The Empire of Lies and "Filipino" Identity

Exploring how Elite Theory explains modern, artificial identities

All essays published before July 2022 are considered obsolete. Kindly wait for the upcoming book.

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Editor’s note: this essay is outdated. Our book, A Gentle Introduction to Pillar of Liberty, is also being revamped. Please see the 2022 revision here.

The Deep State’s Methods Exposed

Prologue: A Political Science Primer

We saw a state of euphoria created by the feeling of absolute superiority, a kind of modern absolutism, coupled with the low cultural standards and arrogance of those who formulated and pushed through decisions that suited only themselves.

Vladimir Putin

Before we continue, we need to explain a few political science terms. Many Filipinos have this idiotic notion that a nation is a population and their territory with administering government. These types who don’t know their basic political science are also the type to spout idiotic political opinions on social media, so we doubt that they would lay eyes on this paywalled article in the first place. Nonetheless, we define terms for convenience either way.

A nation is simply a group of people with common identity, which we call the national identity. A nation is not necessarily an ethnos, or a people with similar institutions, culture, and language. Back in the day, nation and ethnos meant the same thing, hence the Kapampangans were known as Nazión Pampanga by the Spanish. By the declarative theory of statehood, a nation, their territory (the country), ruled by a government holding sovereignty makes up a state. Max Weber came up with an alternative theory of statehood, which holds it as a monopoly of violence over a certain territory. Susan Reynolds renewed the debate on Medieval statehood with her landmark book:

I offer the following, which is based on Max Weber, with some modification: a state is an organization of human society within a fixed territory that more or less successfully claims the control (not the monopoly) of the legitimate use of physical force within that territory. If one were to deny statehood on this definition to medieval kingdoms or lesser lordships in general, or even to those of the early middle ages, on grounds of the fluidity of their boundaries, the ineffectiveness of control within them, the autonomy, or partial autonomy, of lesser authorities within them, or their lack of sovereignty (however defined), one would have to deny it to a good many modern states as well.

Reynolds, S. (1994). Fiefs and vassals: the medieval evidence reinterpreted. Clarendon Press.

Of course, both the Medievalist and the International Relations scholarship still debates what constitutes a state. Andrew Latham, an IR academic who focuses on Medieval times, follows Reynolds’s example and points to the Crisis of the Twelfth Century as statehood’s origin. He further claims that Heteronomy, the idea that no uniform ideal form existed regarding political organization, describes only Early and High Medieval times well. Sovereignty in this time existed, and belonged to the political community as a whole instead of a single entity. Rees Davies points out that most historic states have not possessed a monopoly of organized military force and many have not claimed it, such that modern notions of statehood could distort our view of the past:

What this amounts to claiming is that the categories, assumptions and discourse of the post-1800 state, notably the nation-state, are not fully commensurate with the realities of the medieval world. The “state” was not the fully differentiated organisation which we take for granted today. Power was not necessarily delegated from some putative centre, as contemporary legal formulations (especially by royalist lawyers) and the habits of modern constitutional historians often suggest. Power in most pre-industrial societies was extensive and essentially federal, not
unitary, hierarchical and centralist (Mann, 1986–93, I, p. 10). Charisma was not exclusively a royal prerogative. It could equally be claimed by an aristocracy which, as in Germany, defended and explained its power by reference to divine grace (Reuter, 1993, p. 97). It is the uniqueness of the English experience, not its normality, which stands out in this, as in so many other, respects.

Davies, R. (2003). The medieval state: the tyranny of a concept?. Journal of Historical Sociology, 16(2), 280-300.

Thus in place of a monopoly of violence, there existed control and regulations over legitimate violence. However, discussions about what Medieval sovereignty and authority comprised shifted as the idea of contested authority popped up. Here, Julia Lopez points to four categories of political authority which caused contests between their holders. Neither the heteronomy nor sovereignty concepts fully explain all details behind court decisions, political actions, and historical events. Lopez further justifies her new approach towards Medieval authority:

I examine a variety of legal books, court decisions, and political documents written
by these medieval lawyers in both teaching and the daily practice of politics, and
show that political authority in the later Middle Ages is best understood as emerging from the contestation between four ordering categories. As semantically related groups of concepts, each of these categories put forward a distinct view of what rule was and a different understanding of how rulers stood in relation to one
another—that is, a different order. More broadly, in these four categories we can
not only find reflected some of the arguments of statists and heteronomists but
also alternative understandings that have been missed in IR because of how the medieval period was approached. After examining the four categories, a final section illustrates how contestation played out in a thirteenth-century high-profile dispute.

