primarily a sexual institution.

III. Function and Structure of the Harem

The Imperial Harem will function in a variety of important roles. Clearly its size and scale will determine the limits of what functions it can fulfill. However, the most important function is to have sexual relations with the Emperor.

A. Secondary and Derived Functions of the Imperial Harem

It needs (more in our age than in any other perhaps) to be said that as a matter of state the Imperial Harem is gathered to copulate and have coitus with the Emperor. This would be an affair of state in which the realm had an interest. However, such privacy and intimacy in regards to these matters as is possible will be preserved. 

1.Securing the Emperor’s Network of Relationships

This function has two very different aspects. The first could be called the Old Girlfriends and Fascinations aspect of the Harem membership. There is a strong interest of the state in gathering the women in an Emperor’s life whom he would like to have in his harem into his harem. Taking vows and entering a well-established religious community and becoming the wife and remaining the wife of a man in a fully legitimate marriage are presumed defenses and excuses against the duty of entering the Imperial Harem. Otherwise when her old boyfriend or long-time flirtation becomes an Emperor any woman who is not royal or upper nobility is bound by liege duty if a citizen-subject to report this to the Imperial House. The Emperor will then decide to take her into the harem or not. All certified mistresses of a new Emperor enter it automatically. The second aspect could be called the Sexual Senate. In an epic Harem Jurisdictions would literally send a consort to represent them in the Imperial Harem. In smaller harems the women do what they can from the inside out to function as representatives of the network of places, groups and institutions of which they are a part. 

2. Modeling Responsibility

Though the world and most of its components are so very insane that it makes discussing this unappealing, the responsibility aspect must be discussed.  A Royal Harem of any kind (that is a true Harem and not a dark and twisted cover for something else) exemplifies responsibility. All parties pay a price for it and all share its rewards.

3. Status Symbol

An Imperial Harem rightly constituted and manged is a sign of wealth and power which also affirms the value of people and circulates wealth in a progressive way. In a larger harem the lives of the junior consorts are in many ways as pleasant (except for some sexual frustration in the broader sense and the narrower) as human life ever actually gets. Smaller harems and senior consorts have a more normal life but are still pampered. The Emperor is a sign that it is possible for a man to achieve in this fallen world a level of selfish sexual happiness which will always be very rare and still function in a balanced way. So he is also pampered in that one way especially.

4. Community

Th Imperial Harem is a community for the women and their children. For the Emperor it also is a community meant to be in balance with the Imperial Family proper. More or less he should love and cultivate affections with the Imperial Family. However with adults in the Imperial Family it is supposed to be in many ways a collection of ambitious scheming political operatives skilled in violence and sexual intrigue who are devoted to the realm and a religious ideal and subordinate to the Emperor.  The Founding Family would not be likely to be the best community but the best Family could never be all a man needs. The Harem Community (including children who are not sexual objects or consorts of any kind for the Emperor) is a balancing resource and presence. 

5. Work Force

The Harem will have access to such careers and interests as they have prior to entry but also to the work that needs to be done in the House and even the rest of the Direct Imperial Government. That would be administered with many benefits and much flexibility. However, while it will be easy to criticize and ignore the Harem will develop expertise and flexible skilled labor contributions over time that can be of great value. 

6. Progenitors of the Imperial Natural Lines

The Imperial Harem can allow the Emperor to fulfill the deep male desire to increase his genetic impact and spread that heritage. The Harem over will also create a web of familial ties between the families of a large and diverse Empire. That role is very important to creating a royal and royalist consensus. 

B. Structure of the Imperial Harem and Titles of its Members

1.The Mistress of Ceremonies is a Sort of Governor-General and Court of Appeals for the Harem Community. Except that it is an every real sense a dictatorship of the Emperor. However, if the right is done in the interregnum the man who is Emperor will only use his rule by whim and less than flattering rights sparingly. But the ordinary course of governance above the consort is to the Harem Council then to the Mistress of Ceremonies and then to the Emperor.

Almost every other title in the Harem may not exist and there are some that could exist in an epic Harem especially which are not listed here.  However, the Mistress of Ceremonies is fixed and constitutional and described elsewhere. She is also less under any dictatorial sway.

2. The Basic Structure.

The basic structure is that there are Mistresses who have at least two  Maids (unless the Harem is a small Harem where maids do not exist). A Maid is an essential but not inevitable part of the structure.  She is not a servant or menial but a bound and subordinate companion who is also a consort to the Emperor under complex rules. Mistresses are the Higher ranking consorts regardless of outside title.  In a larger Harem there will be a division in which the Higher Mistresses or few and are called Established Mistresses and have their own palaces or Chateaux under the umbrella of the Imperial House. The lower part of the basic structure is that there are Concubines who almost always have only one Maid. The first title however which is added to the essential if size justifies is to appoint from one to three High Concubines who have their own Villas but also live part of each week in the adjacent quarters to the Emperor. Such Concubines have three Maids each. The rule is that all Mistresses outrank all Concubines and all Concubines outrank all Maids.  But if they exist High Concubine are different and keep a complex form of control over the detail of the Emperor’s personal space and schedule.

3. Most Favored Status

A system of rewards and perqs is set up based on who has most often had relations with the Emperor and most recently, who has borne the most and most recent children,who has been invited to a large meal in the presence most often. There are large issues of protocol and structure which are not addressed here. I hope to return to those if and when needed.  

4. Property

A Harem Consrot loses to the Emperor a great deal of her personal freedom. However, while there will be a tax to Harem Community, the Emperor and the House they will not be enormous and the Writ of Covenant will be real right.  It ends on a dark note to say that an Emperor would more easily get away with killing a Harem Consort in a fit of rage than robbing or defrauding her. In fact, strange as it may seem that is exactly the way the law would be.

Really Becoming an Empire: Some Aspects of Transforming America. Part Two

In the first part of this topic, which was the first post in this series within a series of blog posts, I discussed the Five-Fold Nobility. I want to continue  discussing the process of becoming an Imperial American Culture by discussing the laws, customs, institutions and rules of the interregnum.  The system proposed here and the system it is based upon is best served by relatively dull interregni at long intervals. However, in many ways the interegni are the periods of time which most define the regime and its system. In this Time Between the Kings the functions, structures and values of the regime are best illustrated and best made clear. 

II. The Interregnum

There will have to be a direct  reference in the new Constitution to the  Interregnum Major Section of the Title The Imperial House in the Direct Imperial Government Civil Code and that Major Section will contain the detailed law which will govern and authorize the appropriate officials to effect the progress of the interregnum.

A. End of Reign Issues

The Grand Royal and Imperial House and Household Assembly will have the capacity to administer a number of regimes of Abdication. Only one of them is considered normal and is not really an abdication when within the number of times it has been invoked it is used properly and things are as they were expected to be. When an older Basileus-King/Roi-Emperor has passed the average life expectancy already and has been suffering from a lingering illness and has certified that he believes this to be his last illness and has set this deed in effect then A Time oF Mortality Abdication Act is in effect. When this Monarch slips into a sharp decline, coma or extended incompetence from which it is not believed he can survive longer than an interregnum takes then the instrument of law is activated and all proceeds as though he had died  except for some issues of form. When he dies during the Pre Conclave Process the Process is then interrupted and all the effects are managed which go with the death itself.  Then, with small adjustments the Process proceeds where it left off.  Except fo this single form of Abdication none are normal. The Emperor is expected to reign until dead. The interregnum begins when this death occurs. 

1. Certification of Death or Abdication

All three Court Physicians and the entire Successions Committee shall be summoned. A Quorum of these person will certify the Death or Abdication of the Monarch. 

2.Summoning of the Agents of the Bereaved

In the case of Death the Harem is Given A declaration of Instant Dissolution. In the case of Abdication the Harem is given a declaration of Preliminary and Progressive Dissolution. The Harem’s Steering Board and the Mistress of Ceremonies decide whether they dissolve under a system of Emergency and Secrecy in Dissolution or whether ordinary procedures should be followed. The Harem will divide up the Common fund, set in place the defunct harem trust operating board, set up the correspondence committee and still be on premise to distribute three passes to their choice of Heirs before attending the funeral under normal circumstances. In an emergency they and their children and attendants will follow sealed procedures for dispersal.       

3. Council of the Bereaved and First Dissolution

If there is an Empress she is now titled Empress Bereaved and holds Imperial Sway as she first meets with the Interregnum Council. If  there is an Acting Empress then she becomes the President of the Interregnum Council which shall have reduced but substantial Imperial Sway during the Interregnum. If there is no Empress at all then the Interregnum Council will work under the Minimum Reserve Powers Provision of the Code and will work with the Direct Imperial Government to hold and exercise the Imperial Sway untill the new Emperor is reigning. Here  in the first meeting the Harem. the List of Heirs, the  Mistress of Ceremonies Bureaucracy and the Personal Offices of the Emperor or admitted to the Council of the Bereaved and given Writs of Dissolution and a schedule of their breaking apart and evacuating various duties and places.

4.The State Funeral and Burial

The State Funeral and Burial or to be major events but are not going to discuss in detail here. The Family must be well-informed and cared for but should have few decisions to make and tasks to innovate as regards this event. In all cases all Heirs and Family are to be given time (at least three days) to attend to activities related to these events with little other demand for their serious attentions.

B. The Interregnum  Imperial Sway

The Interregnum does not greatly reduce the powers or responsibilities of the Imperial Sway. The main reduction is  that it shall be nearly impossible to reform Succession law and procedure at this time of the regime’s operation. the governance and politics of the Imperial House goes on with only such use of recesses and vacations as fit within a sensible established framework.

1. The Empress 

If there is an Empress she is politically indistinguishable from the Emperor in all but a few specified areas of law and operation.  The Acting Empress will have substantial power  when acting with full support of the majority of the Interregnum Council. 

2. The Interregnum Council

The Interregnum Council must certify all Imperial acts, edicts and proclamations. They must also adjust to the three very different roles they will fulfill depending on the presence and capacity of th Empress. 

C. The Successions Regime

On some day between the Death or Abdication and twenty-one days later the Imperial Solicitor and the three Chaplains and the US Censors and the Commanders of Each Compact Cavalry Honor Guard will declare that a Successions Regime is under full procedure. These persons will meet with the Interregnum Council and Publish a report on the basics of the Successions regime. they will also address a joint Session of Congress and hold a major press conference on this subject.

 1. Evaluation, Enrollment and House Passes of Heirs

Heirs by right under thirteen years of age will always have been Heirs- in-Waiting. if one is about to turn thirteen he may appeal for a delay of up to one month and according to the guidelines of the Code the Interregnum Council will make these determination. This will be determined and the List of  Heirs will be submitted. Those unwilling to participate will be publicly interviewed, will sign an affidavit and be fined. They will not ne allowed to pass down their participation or simply pass the chance. The number of Passes held by each Heir will be announced and the number of those awarded on the basis of their evaluation and the score resulting in those evaluation passes will also be published. The disposition of the four passes belonging to the Empress, the one belonging to each Chaplain, the three belonging to the Harem, the two belonging to the Imperial Solicitor, the two belonging to the Commander of the Blood Company and the one belonging to the Commander of the Noble and Aristocratic Honor Guard will also be published.  

