50th Congress Inaugural Address

The following is a transcription of the Inaugural Address/Speech from the Throne, delivered shortly after 12:00 noon on June 30, 2014

 Om gam ganapataye namaha. Sahana vavatu, saha nau bhunaktu, saha viryam karavavahai, tejasvi navadhitam astu, ma vidvishavahai. Om shanti, shanti, shanti.

 Mr. Chief Justice, members of the Fiftieth Congress, all those who served in the Forty-ninth Congress, distinguished guests, fellow citizens of Patria, embodiments of divine souls, Amma’s beloved children: Hari Bol, Om Namah Shivaya, Jai Bhagwan and blessings of the Holy Mother and the lineage of Divine Masters.

The oath of office that you heard sworn just a few moments ago is the same oath that was taken on this day in 1914. A century ago today, as the Twenty-Fifth Congress was inaugurated, we read in the Patria Gazette or Castoropolis Chronicle the accounts of the assassination of an obscure heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and doubted that any nation would be willing to go to war over such an event. We likely believed that if war did break out in the summer of 1914, the conflict would be short, with limited casualties, and would not destroy a generation of the world’s youth, overthrow some of the macro-world’s mightiest empires, or become the breeding ground of a deadly flu epidemic. Who would have known on this day in 1914 that the death of an Archduke that few of our fellow citizens had heard of, in a country that few could find on a map, would plunge the world into four years of brutal, bitter war, four years of utterly senseless fratricidal slaughter of soldiers and civilians alike – a global war that had never been experienced in the history of warfare and that thanks to a peace treaty tainted with vindictiveness toward the alleged aggressors would be experienced again, on an even larger scale, only two short decades later. Therefore, on this centennial anniversary, let us pause briefly to remember those who sacrificed their lives amid the trenches and poison gas of the Great War. Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu.

Of course the Great War of 1914-1918 did not prove to be the “war to end all wars”. And likewise the Great Recession of 2008 will not be known as the “recession to end all recessions”. Indeed, for a fair portion of Patria the downturn is still continuing. The Swadeshi Ramrajya’s exhortations to take back the economy resonate as strongly today as in 2010. Many of our citizens have faced four long years of unemployment, wire to wire in the previous administration. Jobless statistics today may look better than four years ago only because an untold number have disappeared from the unemployment rolls not because they have stopped looking for work but because they have decided out of desperation to take part-time jobs, low-skill dead-end jobs, or subsistence-level jobs that pay substantially less than their pre-downturn salary, if not minimum wage. From the shuttered factories of the Rust Belt in Centralia to the empty cubicles of abandoned office parks in suburban Caesarea, so much of Patria is still awaiting the long-promised recovery, still asking “where are the jobs?” The nefarious macro-world forces of globalization, offshoring and free trade are only partially to blame. Within Patria there is no lack of heartless, spineless bean counters in the executive suites who did not hesitate to export jobs to China and throw Patrienish citizens out of work by the thousands if doing so would turn healthy profits and enrich their shareholders. The made-in-Patria economy, the SRM’s calls to put Patria first and bring the jobs home, the rejection of globalism, can only succeed when Congress ceases to act as an army of mercenaries fighting on behalf of the corporate elite. Now is the time to end once and for all corporate welfare and tax breaks for the plutocracy. Now is the time for Congress to enact a minimum wage of 570 rupees an hour, approximately 15 US dollars, the hourly minimum wage that was recently passed in Seattle, Washington. This new Congress must enact appropriate legislation in order to ensure a level playing field and fair play for the manufacturing industries, along with living wages, job security and access to advanced training for Patria’s working class, who increasingly require specialized technical education or a college degree in order to find work, whereas not long ago there were many well-paying jobs that could be filled with only a high school diploma.

Once again, as it has been referenced on previous inauguration days, Patria must fight the growing gender gap in education. We have long known that from grade school to graduate school, from ABCs to PhDs, girls are excelling, succeeding and achieving on a much higher level than almost all the boys. Girls enter school with a lead on boys, and schools then fail to close the gaps. Instead, they increase. The behavioral advantage that girls have over boys in kindergarten, based on teachers’ assessments of their students, grow even larger by middle school. By high school, even advanced math and science classes – once a male stronghold – now have far more girls than boys. At college graduation ceremonies across Patria this spring, women in caps and gowns vastly outnumbered men. And in an economy that rewards knowledge rather than physical strength, the academic struggles of boys turn into economic struggles. If Patria is to build a better economy and leave the previous decade’s global economic downturn behind, we must solve our boy problems.