Lopez, J. C. (2020). Political authority in international relations: revisiting the medieval debate. International Organization, 74(2), 222-252.

Either way, the likes of Mises and Rothbard fix themselves only on the monopoly of violence. Weber himself said that this trait describes states in his day, and by extension our day. We find that the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia began this modern trend.

Even if sovereignty existed in Medieval times as per Reynolds and Latham, its manifestation was muted and decentralized, for the political community held it. Some realms, lordships, and states were externally hierchical. Westphalia concentrated sovereignty to the sovereign, at that state a monarch. Here we see that Absolutism crystalized into its most-known form. The seeds lay in England and France after the Hundred Years’ War, as the sovereign commanded all armed forces in the realm in an age of New Monarchies. Louis XIII further centralized powers, while England saw civil strife. Westphalia, however, saw monopolies of violence dominate territories in cartel, externally equivalent and internally hierarchical.

New formulations of sovereignty, drawing on Roman law and other sources, became very important for the rising territorial monarchs, especially in France, England, and Spain. There were a number of steps along the ideological way. Since Carolingian times, there had grown up the notion of the corpus mysticum—the mystical body of the church—a body for which it might, at times, be rightful to sacrifice one’s life. The distinguished medievalist Ernst H. Kantorowicz notes that, as early as the campaign in Flanders undertaken by Philip IV (1285–1314), kings began to claim that such a duty was owed to the sovereign ruler. Thus came back to life the classical world’s notion of a duty to die for the state—as a secular corpus mysticum. Kings had resort, as well, to “organic”or “organological” analogies in which individuals subject to a ruler were parts of a body, whose head was the king. Such analogies, as developed in detail by medieval writers, are now derided, but are somehow persuasive when deployed by moderns such as Hobbes, Hegel, or Lincoln. The new law of corporations was also taken on board to help give
King or state a real, legal “personality.” Robert Eccleshall notes “the medieval assimilation of political society to a corporation in which authority was said to reside with the collectivity of the members.” Royalist writers readily claimed such corporate authority for the crown. The kingdom, or state, could now be seen as the most inclusive corporate body of all—and suddenly, membership in it was no longer optional.

Stromberg, J. R. (2004). Sovereignty, International Law, and the Triumph of Anglo-American Cunning. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 18(4), 29œ93.

Hobbes wanted the Leviathan State to impose its will over the populace into all facets of life. Rousseau wanted the Leviathan State to unchain man from family, community, and ethnicity to allegedley “free” him. The nation and nationalism, which respectively referred to one’s ethnos and allegiance to received customs and language, now saw the civitas and allegiance to ideology and so-called identity dominate. Of course, civic nationalism is important for civic functions, for a polis comes together from men who wish a common goal. However, the Leviathan State saw an artificial ethnos come up from the civitas, which subsumed all peoples under the Leviathan’s wing. Hence civic nationalism overrode ethnic nationalism, and even worse these two concepts have been intermixed as national identity overrode ethnic ones. The Westphalian poison simply is the blurring between ethnos and civitas, civil society turned Leviathan to impose mass uniformity among the people all to the Establishment's benefit.

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Ukraine and Artificial Identity

Modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era….The Bolsheviks treated the Russian people as inexhaustible material for their social experiments.

Putin, V. (2021). About the historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. OSTEUROPA, 71(7), 51-65.

After the First Migration Period ended, a group of people called the Slavs settled a large stretch from between the Baltic and Black Seas to the Balkans. They followed the initial Germanic and Hunnic migrations, and they carved themselves new realms bordering both them and the Eastern Roman empire. From the first three tribes of Wendes, Antes, and Sclaveni came many smaller tribes, forming their own confederations. One such confederation formed after the chaos of war between Norsemen and Turkics.