2.The Assembly of Peer-Electors, Electors-for Life and Marshalls

All Imperial, Acadian and Royal Peer-Electors and Electors for Life will be assembled and  meet the Marshalls selected by the  Interregnum Committee. The five Peer-Electors who are also Heirs will relinquish their role after certifying the Marshalls. They shall do this with the understanding that they will take these up again if and when they are eliminated from the competition. The Heir will have five days from that assembly to submit their listed Team of Supporters.  

3. The Assembly of Heir’s Teams 

Each Heir shall submit a list of people with a title for which role they would play in the Conclave if admitted. The list will number the highest  total number of people whom that Heir could possibly bring as electors into the Conclave if he used no passes and if he earned therefore all possible bonuses. Thus the list will vary substantially by Heir. Nobody may be a principal on more than one list. Every Heir’s list will include at least three alternates who are not on any other list in any capacity. Nobody may be on more than four lists in any capacity.  At the time of the Conclave no Heir will be permitted to bring in anyone not on their list submitted at this time.   

4.The Grand Assembly of  Permanent Electors and Heirs and the Opening Address of the Marshalls

Once the lists are certified the Marshalls of the Trials and Ordeals will announce the Program and certify the Heirs to the Competitors Camp. They shall not leave it until they become Arrived Heirs or are eliminated. The whole body of Permanent Electors will accompany them there for a reception and the Sealing In of the Competitors.

5.The Dissolution of the House and Household and the Start of the Trials and Ordeals.

From the moment they are sealed in the Imperial Household will begin a step by step and stage by stage dissolution of the Imperial House and Household sections and the Roll of the House and Household. The Permanent and Succeeding Sections will begin to be certified with the help of and witness of the people on the Heirs lists.  The Trial and Ordeals will begin and continue on a schedule which is known and with regulated media coverage.

6.The Trials and Ordeals and the Summoning of the Conclave Participants and Alternates

There will be a Halfway Reception on the day when the Heirs are halfway through the Trials and Ordeals. All Conclave Participants and the Heir Competitors will attend. At that time the Participants will be sealed into the  Residence of the Conclave. They will begin to watch events in the Trials and Ordeals from the stands and galleries prepared for them. 

7. The Arrival of the Heir-Candidates and the Dismissal of the Marshalls and the Minister of Protocol.

When the Trials and Ordeals or completed there will be a Ceremony of Arrival and the Marshalls and the Outgoing Minister of Protocol will be Dismissed at that ceremony. The Empress will address the assembly briefly if she wishes and if there is an Empress without regard to recent or intervening custom. The Conclave proper will begin on the next day.

D. The Conclave

The Conclave will operate in secret. The minutes will not be published for fifty years. The participants will not be allowed to record anything while in the chamber.   The first day however they will all be entitled to write a letter home and then there will be a ceremonial burning of pens and paper. The secrecy will begin the second day.

1. The Opening Address and Presentations of Heir-Candidates

The first day will end with all Arrived heirs giving a speech to the Conclave. They may be assisted by their electors with equipment and performances. Each shall be allotted the same period of time. The speeches will be brief. 

2.The Sealing of the Conclave

The Conclave will be sealed and the Heirs sent to the Waiting Camp. From there they will be summoned as they are eliminated to serve as Electors or else at the end to become Emperor or to witness the Emperor  being proclaimed. 

 3. The Ballots

The Imperial Solicitor will address the Conclave reminding them that they may elect by acclamation on the first ballot so long as it is duly certified by ballot. However he will also read the rules which force an election if pursued long enough. An Heir must receive two-thirds of the votes on the first ballot to become Emperor. After the first ballot all those who received less votes than the top half of the Arrived Heirs and did not finish in the top three in any of either the Imperial, Acadian or Royal Louisiana Electoral Delegations will be eliminated.  On the second ballot the rules will be complex and in the code depending on the number of candidates but the top Candidate in each block will still be protected. On the third ballot and afterwards a simple majority is required to determine the Emperor and any Candidate finishing twice at the bottom of a ballot after the third shall be eliminated.  

4. Proclamation

The Emperor-Elect will be for all purposes Emperor. However, his role shall be assumed in stages. But the Interregnum ends with his election.

Really Becoming an Empire: Some Aspects of Transforming America. Part One

 I am going to discuss four aspects of the new American culture to which we would be transferring and into which we would be transforming. Those four aspects would be The Five-fold Nobility, the Interregnum, the Imperial Harem and the Ethnos Arkadios. These are important aspects of the process to understand and get right. On the other hand that is not the main reason for bringing them up at this point.  I choose to discuss them here because together an individually they throw light upon and illustrate the entire set of political and social changes. I think that if I can make these stand a bit clear then the rest of the massive project would be more intelligible as well. In that spirit I begin my discussion of these institutions.

One definitely cannot make an omelette without breaking at least a few eggs.  The revolution proposed here will certainly involve some extralegal and forcible actions in its creation if it is achieved. If one proposes a revolution one can at best hope for a return to full legitimacy and a new normalcy as quickly and expeditiously as possible. The justification for a revolution is that a severe constitutional imbalance already exists. It is clear to me that in America we are in a constitutionally imbalanced state of affairs.

In this Part One posting I am going to discuss the Five-fold Nobility.  In the next post I hope to  pursue the project and discuss the Interregnum the Imperial Harem and the Ethnos Arkadios. I doubt that I will get all three of the next three topics into the next post. I do hope that I can combine two posts at least whether the next post or the third will be combined.   Of course all of these plans are subject to such changes as might prevent me from continuing with this blog at all. So let us begin by spelling out the system of Five-fold Nobility which would define much of the new regime.

I. The Five-fold Nobility

There are different kinds of Empires and Kingdoms. There are very significant variations in the types and structures of various royalist ideas and royal regimes. The new regime has a very rich and complex body of antecedents. I will not be able to bring all of those antecedents into a good and clear light during this exercise. However, I will make it clear that, in the end, the five-fold nobility emerges as a ver definite and essential structure for both the social and political structure  of the United States and the Empire after the reconstitutionalization. 

A. Nobility, Aristocracy, Protocol and Rank

There is no doubt that United States of America have formed a federal Republic since the American Revolution. There is little doubt that although many forms of inequality have heightened our forms and customs have increasing become those of and undifferentiated democratic (as opposed to mixed government) unitary republic. This new regime will be a very substantial adjustment to and correction of that trend. While a large set of open public and commercial spheres will be kept separate from the rest there will be a strong movement to awaken and assert that aspect of our society which is a society of rank.

B.Ordinary Nobility

The Ordinary Nobility are more or less the aristocracy of hereditary and life nobles who are ennobled to titles and privileges in a manner which is more recognizing and encompassing of the whole person than it is expressive of a functional excellence. While passivity is not their ideal they may still be described as passively noble. However they attain to a noble status they are noble intrinsically (at least in the eyes of law and custom). Titles flow over them but the Noble stature and even a rank is secure. An Empress may become Princess Former Empress Bereaved but remains royal and imperial. A First Heir to any post will hold titles of rank that will be lost if he rises to the principal title or if he is downgraded to Fifth or Tenth Heir after an election. However, even if the falls or very substantial he is assured of a position in the orbit of the title he approached and of a title created “_______________ at Court” if necessary to remain a royal, higher noble, middle or lower noble as when he was carried to that height by law. His legal and social rank may fluctuate but not too far.The Ordinary Nobles may be stripped of titles but this is to be an onerous and extraordinary process designed to be rare unless a sweeping purge were justified by the most dire circumstances.   

The ordinary nobility will contain numerous complex features. Those  which are most important are:

1.Royal and or Imperial Rank and Status

2. Attachment to a Royal or to the Imperial House

3. Being a Peer-Elector

4. The Status of Heir or Consort

5. Attachment to a Constitutional Jurisdiction

6. Public Service and Public Office

But while I cannot  in a brief post get into how all of these feature will interact in practice I will say one thing. The scale of rank will be published and in most cases and for most purposes rank will determine protocol. A non-Elector Duke will usually have precedence over an Elector High Baron. There will be times when other factors change the effects of rank. However, usually as regards protocol the Classes will be:

 Imperial Royals,

 Royals: King or Queen, Princely titles to Demi-Prince and ArchDuke or ArchDuchess

Higher Nobles: these include all Marquis, Earls, Dukes, Counts and several others.

Middle Nobles: these include Viscounts, High Barons and other titles.

Lower Nobles: these include Barons, Supreme Knights and some others.

Then in each Council of Nobles there will be some Nobles elected by the Chivalry and Titled Gentry. The Chivalry or simply Knights (mostly but not all men) and Knight’s  Ladies. The Titled Gentry will be High Squires and Squires  and their consorts known as Mademoiselles, Subladies or Little ladies. These Chivalry and Titled Gentry all have full Second Class Access to the Honor Code and its general privileges.

C.Nobility of the Sword

1. Varied, Joint and Composite Roll

The Nobility of the Sword only comprises the upper ranks of the general system of military rank. However, it is to be linked by many devices of law and custom to the system of military rank as a whole. Cadets, recruits and privates are also seen to form a Constituent Base  for the Political manifestations and operations of the Nobility of the Sword.

Variances of Rank

First, the Services directly to the Emperor and Empress, and the Basileus Arkadios and Basilissa.

The junior membership begins at first lieutenant and full membership in the Nobility of the Sword begins at captain’s rank in these services.

Second, equally the Services of the United States and the King and Queen of Louisiana

The junior membership begins at major and the full membership begins at Colonel.

Third,  Services to the Direct Imperial Government and the States

The junior membership begins at lieutenant colonel and the full membership at General.

Fourth, Services to Fiefdom and Peer, to Compacts  and services to the Territories

The junior membership begins at Colonel and the full membership at General. 

Fifth, Services to Chartered Nobles and to the Possessions

Only Generals or Supreme Commanders of Small Charters are full members. There are no junior members.

Sixth, Family Guards, Licensed Militia and Municipal Paramilitary Police Units. 

Only established Commanding Officers in Full are junior members. There are no full members.