The failure of holding boys back so that they enter first grade one year later than girls needs not be elaborated. It is simply a recipe to increase the dropout rate of boys. There is insufficient evidence that single-sex boys-only schools are helping narrow the educational gender gap, let alone transform effete boys into tough National Union men. In this new administration, Patria’s boys – at least those who are academically diligent enough to graduate from high school and be accepted into college – and girls too, of course, should have the opportunity to reap the benefits of beyond-the-classroom learning, spiritual growth, self-awareness, social maturity and all-round expansiveness that can be gained during an academic interregnum between high school senior and college freshman year. The gap year, long a standard practice in the United Kingdom, must become standard in Patria as well. If you, as a twelfth-grader, have studied hard in order to get top grades, played hard in intramurals and varsity sports, and have just learned that you’ve been accepted into the university you had your heart set on, you probably can’t wait for Frosh Week in September. But perhaps you should wait. Our young men and women should not be required to make the transition from high school to university over one short summer, but instead should devote themselves over the course of one calendar year or academic session to a well-structured program that may include macro-world travel, learning foreign languages and absorbing foreign cultures in real-world environments, deepening yoga sadhana, advancing the practice of Sanatan Dharma by spending some time at an ashram such as Amritapuri or Penusila, seva or selfless service at home by doing volunteer work for charitable organizations in the local community, and even the ultimate patriotic duty of military service. In the US, where the gap year has begun to take hold, universities are reporting an increase in GPA, greater engagement in campus life, increased likelihood that students will graduate 'on time' or within four years, and of course greater clarity with career ambitions. For the students who enter university after a gap year, they actually have something interesting to say to their professors and classmates. With such a packed year of life experiences, with the world as their teacher, there's simply much more to share, relate to, and communicate. These personal anecdotes can come out in conversation with faculty, in essays and in job applications, and of course can be shared at the college pub.

The colleges and universities that our post-millennial children enter, in Patria as well in America, are for the most part traditional bastions of liberalism – a chorus of liberal voices from students and faculty alike that is once again making itself heard beyond the campus. As a result of the Supreme Court’s recent decision that Patria’s gay and lesbian citizens must be accorded full and equal rights – including the right to marry the life partner they choose – as well as the growing unpopularity of American-style social conservatism that was evidenced during the 2014 election campaign, Patria is turning away from the old refrain that it must remain “safe for social conservatives”. With the Positive Possibilities coalition being buttressed by the resurgent Social Democrats in the Fiftieth Congress, there can be little doubt that Patria is experiencing a new shift away from economic conservatism, neo-conservatism or paleo-conservatism toward social justice and more liberal or progressive values. These values, of course, had never disappeared from Patria’s Congress and the public square but since the turn of the millennium had been nearly drowned under the now-receding tide of right-wing activism fueled by petty, regressive busybodies who took their marching orders from evangelical Christians, American Tea Party politicians, Rush Limbaugh, and the other rightist AM radio talk show hosts as they set the agenda to re-criminalize abortion, relegate homosexuality to the closet, exalt chastity and abstinence as the only acceptable expressions of sexuality outside of marriage, and keep women swaddled under layers of “modest” clothing. 

Along with the rejection of social conservative values and the now-discredited, oxymoronic “forward to the 1950s” slogan, Patria is no longer a safe place for big-business economic conservatives or corporate conservatives who dominate the US Republican Party to do business. Our armed forces exist only to defend Patria in case of imminent attack, not to fight needless foreign wars on behalf of Big Oil and to keep the military-industrial complex in business. The Koch brothers and ALEC are not welcome to set up shop here. The CEOs of megabanks and transnational corporations without social consciences, whose highest loyalty is the bottom line, are persona non grata in Patria. Let this be Patria’s warning to the banksters and corporate welfare recipients: too big to fail is not too big to jail. As we have seen over the course of the Forty-Ninth Congress, austerity has failed to stimulate Patria’s economy and has brought no benefits to the unemployed, working poor and what remains of the middle class. Therefore, let us move on from that mean-spirited cut-to-the-bone policy. Those who advocate slashing or tax-cutting our way out of recession will ultimately prove to be on the wrong side of public opinion. Through judicious and responsible spending on social programs, this government does have a duty of care for all citizens of Patria, particularly those who are experiencing poverty and misfortune though no fault of their own. Taxes must be maintained at fiscally sound rates and collected for the common good, in order to provide public services and programs that benefit and uplift every man, woman and child in Patria, not cut in order to benefit the soulless plutocrats and amoral one-percenter privateers. As Theodore Roosevelt said, “a great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy”. Nonetheless, even a more liberal or progressive Patria will continue to speak truth to leftist orthodoxy and the tired tenets of political correctness. If it is at all possible in this new Congress, and not an oxymoron, Patria should become a home of grassroots liberal-libertarian or liberal-populist activism – a made-in-Patria version of libertarianism or populism that does not support the hypocrisy of depending on the “free market” to decide all economic issues while relying on extra-constitutional government decrees for social questions that affect consenting adults’ personal lives, such as the right to seek a safe abortion or to marry a partner of the same sex. Patria must continue to stand completely and unflinchingly for free speech and uncensored open debate of even the most controversial, loathsome, distasteful and unpopular views, such as patriotic immigration reform, condemnation of Israeli neo-apartheid as distinct from condemnation of Judaism or individual Jews, whether certain races or ethnicities have higher IQs than others, and America’s role as the macro-world’s judge, jury and executioner. Dissident voices, both right and left, must find a home in the Inner Realm, free from fear of being stamped down by federal authorities and local police. Patria must man the front lines of the battle against the muzzling of politically incorrect thoughts. Patria must take its place in the vanguard of the battle for non-violent expressions of ideas and beliefs that the PC thought police would dare to criminalize. Deeds may be illegal, but thoughts can never be! Die Gedanken sind frei!