The land immediately between the Baltic and Black Seas paid host to numerous tribes, whether Slavic, Turkic, Norse, Baltic, and so on. One tribe, the Rus, started as Norse traders who would dominate the Volga River area:

By the 800s groups of Gotlandic Varangians had developed a powerful warrior-merchant system. They began probing south down the waterways controlled by the Khazars. They were in pursuit of the Arabic silver which lowed north through the Khazarian-Volga Bulgarian trading zones. The silver coins were obtained as payment for among other things slaves, furs and swords. Gotlandic mercantile leets passing Atil on the Volga were tithed, as they were at Byzantine Cherson. The Gotlandic Varangians settled inside the East Slavic area. They forced their subordinates to feed them and obtain merchant goods.

Tore Gannholm

Of course, great trade also paved a way for great riches. A group of traders establishing colonies and empires abroad happens often through history, and the Rus Norse were no exception. A few former raiders and vikings would establish their own realm among the Slavs. The locals called their Rus rulers as khagans, borrowed from the Turkic Khazars and meaning great khan:

Once the volume of the trade, and other possibilities in the East was realised at home, the enterprises became increasingly attractive for Norse chieftains. It was enough that one leader among them had strong charisma and sense of purpose to give the activities quite a new character—the creation of a political structure, a hierarchic military organization. An organization of this kind came into being in the early ninth century and is known in historiography as the “kaganate of Rus”.

Wladislaw Duckzo, Viking Rus: Studies on the presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe

By the 860s, however, an uprising commenced against the Rus Khaganate. Four tribes overthrew the Rus Khaganate, possibly in response of Christianization efforts. However, the chaos and lawlessness that followed forced the locals to offer princeship (“firsthood” in Latin, first citizen) to a Norseman, Rurik.

Prince Rurik, his brothers, and their descendants commenced conquest over the rest of the East Slavs. Any tribe remaining from the initial migrations fell under the Rus sway. Rurik had made his steading in Kiev, once a border fort between Rus and Khazar domains. From that city, the Rus expanded their domains before itself fracturing throughout Medieval times.

The Rus remained a united people, although their East Slavic language fractured into numerous dialects. Two main strands emerged: the Great Russian dialect, and Ruthenian. The Ruthenian dialects themselves steadied into four: Little Russian (Ukrainian), White Russian (Belarusian), and Rusyn (sometimes counted as a sub-dialect of Ukrainian). Kiev had become a Lithuanian possession, while Moscow rose in prominence by defeating the Turkic hordes.

The steppes north of Crimea were sheer wilderness, the borderland between Russia, the Crimean Khanate, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Wallachian Principality. Over time, however, the Commonwealth had groups of poor, landless peasants settle the borderland. These groups came from free bands of men who would roam the borderland on horses, called Kazakhs by the Golden Khanate for they were free. The Russians called them the Cossacks in their own language. These Cossacks built stockades to defend themselves against Turkic raids. The borderland, or Ukraina in Slavic, now paid host to these settlers.

Eventually, however, one Bohdan Khmelnytsky led a rebellion against Polish magnates and governors who wished to take the Cossacks’ freedoms. This rebellion had Russian support, and despite Polish successes late in the rebellion, the Cossacks had their independence under Russian suzerainty.

Despite the Cossacks having their own realm in the Ukraine, note that no tangible Ukrainian identity ever emerged on the steppe. Most folk called themselves either Cossacks or Little Russians, and not as Ukrainian except as for living on the borderlands. Even as Russia dismantled the Hetmanate’s autonomy, the Cossacks responded by migrating, either into the Carpathians or further East – their combined descendants live as Kuban Cossacks. However, Modern Ukraine has co-opted the Zaporozhian Cossacks as “Ukrainian”, despite Khmelnytsky fighting for Cossacks and locals’ freedom under his rule. The Russian Empire’s attempts at stamping out Little Russian identity proved imprudent because it stirred Ukrainian sentiments among the elites, but this shows that Ukrainian identity never took hold at this time.

