Fifty First Congress Inaugural Address/Speech from the Throne

The following is the official text of the Inaugural Address/Speech from the Throne delivered at the Capitol in Castoropolis, shortly after 12:00 noon Patrienish Local Time on June 30, 2018:

Madam Chief Justice, members of the Fifty-First Congress, all those who served in the Fiftieth Congress, distinguished guests, fellow citizens of Patria, embodiments of divine souls and all of Amma’s beloved children: ya devi sarvabhuteshu matrirupena samsthita namastasyai namastasyai namastasyai namo namah. Salutations and prostrations to the Devi who abides in all beings in the form of Mother as this most auspicious bicentennial inaugural day has arrived. Behold the Inner Realm that the Divine Mother in Her limitless mercy has preserved for two hundred years, the Inner Realm that on this day we vow at Her lotus feet to love and serve, and whose Constitution to support and defend.

On this day in 1818 it was in divine right order for our founding mothers and founding fathers to establish an Inner Realm founded on and devoted to the practice of Sanatan Dharma, popularly known as Hinduism, committed to seva or selfless service as modeled by Lord Rama’s faithful monkey servant Hanuman, and loyal to the teachings of the Vedas, Puranas, Bhagavad Gita and the lineage of gurus. Seventy-five years before Swami Vivekananda introduced the teachings to a receptive Western world at the Chicago Parliament of Religions, Patria raised the torch of Sanatan Dharma and has held it high to this day. Patria’s shraddha – faith – and bhakti – devotion – have never wavered. To borrow the motto of the province of Ontario, ut incepit fidelis sic permanet: loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, Patria slowly grew – if it grew at all –  amid a wild, untamed pre-industrial frontier. Until the coming of the telegraph and railways in the 1840s, the teachings of Sanatan Dharma could travel only as fast as a horse could gallop. But still Patria took root. Even before the American Civil War, Patria offered a safe haven to runaway slaves. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In 1867 as Canada came into being, Patria established a special relationship with the new dominion that continues to this day, even if no Canadian leader from Sir John A. Macdonald to Justin Trudeau has ever recognized Patria’s consular mission in midtown Toronto. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In the 1880s as the great European powers scrambled for colonies in Africa and Asia, Patria claimed Madagascar and the Spratly Islands as part of its colonial empire. The claims were abandoned by 1900 not only when Congress failed to ratify a resolution that would have made the tenrec Patria’s national animal but after Patria recognized the evils of colonialism and the costs of taking up the “white man’s burden” decades before the great macro-world powers granted their colonies independence. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In 1914 Patria declared neutrality in the fratricidal Great War and celebrated its centennial amid the bullets, bombs and poison gas of that war and a deadly flu epidemic in 1918. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In the 1920s Ramrajyavani – the Voice of Patria – signed on in order to propagate the teachings of Sanatan Dharma and bring yoga classes, bhajans and kirtan into our homes via the new medium of radio. Legendary AM powerhouse stations such as PMC, PMBC and POKX came on the air and continue to broadcast today. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In the 1930s Patria battled the Great Depression with its own version of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Many of Patria’s classic Art Deco public building were built as job-creation projects, much like WPA projects in the US, while unlike FDR in 1933, the Patrienish Rupee remained redeemable in gold. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In 1941 Patria committed no troops to fight another fratricidal World War but the Inner Realm supported the Allied cause in the struggle to defeat a true Empire of Evil. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In 1947 as India won independence, Patria also established a special relationship with the motherland of yoga and spiritual home of Sanatan Dharma, even if no Indian government from Jawaharlal Nehru’s Congress Party to Narendra Modi’s BJP has ever recognized Patria. Bharat Mata Ki Jai and loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In the 1950s Patria became virtually a clean-cut piece of postwar Leave It to Beaver Americana, where air was clean, sex was dirty and consumer goods were cheap, where the then-centrist National Union ruled, where women were homemakers and mothers, and where certain races and ethnic groups knew their place. Yet the flame of Sanatan Dharma continued to burn, albeit at times clandestinely, beneath the surface of a lily-white ostensibly Judeo-Christian utopia. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In the 1960s, while the National Union continued its hold on Patria, the counterculture and so-called “New Left” took root. As hippies, flower children and US draft dodgers proliferated in the 37^th and 38^th Congress, Patria redoubled its effort to look inward, “tune in, turn on, drop out” and “make love not war”. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In the 1970s and 1980s, even as yoga was becoming mainstream and immigrants from South Asia were introducing Hinduism to the western macro-world, Patria settled into a somewhat bland liberal, secular republic, usually known as Castoria rather than Patria or Ramrajya. These were the awful days of the powerless do-nothing Fortieth Congress, after which then came the dark time of failed policies and failed hopes of the Forty-First Congress, followed by the alcohol-fueled hedonism of the Forty-Second Congress, which nonetheless left Patria in better shape than it found it. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