D.Nobility of the Robe

The Nobility of the Robe shall consist of the Excellencies of Religious, Academic and Judicial realms of status and endeavor. These three noble groups are regarded as largely one group by law and custom. They are not required to duel to retain their honor and may insult, accuse and slander members of the Nobility in the pursuance of their official duties. They may question the legitimate nature and avowed rights of other nobles and forms of nobility without suffering ordinary liability under the Noble’s Honor Code. If they verbally or by sign violate the provisions of the Honor Code in Pursuance of the Official Duties they have a high but rebuttable presumption of Impunity. If they are challenged the Challenger must also file a Motion to Uncloak against them with the Office of Ritual Confrontation. In Ritual Confrontation they have the highest presumed rights to Champions and Mitigated Stakes of all sorts of Nobles.

Whenever the Nobility of the Robe are not in their homes or on the premises of a site set aside for their official duties they must carry with them or wear a sign or declaration of their status in the Nobility of the Robe or else be liable to violations of law and of the Honor Code.  The Nobility of the Robe are to have some greater level of sexual license as regards promiscuity, homosexuality, and lewd behavior where the persons involved in the lewd behavior were all the Nobility of the Robe and the premises used spoke of an expectation of privacy. They are not so protected in other circumstances.  The Nobility of the Robe Seating Block in every Compact Council of Nobles will be the head of an Association of the Nobility of the Robe in that Compact. Every member of the Nobility of the Robe will be taxed an additional one percent of his or her income which shall be divided (after a fee to the Collector) equally among all the Compact Associations of the Nobility of the Robe to which he or she belongs. The Compact Association of the Nobility of the Robe will have standing as a friend of the court in any court and in all matters involving its members.    

The Joint and Combined Scale of Rank of the Nobility the Robe shall be somewhat brief than the scales of military rank which include or go below the rank of the Nobility of the Sword.  The ranks in systems composing this nobility are varied but the Association shall have its own functional rank. Highest to lowest this shall be: First there is the Crowned Mitre.  Second rank is The Mitre and Throned Coif. Third Rank is the  The Cowl, Skullcap and Benched Coif.  Fourth Rank is the Robe Proper.  Membership and its privileges largely cease to apply after this rank and are not presumed to be of value or importance after this point in the scale. Fifth Rank is the Robed Vestry. Sixth Rank is the Outer Vestry.

Rank is determined by the following factors:

1. Greatness of the functional title.

2.Social Importance and Cultural contribution of the institution.

3.Age and Tradition of the role and institution.

4.Degree of Association with the Constitution, Royalty and Imperial House.

5.Conformity of the Title with the Emperor’s religion, philosophy and constitutional model.

No single factor outweighs the others. The Ministry of Protocol will describe the standards and with the advice of the Compact Associations of the Nobility of the Robe will issue the list of rank.  Here are some examples:

The  Cardinal Archbishop of New York is the Crowned Mitre and so is the President of the LDS Church. But Ordination to the Roman Catholic Priesthood is Robe Proper while Ordination to the Mormon Priest hood is not recognized and belongs to unlisted class Vestibule.

At a standard university a Bachelor’s degree is Robed Vestry, a Master’s is Robe Proper as is a Juris Doctor, most doctorates are Cowl Skull Cap and Benched Coif.  A Juris Doctor admitted to the bar is at the highest level of Robe Proper.  Experienced trial lawyers and most judges are Cowl, Skull Cap and Benched Coif as are most abbots and mother’s superior and the head rabbis of major synagogues. Catholic, Orthodox and Episcopal Bishops are Mitre as are Deans and Presidents of standard colleges and universities. Peers and other academic leaders of great significance would be  Crowned Mitres as would members of the US Supreme Court.

The Mitred Crowns are actually less immune to Honor Code Provisions. The greatest such immunity would peak at the third rank.

In general, the Robes Proper can always vote but only the first three ranks can hold most Nobility of the Robe offices. The Lower two orders are not subject to the full special tax. However, they have a limited schedule of benefits and can only vote in exceptional Association elections.  Another factor is that Mistress of Ceremonies through the Haute Ecole des Traiteurs has the right and capacity to issue a number of titles and degrees at each rank and rank point of the Nobility of the Robe. These will also be possessed of these privileges  of the Robe and other Privileges of the House and Household.   

E.Nobility of the Games

The Nobility of the Games and of the Chamber are the least privileged as Nobility. However, they are privileged to be Nobility and then can add such privileges as they find their own endeavors. 

The Nobility of the Games will be of three classes of membership. The First Class will be the Imperial Rolls, the Second Class will be the Compact Rolls and the Third Class will be the Jurisdiction Rolls. There will be little formal rank except by qualifying for one of these classes by winning  a contest in  one of these categories. Each Contest will have a Nobility of the Games Association. The Ministry of Protocol will certify its operation and operation. In the Olympic Association a Gold in the current Olympic cycle will be worth ten votes and one from earlier worth four. A current Silver will be worth five and an earlier on worth two.  A Bronze will be worth three and an earlier one shall be worth one. Some Associations like the Olympics will always have seats available where they have eligible members in the thirteen compacts and the High Council. Most Associations will have rotating terms. The weakest associations will be part of groups of associations and will rotate terms less frequently than others.   

F. Nobility of the Chamber

The Speakers of all Compact Assemblies, all chief executives of Constitutional Jurisdictions and all others from a long list published by  the Ministry of Protocol will be the Nobility of the Chamber. Full members are those actively serving in the office. Secondary members would be those who retired in good standing and are not later stripped of their status by any legal act. 

G. The Honor Code and the Councils of Nobles

All Nobles in the Five-Fold Nobility are eligible to serve in and vote for officers in the Councils of Nobles. All have a Duty to Respond to the Honor Code. All are entitled to display a crest or arms according to their station. All will have some privileges in Imperial Services and the Courts of Palaces and fiefdoms not available to others.

Monarchy and Royalist Culture in America: Past, Present and Future/ Part 3.3

This is a very long post.  Part of it was published early by mistake and it will still be tweaked but it does complete my trilogy of posts on a subject I think is relevant and important enough for all this effort. This Post will carry forth the outline from Part 2.1 of this same title using numbers so that they fall into place with the other after this introductory section which is not numbered. For anyone this would have to be an odd exercise writing out a long description of a new regime in this way.  Yet having begun it is fairly rational to continue until it seems that one is nearly or entirely finished with the project. So this post will attempt to discuss in a somewhat helpful way the lifestyle, peopling and style of several key groups, communities and institutions in the proposed new regime.

In the strugggle to maintain this very large republic and its many programs and commitments it seems almost inconceivable to take any time and energy away from that sustained struggle in order to invest any of it into changing the form of government from a republican to a royalist form. It seems even more unlikely that a person seeking to advocate such changes would be doing so from the point of view mostly of seeking good, useful and measured change in the country and society as a whole. Therefore, I feel some obligation to lay out my plans and reasons for them in such a way that it is at least possible that many could understand them and appreciate them.

What then would Court and the Imperial House be like? What ought we to hope that they would be like? How would they function in a reconstitutionalized America?

The model I propose of the Imperial House is more ambitious than modest. It is more extensive than circumscribed. It would require more effort and resources to chabge in and of itself than several other royal possibilities, but it is part of the overall reality of a court that is well positioned to respond to the realties of this society at this time.

C. Culture, Structure and Being of the Imperial House and Household.

The Emperor and the Empress were defined in their own sections in the last post.  There is a very real sense in which, ” These two and no others are the point of all this!” But it is just as true that to the very degree and in the very way in which they are important the Emperor and Empress are important for presiding over and leading not just the formal society of the whole reconstitutionalized United States of America and/or Federal American Empire of the United States but also by presiding over smaller and better defined parts of the whole society. So the Emperor and Empress could not function properly without the House and Household and would in many ways be crippled without their healthy existence and so this posting is attempting to give some special recognition to and description of this entity without by any means exhausting the subject. I return to my point that I am aware that this is a great deal of work for me and some for you which is not likely to have much practical purpose or significance. 

1. In Functional and Spatial Terms

I am going to describe the hypothetical  Imperial House and Household in two sections which have rather long and I think accurate names but if you wish you could think of this section as describing the House and Household as a thing. You could think of the second section as describing the House and Household as human beings.  

a. Role in Politics, Governance and Diplomacy

The Imperial House and Household will be doing things very differently than they have been done and will do things that have not been done in America. it would be one of the challenges facing such a regime to be seen as largely a legitimate part of the governing and directing part of the society. For that would surely be its principal purpose.

i. The GRIHHA

Aside from the Imperial Services outlined in the previous post the Grand Royal and Imperial House and Household Assembly has a complicated social  and political structure based on Internal Estates, Orders and Ministries. Each of these is represented in the GRIHHA. The exact manner of their representation being described in the Supreme Charter of the Direct Imperial Government and the Rules of the GRIHHA. Here I will merely list those seated in the GRIHHA all of whom are also part of the life and work of the Unity of Houses.

* Unity Seats include a three year rotation of one third by yearly terms of Acadian Peer Electors and Louisiana Peer Electors. They also include the Vassal Mistresses of Ceremonies in each other court and  the Majordomo di Palazzo for each of the Royal Households. The Unity Seats also include the highest ranking consort from the harem who is under the covenant of each of the Acadian and the Louisiana Titles. Further, the Chaplains, Court Historians and Court Physicians of  each of the royal Titles will be seated in this section.  The Commanders of both the Garde de Roi  and the  Φάλαγγα των Κενταύρων του βασιλιά will be in these seats. The Unity Seats will be one of the three Inner Sections with most of the executive and administrative role.

**The Family Seats these are certain members of the legitimate Imperial Family, the Heirs and the Family Fiefdom. This is the second Inner Section.

*** The Ministerial Seats  consist of the heads of all Imperial Services, the Mistress of Ceremonies, the Most Favored Consorts, The Harem Delegate, the Imperial Majordomo di Palazzo, Imperial Court Physician, Imperial Court Historian Liaison-in Chief to the Direct Imperial Government, Imperial Jester, Imperial Court Musician, Imperial Court Architect, Representative of the Emperor’s Sons and Representative of the Emperor’s Daughters.

**** The Outer Seats include seats for all  those classed as High Ranking members of the Rolls of the Houses and Households, a Rotation of three one year terms for the Middle Ranks of the Rolls, and twenty representatives elected by the Lower Ranks. Anyone seated in an inner section loses their seat in this section.

ii. The Emperor’s Reign as Central Focus 

The main drive of sheduling, planning and budgeting in the Imperial House and Household would be supporting the work and role of governance of the Emperor himself. All things would be structured to support that central function. That includes space and the ordering of family life which will be briefly discussed in this post.

b.The White House, Imperial Fiefdoms and Palaces

One of the differences between the Republic and the Imperial system propsed here is that the facilities in the District of Coloumbia would be greatly in need of change. there would have to be large improvements to the Naval Observatory for it to become the home of the First Executive Vice President.  There would also need to be third major residence for the Deputy Executive Vice President. This official would also become the Grand Ward Chief for one of four Grand Wards in the District of Columbia. That Distrcit will be the smallest and will consist almost entirely of office buildings and residences used by the Federal Ecexcutive Vice Presidency. This will give the Deputy Vice President a more tangible role as well as a seat in the Direct Imperial Governments’  Government  Assembly which he can occupy or delegate to others. 