It took the 19th Century for conceptions of a Ukrainian identity to form among nobility and the wealthy living on the borderlands. The video below gives a concise primer on how this process occurred:

Even the historical academe knows that a Ukrainian ethnos sprang up from Elite considerations and not popular ones. Ukrainian identity, never anything beyond a descriptor for people living on the borderlands, took on new life as a mythical ethnos that had lived since the Kievan Rus. As we discuss above, however, the Kievan Rus gave life to all modern East Slavs, and the Ukrainian language was one of many Ruthenian dialects. Indeed, modern Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian have high mutual intelligibility, so much so that they can be considered broad dialects of one East Slavic continuum.

The results show that the respondents with L1 Estonian were quite successful in understanding Ukrainian via their knowledge of Russian. Based on average percentages for self-reported text comprehension (62%) and measured success (70.55%), there was no significant discrepancy; however, the participants provided a slightly lower percentage for self-comprehension than the actual results showed. Furthermore, we will look more closely into the performance results of each separate group of words using the participants’ comments and explanations. The last subsection will be dedicated to extra-linguistic factors.

Branets, A., Bahtina, D., & Verschik, A. (2020). Mediated receptive multilingualism: Estonian-Russian-Ukrainian case study. Linguistic approaches to bilingualism, 10(3), 380-411.

Co-opting Khmelnytsky for modern Ukrainian identity is like North Macedonia co-opting Alexander the Great just because both figures just happened to live where the modern states now live. Putin exaggerates by ascribing the modern Ukrainian state to the Soviets, for Elite pro-Ukraine movements popped up earlier. Their first attempt through the Hetmanate of Ukraine already prefigured modern Ukrainian policies, the state’s very name co-opting Khmelnytsky’s movement. Soviet control emerged as the Hetmanate’s deposition, and a Bolshevik council stepping in to replace it.

Ukrainian national identity has subsumed all Russians living in the borderlands, whether White, Little, Great, or even the Rusyn subgroup living in the Carpathians. Here we see that civic national identity has subsumed and replaced ethnic ones, with the telos of convenience adored as ethnogenesis. These facts, that modern East Slavic dialects are so mutually intelligible, and that these peoples have an interlinked history, just shine brighter light at how artificial the Philippines’ own concept of national identity is.

Mutual Intelligibility between the Slavic languages. The East Slavic languages have high mutual intelligibility compared to between the Slavic language groups.

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The Revolution’s Westphalian Poison

At best, Ukrainian identity rests on living on the borderlands in a time far removed from historical struggles and conflicts there. The modern Ukrainian ethnos is fictional and artificial. One may say the same about Philippine identity, which rests on men living on islands named after King Philip II. This national identity came from a historical accident, and nothing more.

However, a fictional and artificial identity sprang up in the latter half of the 20th century, with roots dating to the Revolution itself. As we have discussed in previous articles, this is simply Tagalog culture, values, and language. Entropic Tagalog culture long had the goal of subsuming all other Austronesian ethnoi under its belt. We see that the Katipunan had this goal from the very start:

The objective pursued by this association is noble and worthy; to unite the inner being and thoughts of the Tagalogs through binding pledge, so that through this unity they may gain the strength to destroy the dense shroud that benights the mind and to discover the Path of the mind and to discover the Path of Reason and Enlightenment. The word Tagalog means all those born in this archipelago; therefore, though Visayan, Ilocano, Pampango, etc., they are all Tagalogs.

Emilio Jacinto, Primer to the Katipunan

Assent to this idea kept itself not just to some idealists from the Katipunan’s initial cadre, but even to the Revolutionary government’s highest levels. Carlos Ronquilo, secretary to Emilio Aguinaldo himself, writes thus:

This is what the readers must understand: by what we refer to as Tagalog, a term which may be found on almost every page of this account, we do not mean, as some believe, those who were born in Manila, Cavite and Balacan, etc. no, we wish to refer to the Philippines… because, in our opinion, this term should apply to all the children of the Filipino nation. Tagalog, or stated more clearly, the name “Tagalog” has no other meaning but “Taga-ilog” (from the river) which, traced directly to its root, refers to those who prefer to settle along rivers, truly a trait, it cannot be denied, of all those born in the Philippines, in whatever island or town.