 Amid the proliferation of big-government food police and non-government social busybodies, particularly animal-rights zealots, who are quick to pass judgment on our dinner table, eating meat may be one of Patria’s most politically incorrect acts. The many environmental and personal health benefits of a vegetarian diet are duly noted, as are the unsavory aspects of animal slaughter. Nonetheless, vegetarians and vegans do not hold the moral high ground. Neither do organizations such as PETA, who bully and shame meat eaters if not criminalize them outright. Those who claim to profess such a high degree of compassion for animals should afford at least some of that compassion toward their fellow humans. While one should not expect non-vegetarian food at a temple, ashram or yoga retreat – with the possible exception of Kripalu, or what is left of it almost two decades since the ouster of its former resident guru – there is no verse in the Bhagavad Gita or in the other scriptures of Sanatan Dharma that explicitly states “thou shalt not eat meat”. If the teaching of non-violence on the path of Sanatan Dharma consisted only of not eating meat, we would not need the presence of sadgurus such as Amma and Karunamayi or the legacy of great souls such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King to impart the true meaning of ahimsa. Those who choose to eat moderate amounts of animal protein may have legitimate medical reasons, both Western and Ayurvedic, for doing so. By following the recommendations of their personal physician or Ayurvedic practitioner, or trusting their own inner healer, they are not lacking in personal will power, compassion for animals, care for the environment or commitment to sadhana. Real transformation begins within, not with what is on ones plate. Therefore, moving forward in this new administration, Patria’s message to vegetarians and vegans is to let go of “you are what you eat”, treat people as ethically as you claim to treat animals, and mind your own business about your fellow citizen’s food choices.

Vegetarian or not, one of the main courses on this new administration’s plate is a meaty or juicy celebration of the Inner Realm’s two hundredth birthday in 2018. The Fiftieth Congress shall have the responsibility to plan Patria-wide commemorations and to fund local bicentennial initiatives. The spirit of 1818 is upon us! Plan your bicentennial project now!

On this day Patria also remembers the legacy of the late Pete Seeger, who inscribed on his banjo: “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender”. From the 1940s until short days before his passing in January of this year at the age of 94, Pete Seeger was deeply involved in nearly every social cause, from labor unions to civil rights, from anti-war protests to the environmental movement. Even if we disagree with Seeger’s political views, such as his ties to the Communist Party, his social activism and musical genius continue to be an inspiration to Patria. From lullabies at mother’s bosom, to sing-songs around the campfire at summer camp, to protest marching chants at university, Patria has grown up with Seeger’s songs. From bringing songs like Guantanamera, Wimoweh and even Raghupate Raghava Raja Ram to the United States to teaching We Shall Overcome to Dr. King, Pete Seeger has truly changed the world, and has done so non-violently, armed only with a banjo and a voice. Though bhajan and kirtan, as well as traditional hymns and folk music, let us take the slogan on Pete Seeger’s banjo to heart in the Fiftieth Congress, as in the words of Psalm 100 we “make a joyful noise unto the Lord” and come before His presence with song. Inspired by Patria’s presence at Bhakti Fest Midwest a few days ago in Madison, Wisconsin, Patria pledges to be in the Bhav and to move the intense heart-opening joyous kirtan experienced one week ago into this Realm’s public squares and halls of government. With voices united, one in spirit, one in fellowship, Patria will sing the names and praises of all the Devas and Devis. Hail to your glory!

As Patria marks a new beginning and places into office a new body of lawmakers, as Patria affirms the strength of its Constitution and promise of its democracy, as Patria reflects on the centenary of the horrific Great War and prepares to celebrate its bicentennial in 2018, let us acknowledge the supreme lawmaker and lawgiver. The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The judgments of the Lord are true, they are righteous altogether. Behold, a good doctrine has been given unto you. Forsake it not. May peace and goodwill prevail among all the inhabitants of this Inner Realm, and may God bless Patria!

 © 2014, L Con. Pat. The above text is an official transcription, preserved in the Archives of Patria. Any re-broadcast, re-transmission or other use of the pictures, descriptions or accounts of this Inauguration ceremony without the express written consent of the Undersecretary for Protocol, Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Dharma of Patria is strictly prohibited. Don’t fool with us, boy! We will throw your sorry ass in the slammer!