The White House itself would be rather cramped as an Imperial Palace even with just a small space alotted for ministries and services because of the size of an Imperial House compared to a presidential family. So therefore it would have to be seen as the hub and focus of a larger network of homes, properties and facilities. While  on the one hand Washington DC already has many assets to make it a compelling capital and on ther hand as a federal system our society will never create a perfect super capital in ideals and all the bad things that go with such   an attempt in practice. The Imperial Court would greatly indrease the cultural assets available to the District of Columbia.  This is true even though Louisiana will regain much of the prominence it had prior to the War Between the States. We will still be a hyper multipolar society but if we do this then the pole of Washington and the pole of Louisiana will both gain a great deal. However, that can be in the context of overall growth and development.

To quote myself in a Facebook note I wrote on Western Civilization, “If Greece is utlimately our culture andJesus is ultimately our conscience then what is missing. Neither Jesus nor Greece gave us a capital. Rome is the Capital of Western Civilization. That is actually Rome’s greatest achievement in my view. It is not insignificant. In Rome our center hold in some way none of us really understand but for reasons that fill libraries as well. Only in the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven in Beijing China have I found anything which approaches the feel of Rome. They are very different. Rome is more our cutlural capital even now when we are hardly existing as a unity than Beijing is China’s cultural capital.” Both our revolutionary Founding Fathers and this revolution would seek to emulate much of what was best in Rome. A large part of it would be an effort to have a great and effective capital city.
c. Larger Spheres of Activity

The Ministry of Protocol and the House military forces would be the groups most prominently involved in preparing for the House and its members to interact effectively and proerly with the larger sphere of places, groups and individuals with which they must be involved. That includes the preparation of rooms and the organization of space as well as working with the Peer-Electors in creating suitable spaces for entertaining the Emperor and Empress at regular intervals on the premises of their fiefdoms.  

2. The Imperial House as a Set of Relationships Between People 

One thing which would be open about the transition to the Royalist Empire is that there would be a focus of  activity in the Court. The Court is not so clearly defined as any particular palace, assembly or group. The court would have many aspects and manifestations. However, it would have dangers and advantages distinctly its own which would be recognized by its members and sovereigns. Its influence would be greatly limited compared to some historic courts because of Sovereignty shared with the Constitutional Jurisdictions in federalism and the government shared with the  First Esecutive Vice President. Nonetheless it would not try to limit such influence as did acrue to it. Rather, Influence would be seen as amost preferred way to exercise its role in government. 

 a.  The Imperial House and its structure related to the issues of sexuality and also of women within that sexual context. 

i. The Empress

The Empress has a great deal of autonomy and dignity built into her role and this role involes both copulating with the Emperor and bearing him children. This is potentially a powerful influence which will help to shape relations between the sexes, attitudes toward women and sexuality within the realm.

ii. Other Imperial Consorts

The size and diverisity and constitution of an Arcadian Royal Harem of the Imperial scale would depend on many factors. However,  ideal is that it be large. These women are wives and would be spoken of as such in Court but would be recognized in every way as in a seprate legal and social status from the Empress. Only the in-between Mistress of Ceremonies can bear an Heir for example in the ordinary course of things. Joseph Broussard when he was being prosecuted and attempts were made by the British to discredit him was found to have fathered a son out of wedlock with an Acadian woman, it is known that prominent Acadians in the ?Acadie /Nova Scotia region often had Miq Mac mistresses. Louisiana had a large social and cultural regime powered in no small part by the tradition of Acadian leaders keeping Creole of Color and Houma Indian Mistresses as well as (more discreetly) white mistresses in regularized relationships that could be called junior marriages. The institution is essential to the life of the House thus conceieved and ought not to be hidden or apologized for. Religious problems are the most difficult but the truth is that in all long term successful Christian royal regimes the king is usually a polygamous man.  However, in this world and ytime such athing would have to be mandatory and constitutional for many reasons.

I do not have a relationship with Britney Spears. I am fairly sure no Acadian or other role is deepy involved with her but I chose these three pictures of Ms. Spears.She ispossibly a very stuanch republican. Many female celebrities face tragic fates in the course of things when a late plural marriage to a Kng or Prince could be mutually beneficial. A king with a harem (as Versailles included I assure you and earlier kings more honestly) can sometimes attract a variety of women who have a hard time making a regular marriage work but who have a lot of sexual and persoanlity assets which work better in a royal plural marriage. Whatever the details the pictures here tell a story of their won in the context of other publicly known facts. If one chose to one could see American celebrity culture as another sign of the need that exists for a royalist shift.   

iii. Sexual Philosophy specific to this particular House and this particular Regime

 Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 6:28pm 
In one of Leon Tolstoy’s fantasticaly long and eloquent novels a smart young woman uncomfortable with her own sexual appeal says to another character, who is I believe a very self-assured Russian Prince, who has a discussion simialr to the one in my favoritr novelist of sexual love Jane Austen. Or so I think for I have not checked my sources but sort of remeber the scene in both sets of romances.   “Why do people have balls? Wouldn’t it be much more sensible if people simply spent the evening in conversation?” To which the Prince (or prominent English aristocrat) , who is an acomplished social dancer, replies “Infinitely more sensible and infinitely less like a ball.” A society that lives only in words and conversations does not live at all. Women and the way they appear to men is not primarily a subject to be debated. It is primarily the greatest engine and most pertinent mystery of human personality and society.

Tolstoy was a Christian, a dabbling Freemason, a bit of a socialist and an apologetic royalist. There have been many other humans of great intellect with deities like Pan, Aphrodite, Venus and a hundred others who were much more explicit in declaring the enormous importance of sex and the sexual recognition of women. When the founding fathers discussed the work of building the United States several key leaders including Jefferson wrote that the work of Population was one deserving time attention and resources. The American revolution was largely fought to allow the people of the United State a few centuries to breed and and build families and hope that over that time a better set of technologies would emerge to deal with high population density. Sex, family, courtship, childbirth, marraige and the like are of enormous importance to any sane public policy. All of these things especialy involve women as women.”

I am leaving out chunks and paragraphs here that add to the argument but my whole note is available on this blog.  You can read it any time if you wish. Here is some of my main points about the nature of women.

“First, human females are truly shockingly extraordinary. They are not only very different from men they are different from other female earthlings. Women distinguish our species so enormously that it is simply inevitable magic. The combination of human extreme bipedalism (walking on two feet) and the shape of chidlbearing hips combine with prominent breasts to create a figure which is very extreme sexual dsiplay compared to men’s beards and very little else is so specifically developed as sexual flesh. This is somewhat different from our nearest biological relatives the apes. It is very distinct from the myriad examples of ducks, deer, chickens, lions, turkeys and other well known species where the male expresses the physical “come hither” material in the sexual dialog. In most species there is either no sexual dimorphism meaning there is asexual morphism — meaning males and females look mostly alike OR the male wears the plumage.

Having shown a major difference we are only geeting started. A heathy adult female can have coitus on any day at any period of that day. Most females are penetrable (in species like large animals which penterate) only infrquently and are fertile only on these realtively rare occasions. Healthy adult human females are fertile and infertile every month when they are not pregnant or lactating to supply a dependent nursing heavily. The variations between fertile and infertile periods within the month are not common to the whole species nor linked closely to the weather but vary from woman to woman. Further, there is very little physical difference between fertile and infertile women so that estrus is largely hidden. This is also a very limiting set of sexual characteristics which human famles share with few if any other females on Earth if taken as a whole.

To add another level of complexity to the totality of the factors in the paragraph above the human female fertility cycle matches the length of one of the most obvious cycles on earth that of the moon but is not tied to its periodicity. It generaly runs according to the woman’s own biology but does tie in and sychronize to some degree with women she lives with and is somewhat (but very subtly and eraticaly) related to sexual stimulus from men especialy in very young women.

Additional to all the other differences there is the difference between the baby delivered by a woman and an adult human. That difference is called the “degree of neotony”. Almost no creature has a greater degree of neotony and when one combines this degree of neotony with the degree of involvement and care a young human will generaly accept and seek from its mother this creates a greaer demand and matched capacity for mothering per individual human than almost any other earthly species.

These are actually only a few of the reasons why women are objectively one of the most fascinating and compelling subjects to which one could apply the human mind. I actually believe that one of the greatest windows for insight into the state of well-being, progress and potential of any society is to look at women as women within that society.

Here is a woman functioning in Acadian or Germano-Acadian home ‘s kitchen and living room where she plays a vital role in social and economic development in the family and community. The painting is in turn painted by another woman, my great-great-grandmother Regina Oubre Hollier. Dhe is drawing from childhood memories for the composition.”
Leaving out some comments about sex in our time I come to what I see as especially relevant here. Part of what taking sex seriously means.
“In a royalist or aristocratic high republican or a number of other regimes the family has a stature which can tie together the privacy of sex, affection and home with the qualities of a public institution.The modern era has largely abandoned this whole vast set of institutions and patterns which tie these huge parts of the world together.

The point of all this is not that women should have no meaning or existence outside of their role as sexual coun terparts to men and mothers to children. However, the point is to show thattheir is almost limitless capacity for development and discussion in that aspect both of women and of the idea of women. To know woman one must first renounce that kind of asexual androgyny which has had a great deal of credence and influence in the world of my lifetime. Men and women are profooundly different and that difference is vital, useful and profoundly energizing in a decent and healthy society.

There are many layers of sexual exchange and perception between men and women. The Bible is one of the sources for wisom and the perception of ages regarding the relations of men and women. In the iconic story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis in the Bible Adam is the first man and his words upon seeing the first woman are memorable. As Genesis 2: 22b-25 states:
” When he brought her to the man the man said.
“This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
This one shall be called “woman” for out of “her man” this one has bee taken.”
That is why a man leaves his mother an father and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.
The man and his wife were naked but they felt no shame.”

The extreme intimacy of the passage is in comparison to the anmials with whom Adam cannot marry or form an intimate partnership. But it remains a very intimate passage. There is almost nothing that has been mor under sustained attack for millenia than this excited, intimate and personal recognition by man of his mate in women. Real moral science ia very demading and elegant pursuit and thus is more often abandoned than pursued. However, real moral science must always take a careful measure of relations between the sexes.