Carlos Ronquilo, The Revolution of 1896-1897

Hence here begins the motte-and-bailey tactic that the Tagalog-built Establishment uses in carrying out its Entropic policy. Government-backed historians see this paltry goal and jump to the conclusion that since the Katipunan and the Revolutionary government applied “Tagalog” to all Filipinos (whose connotation had shifted from insulares to all people living in Filipinas in the late 19th century), all “Filipinos” joined the Revolution for the Spanish called it the Tagalog War. A nonsensical motte-and-bailey statement fit only for a matriarchal race.

Truly, the Philippine tribes share only your typical Austronesian commonalities:

• dorsal slit circumcision (where no foreskin is removed)

• matriarchy,

• collectivism,

• outrigger boats,

• stilt houses,

• pottery style, and

• warrior tattoos.

That said, a few Austronesiasn tribes have already broken against these commonalities in prehistory. See the Maori who abandoned circumcision and matriarchy after landing on New Zealand, or the Toba Batak who adopted patriarchy and ritual cannibalism, or even the Kapampangans who followed the same lines as the Maori. True, Malaysia and Indonesia formed from colonial lines, but civic national identity never subsumed individual ethnoi, and unity in diversity remained important to them. Civil Malaysian and Indonesian nationalism also sprang from different dialects of bahasa being common along those colonial lines. In the Philippines, however, the only linguae francae that existed historically were Spanish and English. In fact, Spanish usage only increased during the American period:

There is, however, another aspect in this case which should be considered. This aspect became evident to me as I traveled through the islands, using ordinary transportation and mixing with all classes of people under all conditions. Although based on the school statistics it is said that more Filipinos speak English than any other language, no one can be in agreement with this declaration if they base their assessment on what they hear. Spanish is everywhere the language of business and social intercourse. In order for anyone to obtain prompt service from anyone, Spanish turns out to be more useful than English. And outside of Manila it is almost indispensable. The Americans who travel around all the islands customarily use it.

In the meantime, the use of Spanish, instead of declining in the face of the propaganda promoting English, seems to spread by itself. This fact has merited the attention of the government. The Education Director’s report for 1908 says in page 9: “Spanish continues to be the most prominent and important one spoken in political, journalistic and commercial circles. English has active rivals as the language of trade and instruction. It is equally probable that the adult population has lost interest in learning English.” I believe it is a fact that many more people now know the Spanish language than when the North Americans sailed for these islands and their occupation took place.

The Ford Report of 1916. No. 3: The Use of English.

These facts the Katipunan and by extension the Tagalog Establishment routinely ignores. Like with Ukraine, civic nationalism subsumed and replaced ethnic identities within the Philippines. An artificial ethnos sprang from seeds planted by the Revolution. The Westphalian poison crystalized in the 1950s, thanks to likes of Carlos P Romulo. One can only look at his infamous newspaper article to see how the poison spread:

I am a Filipino–inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future. As such I must prove equal to a two-fold task–the task of meeting my responsibility to the past, and the task of performing my obligation to the future.

I sprung from a hardy race, child many generations removed of ancient Malayan pioneers. Across the centuries the memory comes rushing back to me: of brown-skinned men putting out to sea in ships that were as frail as their hearts were stout. Over the sea I see them come, borne upon the billowing wave and the whistling wind, carried upon the mighty swell of hope–hope in the free abundance of new land that was to be their home and their children’s forever.

This is the land they sought and found. Every inch of shore that their eyes first set upon, every hill and mountain that beckoned to them with a green-and-purple invitation, every mile of rolling plain that their view encompassed, every river and lake that promised a plentiful living and the fruitfulness of commerce, is a hallowed spot to me.

By the strength of their hearts and hands, by every right of law, human and divine, this land and all the appurtenances thereof–the black and fertile soil, the seas and lakes and rivers teeming with fish, the forests with their inexhaustible wealth in wild life and timber, the mountains with their bowels swollen with minerals–the whole of this rich and happy land has been, for centuries without number, the land of my fathers. This land I received in trust from them and in trust will pass it to my children, and so on until the world is no more.