I think it deserves to be said in this context that I believe in a moral struggle as a desirable thing. I find that those who are not struggling have usually settled for something bad. One of the powerful shaping forces of humanity as it is remains the strong belief that anything related to the relational structure of humanity must either be very ancient, fixed and setled or else a really blank slate upon which any given generation can write or draw whatever it wants. For me I think that the entire mystery and meaning of humanity is something quite different. Humans have numerous intrinsic qualities that cannot really be changed much in any generation. Yet one may face the future with confidence when aware of these strictures of the past and present. A generation and an individual can compose any vast number of varied tunes using these notes given by nature. By preserving and fully working the great musical tradition one can even enhance the range and delicacy of notes available to future generations of musicians. Sexuality and the role of women is one of the great musical worlds in which the human race can operate. It is an area where we all practice some form of art whether or not we even acknowledge it.

What evolution, the idea of original sin, reincarnation, eugenics and quite a few other theories about the proper living out of humanity have in common is the idea that we pass on something different to the future based on our actions. Humans may not agree on what the mechanism for passing things on is, nor what ought to be passed on, nor how that which is passed on relates to present behavior. But in many different ways and at many different levels of intensity we remind ourselves and are reminded by those we put in charge of our most serious thinking that we are changing the present of future generations by how we live out our own present here and now.

This is a rather serious business and humans are able to make rather substantial changes in the population in relatively short periods of time. One of the most notable struggles of human race is our struggle to define and make ourselves as a species. That our greatest project is ourselves is a perspective which gives great importance to waman’s involvement in the human adventure. One of the characterisitics of the modern era is that we expect the totality of sexual relations to be easily defined. Consider that terms like: harem, concubine, paramour, mistress, courtesan, sister-wife, rival, Abbess, novice, midwife, maid, lady-in-waiting, placement, princess, Queen, Official Mistress and countless others once denoted roles which were available to women in many cases simultaneously and which in huge numbers of places have all disappeared down to the last one. I write here not so much to change the world but more as any defeated soldier may write when he decides that before his life ends he wants to make really clear how badly he views this new order and the triumph of what he fought against. So for me I see layer upon layer of both personal defeat and the coming to an end of much of what makes the human species human. It goes back to my recurring theme thayt life has mostly been a nightmare.

One thing about sex and womanhood being very near the core of the human moral struggle is that the issues related to womanhood and sexuality are subject to the same regional and epochal variations as are other part of the human moral drama. From my point of view I may say that all humans are severely confused and diseased in their understanding of these things. However, I would not say that they or we all suffer from the same delusion or disease. We may all be in error but we are in distinct errors across the species. A loose translation of the Bible called the Catholic Living Bible translates a passage as follows:
Luke 11: 45-47a
“Sir,” said an expert in religious law who was standing there, ” you insult my profession, too, in what you just said.”
“Yes,” said Jesus, “the same horrors await you! For you crush men beneath impossible religious demands that you yourselves would never think of trying to keep. Woe to you!””

Sex is an area where evil intentions , evil plans and hate often come dressed up as morality. One of the greatest problems humanity faces is the problem of overcoming the advantages acrued by evil in human affairs once evil is recognized as a real thing. I think that for me sex is an aspect of the human condition which accentuates hoew badly flawed our species is and yet, at the same time, is the point of glory at which we can most resemble the species we were once meant to be.”

Leaving out more discussion of current events that helped the argument I resume with my argument itself. I think it is relevant in many ways..

“I do not believe that the story at the begining of the book of Genesis was written by Moses after visiting the origins of the human species in a time machine. I do not believe the writer had a Ph. D. in biology. I do not believe it is a book coded from another book which was largely a straight first hand bio-history of its time — that is what I believe about the Gospels. I am even willing to say that he early stories are myths which is a word that atheistic relativistic scholars love to use for them. However, I do think that they are true stories written to pass on ancient coded trruths and insights which come from miraculousy ancient parts of the human story. Why is so much in the Bible coded?

That is a question for a long an important note on another occasion. In this note we will examine a bit more of Adam and Eve. There are three phases of the sexual relationship betwwen the two. in very general terms I mean for one could argue for a dozen phases.

The first is the phase in Genesis 2: 22-25b which I have already quoted this is the relationship between Man and Woman which God intended as unique to the human species. This really reflected the Image of an ultimate divine nature. The qualities of that relationship are intimacy, passion, empathy, excitement sex, good bodily self-image and fertitlity. It sounds tiring to those of us with enough mileage but otherwise one who can think can see the logic and goodness of it.

To preserve this humanity needed God’s friendship and to avoid eating the fruit of the knowleddge of Good and Evil. The writer here is using code for cannibalism. Yes, that again. The passage says that iti is a tree in the middle of the garden of course humans are in the middle of their own world always. That on the day one eats it humans will die and again if humans are eaten then the human eaten will die. It brings knowledge of Good and Evil and we actually have a lot of data across many centuries and cultures to show that eating human flesh is a passage which brings cunning, insioght and moral guilt into human minds in a unique way whether the society endorses or forbids cannibalism.

The last set of relations is the abusive marrasige and the loss of God’s friendship which define behavior which is in the survivable margin for humans as we currently are. These last two phases of the story are descibed in Genesis Chapter three. We all are still living in the last phase at best from the story’s own point of view.

It goes far beyond my capacity in time and space in tis note to show instances of cultures where men have driven their lands into desert and ruin to make sure that women were sastarving and dispossessed and fit into one of three (to them) acceptable catgories hyper-breeding terrified slaves, spies or religiously deluded cattle reared as food. rthis of course has always included the need to kill and maim some large number of men who cannot overcome (or heroicaly resist overcoming) their lover for mothers, sisters, and female lovers. Some of the time homosexuals have led this misogynistic elte.

Life is often hell and human society often a sewer which exceeds my capcity to espress and usually it involves building things on one of two principles men hating women or women hating children. Often this is dressed up as religion or ideology but it is really about that. This engine allows the most foul and wothless kinds of people to amss almost all available power and resources. It has happened occasionaly since time imemorial.

The sexualy intense path of paradise requires lots of restriction and guidance in the real world. It always has unless you believe we may have had an unfallen Eden somewhere in the pre-historic past. But it is the path which produces real joy and love, wealth, pressure for progress and other necessities. I presume that almost everyone alive today is someone iI would consider fundamantally insane. But I do not take such a dim view of insanity as some do. Homosexuality is a condition of some sons of women which is in my view tolerable when those who are homosexual know it is alimiting thing and have the humility to see it as a speciai status with some rewards and some disease like qualities requiring a routine of self -care, or when they publicly acnkowledge it as a kind of loss in bio-sweepstakes in which they make the best out of a less than first place postion. But when they think as Mr. Hilton does they are evil men encouraging other evil men in a way which opens on to an ininite pool of evil.

Women are tied to certain kinds of inferiority too. the way a man is supposed to feel superior is in the act of achieving coital satisfaction. Unthinkably in allowing the killer and crusher in him to feel fed by her sufferings in pregnancy and child birth and then letting the good and protective part of him make it up to her in other ways. Women are supposed to have a capacity for maistakes as a class which is no the same in men. If women stopped getting pregnant and being a little optimistic about it when everything was bleak and horrible there would never be a brighter tomorrow. What is wrong is that there have for hundreds of centuries been people racing to the bottom giving women less and less of their share for breeding expenses as it were. There is a lot more I could say on this subject. Men have also been maimed and crippled by women in many ways and that is also part of the drama.”

I leave out an ending statement challenging  gynecologists and the Catholic Church to learn to make eachother better not worse. But basiacally this is the argument and the essay. That is my note on what the sexual values are  that might come into play. There is a lot that is in it and a lot that is not.

 iii. Other Sexual Relations and Practices

The Court is not just any place. There is an element of sexual freedom afforded by a Court Physician with a staff, strict rules of propriety and ones own police force which are distinct from the realities elsewhere. If this regime were launched it would be expected that the Court would allow some sexual realities in Court that it seeks to vigorously restrict in the realm. That does not mean there is no enforcement of a sexual code in fact the failure to enforce one is one of the greatest causes for the destruction of  any Court worth having. 

b.The Imperial House and issues of military and martial culture:

Another cultural area is the realtions between the House and Household and the military. This will not always be smooth but the military belonging to the House and the other forces in the reconstitutionalized America will shape the experience of life and community at court. The Court and this new regime will also help the military establishment which curretnly exists to revitalize and improve ties and relations with the society as a whole. Part of this American Revolution would be various ritual and formal tied between the Court and the service academies.  In the midst of all  this one can see how certain ancient traditions within the Acadian culture regarding the Christian faith dominant in our land could be relevant to this renewal of military culture especially as it is studied. In line with that I produce an essay I wrote on Face book over a year ago. 

  • Our Military Will be Brought into a Central Cultural Nexus

     

” Monday, April 6, 2009 at 11:28am 
Many of my fellow Americans are bearing arms in the service of their country in Afghanistan and Iraq.These are the countries in which the US is more or less officially engaged in a war. We have a large number of people, mostly young men who wear uniforms, follow schedules, bear weapons, drill, fight and kill as well as dying and being wounded in those two distant lands.

Perhaps they know Jesus as the Prince of Peace. I certainly know and honor Christ as the holder of that Title. Many of them are certainly Christians and it is to the Christians who serve in the US military that I primarily address this note. I think war should be avoided whenever it is right and possible to do so. Jesus said “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly”, can it be acceptable to Christian families to have their sons, daughters, wives and husbands far away causing pain and injury to other people?

Smaller numbers of Americans are bearing arms in service of the country which has renewed my passport in Korea, Germany, Japan, Cuba, and on ships and planes around the world. In addition there are farflung bases on quasi-American soil or a least not state soil. Tiny detachments hold a position for our interests in American Samoa and larger ones in Guam. There are bases in very powerful and not so powerful countries with whom we have had historic ties — these range from the United Kingdom to the Federated States of Micronesia. Then we have a fleet of nuclear powered and nuclear armed submarines prowling the oceanic depths. This is an impressive amount of coverage for a nation’s military. I actually find the role of the miitary as an institution very interesting. However it is also true that I am interested in the way our toops are mentally affected by their service. I wish all American military service personnel well as military service personnel. That is a simple postion for me to take. As long as I carry an American passport, have credits with the Social Security Agency and vote in our elections in Louisiana as it now and foreseeably exists — then the USA is the country I support as mine and the very important role of the military in that national team is one I have to root for in their role. Some people in uniform are also brave, honest, decent and patriotic. I like those qualities. However, I do not cheer on our folks in uniform because I think they all have these qualities. Rather, I think otherwise.”

I will leave out some of my favorite stuff from this note that I am quoting and reproducing here. However, although I ahave accepted that this may be the longest post in my life I am trying to keep it a little shorter than it might be. I resume:

“I think that Christianity is entirely relevant to the discussion of war and arms in the United States. I think that Easter week especially is a relevant time to join the two discussions. It may prove to be a very thankless task indeed. I think of my countrymen and women who are coming from the aging congregations of urban Catholic Cathedral parishes, small rural Catholic chapels, incense filled Orthodox churches in ethnic neighborhoods, hardshell Baptist churches on red dirt roads near old sawmills and bait shops, Mega Churches with Protestant preacching and modern audio-visual equipment and the average sized Catholic churches filled with families. I think of young men of 17, 18, 20, 24, 25 and 27 heading off to boot camps, training, transports and war. I think of the secular ideas which guide so much of the military structure and the whispers and influences of men as diverse as George Washington, Hitler, Clausewitz, Mohammed, Mao Zhe Dong, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan, Horatio Nelson, Andrew Jackson and Patton who may influence their thoughts about war. I have nothing against their learning from, and studying either the good men or the bad. However, I am driven against all sane reasoning to put down a few of my own thoughts about Jesus Christ and the Christians view of war and military service.

Jesus’s Apostles had nicknames, given names or nommes de guerr that included: the Rock, Sons of Thunder, the Zealot ( a member of a known military and anti-Roman organization) and were accustomed to life threatening situations. Crucifixion and stoning were among their regular subjects of conversation. Jesus also spoke propheticaly of the coming siege of Jerusalem. Is this post of engaged observation all their Savior has to offer those who serve in the military and honor his name?'”

I related the note to my own life. We will skip that here:

 “Jesus said ” Do you think I have come to bring peace to the Earth? I assure you that I have not come to bring peace but fire and a sword”. Is a sense of social revolution or social consciousness all these young people can bring into the upheaval of armed conflict from the one who is their model of perfection?

My grandfathers both served in the US military. I have a rather complex and rather large warrior heritage. It extends in varied directions. My mother’s father Cecil Bruce Germillion served as a bombadeer instructor in the Army Air Corp. My paternal grandfather served as an officer in the US Navy. He said he commanded a golrified private yacht in the Gulf of Mexico early in the war. Later he was part of the large fleet of vessels headed towrd the invasion of Japan’s home islands when the atomic bomb ended the war. He used to say that although he saw some action in the Pacific his real anxiety was just as great in the Gulf. He said only once but with great passion that while in the Pacific he was well armed and supported in the Gulf he and his next subordinate (perhaps an Ex. O. or a Chief I do not recall) sometimes referred to the yacht secretly as the “USS Sitting Duck” which had to do with his evaluation of the vessel’s capacity to take on a wolfpack of German submarines in full out combat.

When Jesus was criticized for failing to keep some laws of the Sabbath by gleaning grain on that day he defended his behavior by sighting the example of King David who ate the Show bread because David was a king and he and his men were under the duress of warfare. Is Jesus’s example merely that of seeing his ministry in the pattern of military operations in his familial and national history?

I am a child of the sixties. I lived in New york and London in the 1960s and had relatives who were on elite college campuses during the heyday of the Peace Movement and the movement known as the Hippies. I never really felt that wearing black hats made some people bad and wearing white ones made other people good. I do not have the space and presume of the reader’s time enough to really cover the personal aspect fully. I am not a trusting blind supporter of the military or its policies. I would not describe myself that way at all. I am not ashamed of my own lack of courage or experience with conflict or danger. I would not describe myself that way at all.

So I wonder what I might say to those spending Holy Week and Easter in the forward zone or any other zone of the US military. First, I would say that Jesus did have you in his heart as he prayed for you that night in the Garden of Gethsemane becuase you are one of those who has believed. That is a great comfort in many ways. But it is also true that is evidence that God holds you to a personal standard. A Christian cannot believe that our personal lives and consciences disappear entirely into the duties and rights of a military force or a country. God will still hold you accountable for all that you do and become while you are in the services. God will not expect you to behave as if you were not a soldier, sailor, marine or airman but he still sees your heart and weighs your deeds. Of course when Jesus taught us to pray “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” he no doubt included martial trespasses in the economy of God’s mercy. God’s mercy is certainly a very big part of what we celebrate on Holy Week and Easter.

On Palm Sunday we remember Jesus, the Son of David entering the City of David. We remember that the crowds were shouting “Hosana, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Jesus had many who supported him his claims and his ministry.He did not shy away from leadership, rank or office and he was very open and brave.

So far everything I have written in this note is something I can live with and not regret. But now I am going to start the part that I already regret before having written it. In a sense all war is wrong and even military service. I say that as one who believes that in the Holy center of the Universes around the throne of God the angels wear and use weapons and are organized in armies. But ideally and perfectly there would be no war or planning for war. So I am writing this to an audience I want to encourage who at the same time I do not hesitate to say should ideally be doing something else. I look out at the world and the church today and feel that I too must do something immoral and which will stink in my conscience for a long time. I feel that I must reveal the some of secrets of a society which has done great good and kept its secrets since the time of Jesus. I do not see Knightly orders, Popes,their Catholic Majesties of Spain or anyone else standing between me and this day. So I write what is precious to me hoping I am not violating Jesus’s injunction not to throw pearls before swine.

The secrets of our ancient order which I am going to reveal are hidden in the gospels themselves. Are there things hidden in the Gospels? It is a reasonable question.

“The disciples approached him (Jesus) and said, ” Why do you speak to them in parables?”
He said to them in reply, “Because knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been granted to you but to them it has not been granted, To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not even what he has will be taken away. That is why I speak to them in parables, because they “look but do not see and hear but do not isten or understand”.” Matthew 13:10-13 New American Bible.

Jesus was, among all the other things he was, a warrior. He did not do many of the things that leaders who inspire others have done. He did not besiege or sack cities like Mohammed or his own namesake Joshua. He did not burn down the temples of idols like these same men. He did not rejoice in blood and mayhem like Ghengis Khan or the Viking Pagans. Your savior was a warrior who took his joy in weddings, Passover feasts, the Eucharist he was founding, flowers, birds and children. He did not take his joy in the sufferings of others. Our age is very different from the spirit of that secret warrior Jesus but nonetheless in following the warrior’s path you are not straying from the path of Jesus’s own experience.

Josephus either implies or states that during the siege of Jerusalem the Jews turned to cannibalism and ate one another. People eating other people is a huge and undiscussed part of human history and experience. It is one of the most important struggles of human history. Many societies have been proudly and openly cannibalistic. Many people in the world in 2009 are cannibals. Rome was a place where public law and morals condemned cannibalism. It was a place where officials would have been ashamed to admit to having dealings with merchants trafficking in human flesh. I know to my own satisfaction that here were non Jews eating and butchering Jews at that siege. By mentioning cannibalism at all, even blaming it on the Jews, Josephus put his own life at risk. In Rome there were a group of unofficial but sophisticated pirates who participated in the war machine by buying slaves on the cheap after battles and sieges as well as capturing all they could in the invaded country. They killed these people, often with torture and sport and then made sausage or pies out of them mixing the human flesh with pork.They made a very good profit on this in part because they worked the people as slaves before reducing them to food and extorted knowledge about the new lands fallen before the Roman banner. For this purpose they located large herds of swine near the lands to be destroyed in advance. They were wealthy, powerful, cunning, well armed, possessed of assasins corps and called themselves demons. They had a handful of key agents throughout every Roman Imperial governnment. They were an order older than Rome itself and not entirely Roman. There were at least tens of thousands of men at arms at their command both in the Empire and in non Roman lands. These were the enemies Jesus fought with 12 Apostles, 72 zealous highly trained disciples divided into groups of six for each Apostle. Then he had 38 reserve guards. All were also trained in charitable ministry and his preaching this was not a made up addition later on and yet with 133 part-timers(the ten not enumerated are my last nod towards a disappearing tradition) and the women officials and crowds who supported them Jesus opposed one of the most fierce and powerful forces ever to have existed.

The events of Jesus’s war are chronicled in specific events:
Event One:
Matthew 8:22-27 / Mark 4: 35-41
Jesus calms the storm at Sea

Event Two:
Matthew 8:28-34 / Mark 5:1-20
Jesus crosses the sea of Galilee
Demons are confronted
a herd of swine are destroyed
captive freed
Jesus leaves the region with the ones remaining very upset

Event Three:
Matthew 14: 13-21 / Mark 6;34-44
Jesus feeds 5000 people mysteriously
the disciples are instructed to collect all the fragments

Event Four:
Matthew 14:22-33 / Mark 6:45-52
Jesus is seen walking on the water with Peter.

Event Five:
Mark 8:1-10
Jesus feeds 4000 people. Mark makes it clear that these were multiple events.

Event Six:
Matthew 16: 21-23 / Mark 8: 31-33
Jesus begins to predict the Passion and Crucifixion in Jerusalem as inevitably the end of his life.

Jesus and his elite units used to wait for the worst storms on the Sea of Galilee. They crossed the sea in those storms under his fearless leadership. They opened the early pens located by the demons there in anticipation of the Roman destruction of the Jews and they liberated the prisoners. They then drove the pigs from the demons herds into the sea. Jesus was a carpenter and he located wooden buthcering sites at hudden spots in the out in the lake. The crews would remove nets filled with rocks and the rafts would float to the surface. Then his crew would attach inflated pig skins and pig bladders to increase bouyancy. On these non freeboard platforms they would slaughter the pigs and butcher them into boneless slabs of fish shaped meats. They would dump the entrails, guts, bones and heads in the lake. Knowledge of these dumps enbaled him to instruct fisherman as to where to put down their nets to get a great catch. Then they would cover the platforms with nets filled with rocks and arrive at shore near guarded ovens. Reusing fish bones frm each feeding and buying distressed fish from other fishermen with knowledge of where great catches could be found they would take a breading and adhere two pork steaks to the fish skeletons. They mixed these porkfish with regular bread and fish and fed thousands repeatedly. This also attracted donations from those who wanted to contribute something and these resources funded a large ministry of healing and teaching. Jesus constantly taught that eating unclean food (such as pork) did not make someone imoral. Once Peter and Jesus were seen using these platforms it was inevitable that Jesus would be killed. He chose to make this happen in a very specific public way in Jerusalem and create pressures on the demons.

After cleansing the Temple, Jesus managed to give on last speech to a huge crowd before being arrested and killed. He said two things at once. To his disciples he said that he was the living water and if they recognized him and believed in him then he would flow out of their hearts and meet their needs for courage and peace of soul. To the handful of demon spies the same words literaly were: if you recognize me from the stormy waters, I am the water that made your guards thirst no more and living water (blood) flow from their chest.

Jesus was not a great general, he had no palaces, published glories,nor vast armies and suffered more than he made his enemies suffer. He spent time healing, forgiving and seeking peace, he was humble and meek at many times (not always meek and almost never mild) but he was a warrior. In terms only of skill and bravery he was as he was at everyhting– arguably the best there has ever been. Yes, I mean that seriously. Your churches and mine may in the end condemn me for what I write and I think his contribution to war is lost in the mists of time. But your Savior has not left you as orphans in this world of war. There are no simple answers, no excuses, no bloodlust but the Prince of Peace was a man of war and you need not doubt him as you celebrate his legacy in an armed camp.”

c.The connection of the Imperial House and the royal traditions within our history.