I am a Filipino. In my blood runs the immortal seed of heroes–seed that flowered down the centuries in deeds of courage and defiance. In my veins yet pulses the same hot blood that sent Lapulapu to battle against the first invader of this land, that nerved Lakandula in the combat against the alien foe, that drove Diego Silang and Dagohoy into rebellion against the foreign oppressor.

That seed is immortal. It is the self-same seed that flowered in the heart of Jose Rizal that morning in Bagumbayan when a volley of shots put an end to all that was mortal of him and made his spirit deathless forever, the same that flowered in the hearts of Bonifacio in Balintawak, of Gergorio del Pilar at Tirad Pass, of Antonio Luna at Calumpit; that bloomed in flowers of frustration in the sad heart of Emilio Aguinaldo at Palanan, and yet burst forth royally again in the proud heart of Manuel L. Quezon when he stood at last on the threshold of ancient Malacañan Palace, in the symbolic act of possession and racial vindication.

Romulo, C. P. (1941). I Am a Filipino. Malacañang Palace Presidential Museum and Library. The Government of the Republic of the Philippines.

From his words we find the same narrative that repeated in schools and colleges across the state: one Austronesian people, homgeneous except in so-called dialect, fighting for a united cause against Spain for centuries, with Tagalog heroes at the forefront. These Westphalian efforts resulted in the Tagalog language being renamed Pilipino in 1959 to be more palatable to the population at large. Of course, no one bought into it, especially Kapampangans and Visayans. Diosdado Macapagal, himself the scion of traitorous Kapampangan noblemen, moved the national Independence Day in an act of Tagalista obeisance. These efforts culminated with Marcos’ Democratic Revolution from the Center, with the 1973 Constitution providing for a conlang called Filipino to become the new national language. Here we see desperate attempts to impose a national ethnic identity on a disparate populace. Of course, uniting disparate peoples with almost nothing in common happens only when one culture trumps all others. Marcos and later Aquino’s efforts resulted in Tagalog culture and language becoming the norm. Government-backed historians write thus:

In his patriotic writings, Bonifacio expressed his concept of nationhood. In K.K.K Katungkulang Gagawin ng mga Z.Li.B., Pagibig sa Tinubuaang Bayan, Hibik ng Filipinas sa Ynang España, and Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Tagalog, he referred to the Philippine islands as sangkapaluan (archipelago) or Katagalugan (Tagalog Nation). In a revolutionary leaflet printed in Cavite during the first quarter of 1897, Bonifacio wrote: “Mabuhay ang Haring Bayang Katagalugan.” (“Long live the Great Tagalog Nation”)

In Focus: Andres Bonifacio and the 1896 Revolution

This Westphalian poison of blurring the lines between ethnos and civitas bears its intended fruits today: national identity is important to the liberalist professional-managerial class, and atomization resulted in the Leviathan State grabbing power. We have discussed at length the Revolution of Mass and Scale brought by Westphalian poison, and how the liberal Establishment demands that Filipinos put their so-called nation above their homes and their communities. Indeed, the Philippines’ case is sheer proof of Elite Theory’s validity.

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Nation-Building and Elite Theory: Culture as Downstream of Politics

There cannot be a firmly established political state unless there is a teaching body
with definitely recognized principles. If the child is not taught from infancy that he
ought to be a republican or a monarchist, a Catholic or a free-thinker, the state will
not constitute a nation; it will rest on uncertain and shifting foundations; and it will be constantly exposed to disorder and change.

Napoleon I

Nation-building refers to the process of establishing national identity using state power. That is, the state imposes values, preferences, and language on all citizens. Contrary to the maxim that politics is downstream of culture, we have the exact opposite: nation-building proves that culture is downstream of politics.

Strong, centralized states use nation-building out of necessity, for this allows efficiency and sheer application instead of thinking and prudence. Samuel Francis writes thus regarding the Managerial State:

Mass production requires not only homogeneous goods and services but also homogeneous consumers, who cannot vary in their tastes, values, and patterns of consumption, and who must consume if the planning of the corporations is to be effective. The moral formula of managerial capitalism is [therefore] a justification of mass, the legitimization of immediate gratification of appetites and desires, and the rejection of frugality, thrift, and the postponement of gratification. Mass advertising serves to articulate an ethic of hedonism, and modern credit devices and the manipulation of aggregate demand serve to encourage patterns of hedonistic behavior in the mass population.