There are images and portrayals of royalty and royalism thoughout  much of our society and such episodes in our history. There are also numerous royalist regimes. Not all of our relations and anlses of things would get easier and better. But it seems that America can afford a royalist regime, needs one and so to me it seems the results will be mostly beneficial.  

The King of Hawaii greeting Captain Cook

 

 Joining history and popular culture with a publi9cly established royalty would meet real needs that people have. Needs that keep expressing themselves whether or not anyone pays attention.

Kimberly Williams with two girls in th movie the Princess Diaries

 

d. Believing in and Understanding  a Legitimate American Royal Monarchy starting with the Keys of the Line.

While I have not named the five Princes des Grand Familles or the potential Emperor who is operating as a Basileus Arkadios in secret or in some places as what is called a “Wide Open Secret”  there is a great deal that could be learned and understood simply by a solid reading of the best and better books and articles on Acadian history and the Cajun Renaissance going on from about 1960 to the present.  It is a good bet that these six men and others will have a great deal in common with the people described in the most accurate books and articles.  It is also likely that they will have been formed by experiences and cultural influences which the books and articles  decribe. I want to give some idea of who the Basileus Arkadios could be by saying who some of the previous ones have been. This revelation as it were is  called the “keys of the line” or “Les Cles des Nommes des Rois”. If this regime is established it will be the first open reign of a Basileus Arkadios in a long time. However it is acceptable to publish the keys of line of kings stopping short of th living king.

   i. Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil was the third Broussard to hold the title he held it from Acadie in what is now Nova Scotia to the Part of Louisiana that is now Acadiana. Every Basileus was a Broussard until Governor Mouton. Joseph Broussard was both my ancestor and the ancestor of my ex-wife.

ii.Governor Mouton was the only Basileus in the New World to abdicate except to start an interregnum a bit early when cleary dying. He abdicated in favor of General Mouton who died of wounds received in the War Between the States while still a fairly young man. Neither of these two Mouton Kings is my ancestor.

iii.Severin   Leblanc was elected King and the Leblancs were elevated from the highest ranking High Chiefly Clan to the Lowest Princely Clan. In other words they were neighbors in protocol rank and his family’s relative ranking did not change. The line above him was moved below him.  Every king from him to Dudley Leblanc was a Leblanc. I am descended  from Severin but not from Dudley. However, one of Dudley’s daughters was reared by my grandfather Chief Justice Frank W. Summers’s brother Clay and his wife. Dudley was the last king named Leblanc in the line.

This would be a good place to search through this blogs pages and posts if one is really interested. I am not entirely sure what is on this site myself but on my Facebook  profile I have a great deal more information available. Among the thousand books listed on one of the applications there as books I have read there are many books on the subjects related to the line of Acadians and their experience although not written specificaly about the topic of the secret royal line. In addition, I have relevant notes there which do not appear here.   But I do want to try to make clearer the significance of Greek heritage to those who may not have thought much about it.

I want to quote from another part of the same essay where I got my own words about the importance of Rome’s having created a  Capital City for Western Civilization. 

  • “” I suppose that prior to really discussing Western Civilization one ought to define the terms “Western” and “Civilization”. That is certainly how Socrates would have gone about it and he is certainly one of the major fountains of whatever Western Civilization turns out to be. However, there is no group of people here to stand in for the young Athenian aristocrats I would speak with if I were him. Socrates is a major literary figure but was not a writer. His talent was for leading discussions. From his example of course we get the term Socratic method. The socratic method whether written of in upper or lower case letters is still the principal technique in American law schools. I of course attended one such twice.

I have a fondness for Western Civilization. It strikes me as a thing worth learning about and keeping in perspective as one of the biggest and best things humans have done. However, it also strikes me as a flawed thing with many acts of wrongdoing which can be laid at its door. I also think that more than any other people the Chinese have reason to be a little paranoid as to why we have developed such an obsession with the study of Western Civilization under just that exact title. This note will not only deal with Western Civilization.

I think that all of human greatness is a subject and a reality far broader than Western Civilization. In fact I find that Humanity is far more rich and complex a topic than Civilization iself. Civilization is a mode of being ewhich is not an unmitigated good in fact. Civilization is many things but it is always a gamble there is a great deal of gambling in the structure of a real and honest civilization.Civilization causes us to all give up many things we want and could want more. Civilization causes us to feel a need for and consume things we might not otherwise consume.These dissaciations are very costly and there must be off-setting good results to justify them. Many patterns of life are determined by the civilization itself or its large corporate and collective organs. A vital and basicaly good civilization has an element of institutional preservationism, an element of planning some structured sharing. Civilizations without those things soon cease to deserve the designation. These are elements combined with a structure of optimism and gambling that is essential to the civilized stance and point of view.

Those civilizations which do not have an element of gambling in their structure have much greater evil making things go and are in fact not really civilations they are to real civilations what the modern writers following Stoker’s fictional vampire Dracula is to an average human. They keep up the appearances of life but without many of its most vital processes. Dracula is all about death and in the sun he is ashes byt he claims to be immortal and does go in a sort of life for a very long time.

Unless a society is renewed continuously and in a way which is authentic then there is no way it can remain a real civilization indefinitely. I am fully certain that many civilzations are almost entirely dead before the force which actually destroys them appears on site.I have had a feeling much of my life that the civilization into which I was born had huge problems in its inner resources and workings. I have often felt that my life was really a profound hell in many ways. I still often feel that way.

I have written a lot about Jesus in these notes. I have also dealt a great deal with other forms and leaders who were Jews, as he was. Jews have played a large role in Western civiliaztion but (though oddly Jew has come to mean someone who does not follow Jesus and is sure about it ) Jesus is their greatest flowering out into the world and is one of the very tiny number of people bron before 1500 who truly envisaged his legacy as bringing something to all peoples and cultures of which he knew or did not know during his lifetime. He was an outgrowth of Jewishness and its highest expression in that regard. We may turn to this subject again in this note. But to sum up the Jewish thing is too much about just Jews on the one hand and about all humans on the other hand to be the direct foundation and centerpiece of Western Civilization. If one wants to make a silly and ethnocentric error which is the least incorrect then this would be it,”Western Civilization is spelled -G-R-E-E-K”. If one wants to speak of Eastern Civilzation one should know lots about Japan, India and the Eastern part of Arab tradition. But if one wants to make the ethnocentric silly error which is least incorrect then it would be, “Eastern Civilization is spelled -C-H-I-N-A”. Greece and China aren’t even close to the whole story but nonetheless one could never exhaust either of their contributions to Western and Eastern Civilization respectively. They are of course very different countries.

I am proud to say that I speak truly deplorably horrid Greek and surpass it with almost superhuman butchering and botching of Madarin Chinese. I think when one speaks these languages as badly as I do there is a sort of automatic respect which is born within one. I do not write at length in either of these languages. I do write badly at length in quite a few languages. However not in AEllada or Putong Hua.

I think that reading Homer, Plato and Aristotle are essential to being well educated in the lore of Western Civilization I certainly openly advocate such readings. I have occasion to teach a few young boys whatever I wished for a few months full time on several different occasions and I have always set up a schedule of a number of subjects rotating through each week. Typicaly there have been five or so of these subjects but usually on has been the Bible and another has been what I call the Classics which always starts with Homer, Plato and Aristotle and not necessarily in chronological order.

Much like the Bible, Greek thought has been co-opted and sometimes hi-jacked by a variety of people with agendae which were intensely important to them and which were formed largely by reactions to the points of view held and expressed by other people trying to control the discussion of these same writers and ideas. However, the Greek world is truly very vast and very diverse.The Greece of Lykos the Wolf-man king of Arcadia and of Alexander the great are very clearly connected but are vastly different from one another. The Greek civilization of Septuagint and the Ptolemy dynasty are profoundly different again.

I could read and teach only Greek ideas and culture all my life and only that and scarcely mak a good start. However, Homer, Plato and Aristotle are the things I have repeatedly chosen to teach when offered choices. They bring a person into the experience of the great Greek phenomenon of experience.

The New Testament is also written in Greek of course. it is drawn from sources written in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic but all of those ancient books are lost and the texts closest to the best of them are the Gospels in Koine Greek. Christianity is certainly vital to the history of Western Civilization. But Christianity has universal obligations. A good Pope must be especilly loyal to the city of Rome and also have a love for Jerusalem. However, a good Pope must also have some real space in his heart for the good of Beijing, Delhi and Lesotho not only the people who live there but even the pre-Christian cultures that flourished there. To be Vicar of Christ and not a great scandal is to be the vicar of the one who sent the Good News to the ends of the Earth.

The pre- latin people and other Italians, the Celts, The non Hellenic Egyptians, The Ethiopians, the Germans and the Norse each have a substantial history with Greater Greece that predates their own written history outside of Greek history. All of these groups who made a substantial contribution to Western Civilization from the inside were at least a bit Hellenized before they emerged as there own sort of thing. On could describe modern Western Civilization as that cultural system which emerged from:
1.The Hellenization of Ancient Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
2.The Romanization of the Hellenic World.
3.The Christianization of the Roman Empire.
4. The Barbarization of the Christian Roman Empire.
5. The Fashioning of Christendom from the Teuton lands and the crumbling Empire’s pieces.
6.The survival and change of Christendom under the assault of Islam and the Norse raids and settlements.
7. The Renaissance process of remaking Christendom mostly with ancient Hellenic ideas.

The many important things that have happened in Western Civilization since about 1600 AD depend on all of these foundational transformations are react intensely to them. These 4000 years from 2400 BC to 1600 made Western Civilization a definite and real thing which still remains identifiable. Things have gotten better and worse since 1600 in all kinds of ways but much has stayed the same. I do think however that we are in a place where we could lose all that is left of this civilization.

I think that Western Civilization is in serious trouble. Things have gotten bad in ways sufficiently broad and mysterious tro be difficult to detect analyze or appreciate. However, our civilization will have to play some very fine poker or lose it all in my view. I am doing what I am currently able to get done to address that crisis but it certainly is not nearly enough. I know that for me society has always been flunking and yet I see the trend as downward towards worse and worse performacn on the scales I am using to measure with in these matters.”

  • Many people have mattered but none have mattered more than the hellenic peoples in the development of modern Western Civilization.  The Acadians and there royalty provide a vital link top that great source of culture and achievement for America and that link would be secured in the new Empire. 
  • e. Understanding the Acadian Royal Tradition and the people and structure of the Imperial House as Community and Family 

    One truth that will be obvious if it is considered is that any House moving into this role from America would be moving from relative darkness to relative light in many ways. 

    i. What we look like around here 

    Remeber I am descended from many of the local kings and so regardless of anything else looking at my family can give you an idea of what the House might look like. More or less, you can see some of our feature if you try.  

    My father frank Wynerth Summers II catching a fish offshore in his younger years.

     

    My young father fishing captures his basic looks and some of our relatives attitudes about many things too. He was and is an outdoorsman and many Acadians are that way. In taking my nieces and nephew to ride an elephant they also are building a spirit of adventure and a bond with nature. 

    This is me in the reddish shirt taking my two nieces and a nephew to ride an elephant

     

     My ex-wife was a Broussard by birth. She could have become a Basilissa under our rules by marrying man who was or could become a Basileus. This is us relaxing at Sea Island Georgia’s Cloisters hotel.  

    My ex-wife Michelle Denise Broussard Summers

     

    I am a white Anglo-Acadian. Some people are whie and almost pure Acadian others are white Germano-Acadians. It is not to hard if you grow up learning the many fine and also the large distinctions.

    Loraina and Sally (W.G-r. & L.T-t) my student assistants at a tecnical university in China

    I call them Loraina and Sally sometimes. Student Assistants in China.These young ladies were dear friends, assistants and quite attractive. Chinese can hold na outer title and a contract with an Acadian noble in our tradition but not be Basilissa. Nobody half Negro can be a full member of the Tribe when it is duly constituted but can vote and keep some hereditary rights in a differnt waywith other races children of mixed race fall into complicated rules but are more or less members of the tribe.  Perhaps someone who was a fourth Chinese and three Fourths Acadian could be a Basileus but it has not happened.

    Because of the lack of official status for so long we have lost the capacity to make our system fully work.  However,we have our racial protocols and if the new regime were established they would restore themselves in all their complexity. I return to quote again from the same note or essay which I myself wrote and used to illustrate my ideas on the Capital City and on the importance of the Greek heritage of the Arcadians-Acadians. The Ethnos Arkadios is multi racial in the broadest sense of what the Ethnos Arkadios is but its fabric and essence and continuity is a community of white people. People of other races can play important roles and relations can get complex but the white racial identity is near the center of things.

    I discussed the issue of race in the same note on Western Civilization in which I discussed Greece and trhe importance of a capital city. I retrun to quoting that note now: 

    “One quality of Western Civilization is what some friends of mine and I used to call “the unbearable whiteness of being” that was a pun because of a movie called The Unbearable Lightness of Being. White Racism, White Supremacy, White Identity Preference and Snow on All Mountains are actually all distinct politico-social views of whiteness in the history of Western Civilization. There at least two and a half people left alive who can rationaly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each position and the differences each has with each other position.” later I went on to discuss how this works with the dumbing down of other discussions besides race.

    I discussed in very harsh terms my opinion that Geramny and Austria cannot ever be fully rehabilitated as part of Western Civilization and the World Community until they devote great and known resources to building ups a great Israel. I regar those countries as very second class.

    I discuss this:

    “Having said this do I think the Hapsburg’s empire for so long was one of humanity’s great achievements?
    YES, I do.

    Do I think Charlemagne was deserving to be called at least a Father of Europe?
    Yes, I do.

    Do I think that Goethe, Saint Boniface, Meister Eckhart, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven made stellar contributions to Western Civilization?
    Yes, I do.

    Do I think the Germanic English despite murderous scandals, silliness and stealing credit from other Celtic Brits or socio-morally solvent?
    Yes, not rich but solvent.

    Do I think that the right wing Teuton chauvinistic Austrian Patriot Prince Meternich was a collosus in modern times and a fine Christian?
    Yes I do.

    So how can I justify my point view? Well, if for ten generations one has mixed feeling about hardworking neighbors of moderate talent who have gotten rich partly through hard-work and thrift then one says they are rich. But if one sees two generations sell all the furniture for drugs, burn down the house, beat and chain their daughters as naked prostitutes and paper the town in hot checks then one is entitled to give them a distinct credit rating than before. Money in this metaphor stands for morality. The neighbors stand for Germany and Austria. I refuse, knowing I offend some fine Germans on this list of friends to say I regard those countries as legitimate or their people as having face in Western Civilzation. They are the very, very poor relations of the family for at least as long as I am likely to live. The whites of the South are known for prejudice and holding a dim view of their neighbors both justly and unjustly. I know there are music groups and artists and others who call themselves ” niggers” without offense and I think policing language is doable but very tricky work. But I assure you that on occasion I have used all the contempt any white southerner ever put in any word into my greetings of Germans and Austrians.

    How they can show their faces in the world and do nothing to deserve it as a country makes me sick. These countries are not alone among the guilty but they disgust me.”

    I said that in my view Western Civilization was mostly dead before World War II. Enslaving the many low ranking Nazis and bring them abroad and also settling in German Americans and other German colonials not infected as the elite would have been a better approach.  I also suggested the sales of the property of elite companies and people would have gone half to other restoration of Germany and Austria as client states and half to build a new Israel. Tet I admit the Jews had been corrupted by their history and the Germans had some grievances ( without going into detail): 

    “I do think Germans had some grievances and there are real problems they needed to address and some of them involved a great people dispossessed of their homeland long ago and not by Germans. However, the behavior of the Third Reich is the essence of obscenity The stench of it still clogs up the breathing passages of the world. I can’t take seriously our international system founded on so little punishment of such great offenses. Jews, Poles, Russians and intellectuals have rivers of blood calling for vengeance. We are not a church and I don’t much want to hear about of absurd plattitudes.”

    I contrast the Third Reich’s view with the ancient Greek struggle to understand race. Then I jumped to the Nordic link to the Third Reich which tempers German and Austrian guilt although it remains vast : 

    “So we can tell from a document discussing the fact that Socrates was indeed a white man what race meant in ancient Greece. It continues to men about the same thing to me now. Christianity tempers my views perhaps. The issue of Greece brings us to the Nordic peoples. Western Civilization has tow very distinct historic poles. The diffusion throughout the world has been important but now we are living in what is ultimately a world civilization. When for millenia Western Civilization really was autonomous it had a North Pole which was Scandinavia and a South Pole which was Ethiopia — culturally speaking. Stockholm is founded on a set of rhythyms and patterns that really do not flow from Greece. Ethiopia is also. However, whether they know it or not both have long been inextricably in the orbit of the Hellenic and post-Hellenic world. This is the very real orbit and rim of of culture that delineated the edges of Western Civilization when Eastern Civilization and this civilization had not really merged to create a world civilization.

    I would like to spend more time writing about Ethipoia than I am going to spend. I would like to explore African, Arab and Greek confluence. I would like to talk of ancient mixed race peoples and of the Shebaitic House of Solomon’s role in Judaism and Christianity. However, I will not get to that in any detail in this note. A great deal has been thought and written about how black these people were or were not. But I will turn instead to some of the the whitest people anywhere. I will instead speak of the Norse.

    Hitler divided the Germanic people into Alpine, Nordic, Jewish-influenced and miscellaneous racial types. The ideal he was trying to move towards was the Nordic type. No group takes its hereditary appearance as seriously as the Norse and I have no doubt some of the really evil minds that will never appear in history’s account but which shaped the Third Reich were Norsemen. I truly do believe thatthey are the most geneticaly distinct people in the world all in all. In many ways they resemble the true Mongols of the East but they are also very different. The Scandinavian countries are Norway, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Scotland for people and groups who call it Sutherland. The Scandinavians have almost always been a great race and occasionaly a mighty civilization. They have seldom been a good people all in all and never been a great civilization.

    Scandinavians have visited every part of the world and burnt the records of their travels they reshaped the culture of Ireland, Sicily and Russia. There has never been an historic China or Japan that did not have Scandinavian pirates somewhere in the background. Scandinavians traded in maps and technology in very significant ways and helped many people break out of technological impasses with the help of technology taken from neighbors. The ninth and tenth centuries AD are known as the eras of their journeys. However I am aware of another tradition. Outside of history and archaeology there are tales with the ring of truth of widespread war between Acadians that went on for almost a thousand years. In Acadian lore Scandinavians come from a people in Westernmost China who were isolated and very advanced who traveled for completely unimaginable reasons to rejoin their ancient and primitive related tribes who were almost a forgotten myth and lived in the frozen North. In the travel they passed through ancient Arcadia as slaves, refugees, pirates, princes and wizards for a few generations. It was this reunion which really marks the start of Scandinavian culture. I do not think that Scandinavians share any belief in this tale but it is what I believe.”

    Despite some rather critical remarks the New regime would have on Peer in the Ten of the High Imperial Nobility who would be Chief of at least part of the Scandinavian Settlers of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  In addition One of the  Twenty Peer- Electors of the Kingdom of Louisiana and also another member of the Ten will be  Herzog der Flussesbanken, Chef des Communites de Cote des Alleman. However if you wish to know our views on Acadian appearance you must first know Classical and Arcadian Greek statuary, Byzantine Royal Mosaic portraits. Then for the more Hebrew side of the ideal look at Byzantine images of Jesus Christ. For the darker Central Asian idea of our ideal see the Pompeiian image of Alexander the Great in the vast battle mosaic. This is to skew towards the Norse, Celtic and Germanic marriages in France. But we have no interest in leaving our heritage of physical appearance entirely behind at its Greek roots.  

    Beyond all this I turned to the Celts in my note on Western Civilization. The Celts and the Hebrews are two groups tied to both Acadian and American roots and who are well represented and well challenged under the proposed new regime. Here’s a bit about the Celts:

    “Without discussing the Celts of Vercingetorix’s brave fall, the letter to the Galatians, Brian Boru’s victory over Scandinavian kings and the beauty of their art how can one discuss this civilization. Ancient Greece was largely defined by trade with Celts and war with Persia. However neither St. Columba nor the Irish Republican army will make it into this note. The Celts were a high and splendid Barbarism which Rome broke because unlike the Greeks they made provinces in preference to colonies. Greeks learned to make provinces when Alexander conquered the Persian Empire. But they never really loved to do this. Colonies, Polises and Kingdoms stirred the Greek Soul. Only in the Eastern Roman Empire did Greeks learn to love the system of Empires and provinces. So the Greeks warred with Celts but they always lived together and enriched eachother. The Greek’s resented and opposed Roman influence but could adjust to it more easily than the Celts. That is why one thinks of Ireland and Wales when one says Celts although the culture extended from the British Isles to Turkey”. 

    I am not going blind into the idea of acknowledging the complexity and difficulty of making America authentic. It would be easier to govern if America had only developed into a less complex nation of a hundred million less diverse people. That is the truth. But if we accept the struggle implicit in what we truly are it can assuredly make us great. I have to stop somewhere and I think I will stop here because it is time to stop. I had meant to cover some of the darker problems of the House as it would emerge from the  shadows to full public life. However,  I will do that in a distinct context and at a later date I think.