Samuel Francis, Leviathan and its Enemies

The manager finds his wealth from his ability to apply rules and regulations to situations, his managerial skill trumping his productive ability. He has no skin in the game regarding property rights or proper administrative prudence, so his on-paper successes may translate to concrete failures. Nation-building is the manager’s most important tool, for consumption-based identity allows state powers to increase. The liberal professional-managerial class indulges in popular media and sloganeering. No better slogan better describes the Philippines’ current state than the Tagalog Isang Bansa, Isang Diwa: "One Nation, One Spirit”.

Similar patterns emerge in history, not just in Ukraine or the Philippines but even Europe and the United States. French, a dialect of the langues-d’oil from Ile-de-France, and Italian, a Tuscan Romance variety, came from minority languages to “national” ones out of managerial assent. These were elite initiatives, and not popular ones: the French Revolutionaires imposed a top-bottom reenvisioning of France as nation-state, and Italy unified from Savoyan Freemasons who wanted to unite the Italian peninsula under their rule. We see that Bretons, Corsicans, Occitans, Venetians, Sicilians, and so on had their peoples, communities, and families subsumed under one civic identity transforming into a new ethnos. Indeed, this Westphalian rot emerged in the 19th Century as governments strove to enhance thier Leviathan powers:

Almost all European governments eventually took steps which homogenized their populations: the adoption of state religions, expulsion of minorities, institution of a national language, eventually the organization of mass public instruction.

Tilly, C., L. Tilly and R. Tilly (1975) The Rebellious Century 1830-1930. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.

The Managerial Elite is doomed to fail for their indices and metrics fail to conform with reality. Both Louis XVI and Nicholas II faced this themselves. While their deaths were tragic mistakes, we must remember why the people rose to support an elite vanguard of Montagnard Jacobins for the French and the February Freemasons and later October Bolsheviks for the Russians: their leaderships had grown decadent, while counselors and managers had taken over for their monarchs.

Liberal Democracy as the god that failed sees homogenization as a must. Managerial liberalism sees that man, unchained from his home and heritage, must be further freed from material need by joining the hivemind:

Thus individuals who are further from the government prefer more homogenization... The intuition for homogenization under a democracy is immediate if we interpret homogenization in terms of roads, infrastructure, or public schools teaching a common language. The “preference” interpretation of homogenization, literally speaking, implies that an individual “chooses” a policy that changes his preferences, knowing that after the change he would feel happier in the country in which he lives. This argument becomes more plausible if we think of a dynamic extension in which parents transmit values and educate their children in such a way which makes them fit better in the country in which they live by adopting certain social norms and types of behavior. Strong attachment to cultural values can be captured by very high costs of homogenization.

Alesina, A. F., & Reich, B. (2015). Nation building.

The Leviathan State holds its constituents hostage by demanding excessive tribute, and forcing the populace to conform in mass lest they lose access to their lost taxes. Anarcho-tyranny by the majority develops, for the Managerial Establishment lets multi-culturalism’s ills develop to accelerate mass conformity:

You can accuse the federal leviathan of many things—corruption, incompetence, waste, bureaucratic strangulation—but mere anarchy, the lack of effective government, is not one of them. Yet at the same time, the state does not perform effectively or justly its basic duty of enforcing order and punishing criminals, and in this respect its failures do bring the country, or important parts of it, close to a state of anarchy. But that semblance of anarchy is coupled with many of the characteristics of tyranny, under which innocent and law-abiding citizens are punished by the state or suffer gross violations of their rights and liberty at the hands of the state. The result is what seems to be the first society in history in which elements of both anarchy and tyranny pertain at the same time and seem to be closely connected with each other and to constitute, more or less, opposite sides of the same coin.

This condition, which in some of my columns I have called "anarcho-tyranny," is essentially a kind of Hegelian synthesis of what appear to be dialectical opposites: the combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection or public safety.

Samuel Francis, Anarcho-Tyranny, U.S.A.

Oversocialization, as Theodore Kasczynski calls, it provides the mass populace with a kind of comfort and security. Yet costs from homogenization need an outlet. Sexual revolution, feminism, student activism, all outlets for the need to rebel result in cultural decay and stagnancy as the Establishment makes its mark. Hence the System’s Neatest Trick plays out:

The only way to deal with guilt among those who refuse to repent is the palliation that comes from social activism. Involvement in social movements like the civil-rights, abortion-rights, and gay-rights movements became a way of calming troubled consciences.

Eugene M. Jones, Libido Dominandi: Sexual Revolution as Political Control

Mass atomization from Nationalism, while tragic, is only the first stepping stone to further Leviathan control. Hence the Westphalian order is already being violated: see America’s suppression of the Confederacy, its countless interventions abroad, its cultural stranglehold on the world order. Russia and China, in their multipolar pursuits, have done likewise lest they fail the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Similar actions will prevail in the future, and by Schumpeter’s Gale even the Empire of Lies and other nations’ Managerial Establishments will tire. A new order will set in through mass conformity, for a global government can easily restrict access to resources for those who fail its standards.

Hence the Manila Establishment demands one nation, one spirit: mass society, mass uniformity, and mass homogeneity. Democratic Revolution from the Center took the god that failed and made it wellspring of this project. The Empire of Lies found willing puppets in Malacanang to impose its globalist agenda on the Filipinos, and its movement will not be stopped.

Nations by Consent: Localism and Neotribalism against the Empire of Lies

The empire of lies proceeds in its policy primarily from rough, direct force… We all know that having justice and truth on our side is what makes us truly strong.

Vladimir Putin

The Empire of Lies refers to the neoliberal, globalist, and socially progressive order that America began by suppressing the Confederacy. American commitment crystalized in 1913, when the Federal Reserve began, when the income tax was set in, and when popular election of state senators became norm. The Old Right faded, with the Republican Party cementing its New Right shift with the Southern Strategy and resulting neoconservatism. The Empire of Lies saw that America lose its small-town and localist values in favor of liberal mass society.

Rousseauan and Hobbesian values made their headway in the Philippines earlier with the Revolution. Their futile ascent through the Tower of Babel, however, will not change that man’s end is not mass society. His earthly end lays in closed-knit communities, where he can grow in virtue and friendship. Ideological particulars had come from mass society’s growth. The Revolution of Mass and Scale, growing from Late Medieval times, had ruined man’s conception of civil society and his earthly end. Indeed, whatever form of government works best at a small scale. Local government trumps national government in all things, especially in regulation and taxation. The city’s first corruption happened for the city is a state in miniature, and was prone to faster atomization than smaller communities.

Aristotle wrote only in the context of a city state, and the Scholastics thought sovereignty resided in the political community as a whole - which practically speaking was small in their days. Latham contests that St Thomas believed in a large state, but his political writings referred to a political community in general, which was barely bigger than a city in his time. Thus, we present localism and neotribalism as the best way to induce nations by consent. A community forms because many men succed where one fails. However, cooperation demands mutual understanding among cooperators. Those with the same skills, the same frameworks, and so on find greater success than disparate individuals who by accident try to work together. Thus anarcho-capitalism necessarily fails on a wide scale, as the Republic of Cospeia shows: only so many men can work together without a pemanent coercive authority. Socialism, too, fails on a wide scale, such that communal monastic and mendicant communities were meant only for those with the aptitude to join. All forms of government necessarily fail when applied on a wide scale, and local communities should have the right to decide how to manage themselves.

Thus the Westphalian poison needs to be purged, the Tagalog cancer excised. The Tagalog-led monopoly of violence needs to be removed in favor of controls and regulations on private violence. Rothbard himself wished for police to take matters into their own hands, and be penalized only when their decisions proved imprudent. Local police and local militias need more importance than national ones. Judicial combat and vigilante justice ought to be tolerated within reason. Local laws and charters need precedence over national ones, and the national bar needs to be disbanded. Only by truth and justice can the Empire of Lies be defeated, and these better spread when civil society remains in its proper domain, and the common good keeps itself to a community and not mass society.

Pamag-aclas careng tampalasan pamimintu ia quing Dius!