Finally in 1989, as the assimilationist regression-to-the-mainstream Forty-Third Congress became a house divided against itself, there came the spark of liberation which has become known as the Dharmic Revolution. Actually the “Spark of ’89” was a counter-revolution against the tired old forces of blandness, centrism and assimilation to mainstream Western Judeo-Christian values. It served as a call to return Patria to the values and traditions that had birthed it in 1818. Whether a revolution or counter-revolution, it did not take place in a macro-world vacuum. As we know, Patria’s spiritual re-awakening almost three decades ago was inspired by and took place amid the fall of the Berlin Wall, the democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe and the demise of the Soviet Union. Patria turned inward, focused inwardly, as the Forty-Fourth Congress election in 1990 called for a return to the spiritual values that gave birth to Patria and made it great. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In the Forty-Fifth Congress, Patria deeply felt the pain caused by the downfall of one beloved teacher in the Kripalu lineage, but sought out others and between 1994 and 1998 transitioned from Amrit to Amma. During this transitional time, Patria was represented during a Premyatra or Pilgrimage of Love to India that re-connected with the lineage of Swami Kripalvananda to whose lotus feet Patria remains devoted. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

On December 31, 1999 citizens of Patria were kept in suspense wondering if the power grid would fail and the infrastructure would collapse as the clock struck midnight. That it did not, and the first day of the new millennium turned out to be a day just like any other, was due as much to the grace of the Divine Mother as to the computer geeks who spent much time and treasure fixing the alleged Y2K bug. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

On September 11, 2001 Patria mourned and still remembers the lives lost in the horrific attacks perpetrated by Al-Qaeda, but would not join George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror. Hate cannot drive out hate. Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

In 2008 the macro-world’s economy melted down and threatened to take Patria down with it. Yet Patria rode out the Great Recession, the Patrienish Rupee – still based on a gold standard as in the 1930s – lost virtually no value and the economy recovered through the grace of the Divine Mother. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

And thus, over two centuries, this lovely land has prospered with the blessings of Amma, Karunamayi and all the Devis. Rooted, vital and expansive, grounded in the Positive Possibilities and the Divine Mother’s love. The motto of Canada’s most populous province has never rung truer in Patria. Loyal she began, loyal she remains.

With that re-cap of Patria’s history, we have looked back over the past two hundred years. Now let us look forward to the goals that this new Congress hopes to achieve over the next four years.

That the duty of care for the environment – beginning with simple steps of re-purposing, recycling, conserving non-renewable energy and reducing dependence on fossil fuels –  must be one of the primary duties of all Patrienish citizens in this new administration is widely accepted. No one can fail to note the extremes of climate change in recent years – let us not use the term “global warming” because in many cases the climate change, caused or exacerbated by human activity and misuse of nature’s gifts, has resulted in brutally cold winters and more snowfall. In 2016 Patria became the first and thus far the only government with the exception of Samoa to have ratified the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary or MAPS treaty, intended to establish all ocean waters north of the Arctic Circle as a marine protected area, free from oil drilling and all other exploitation, thereby protecting the fragile Arctic ecosystem and safeguarding the melting polar ice cap that is a major factor in climate change. MAPS would also compel a global shift away from fossil fuels to sustainable energy and unite world leaders in the commitment to value long-term collective good over short-term individual gain.

But being thousands of kilometers away, the Arctic Ocean may not seem to affect Patria’s daily life. Along with planting trees and keeping bees, what else can citizens of Patria do locally in order to foster sustainable living? The spiritual leader of the Amrita Party has the answer. In this bicentennial year, it is Amma’s wish that Patria concentrates its environmental initiatives on source reduction – stopping waste before it begins, and sharply reducing our use of plastics. Recycling is far from enough. Instead of recycling plastics and other throw-away products that need to be processed for reconfiguration into another form, we need to start using products that are designed to last, can easily be reused or repurposed, or find an alternative way of living that eliminates the need for the product altogether.

As we know, plastic is a notoriously unfriendly product for Mother Earth. It biodegrades very slowly, if at all. Discarded plastic sits in landfills for centuries. Plastic trash thrown into rivers and lakes makes its way into the oceans, where fish, sea birds and other marine animals mistake it for food or get entangled in the millions of tons of plastic waste choking the oceans and die horrific deaths. Fish and other animals taken from the sea for human consumption ingest micro-plastics which eventually end up on the human dinner table. But even vegans are not immune from plastic contamination. Therefore, as a bicentennial project the Fifty First Congress will answer the call of Amma’s Green Friends organization and take up the 2018 Plastics Challenge which was inaugurated by Amma in February of this year. Citizens of Patria will do their part to reduce significantly the use of plastics, reuse or repurpose so-called single-use plastic products at their homes, schools and workplaces, and find alternatives to plastic items, such as wooden toothbrushes, metal water bottles and even metal drinking straws.

If there is to be a war on plastic, India – perhaps the macro-world’s most polluted nation – is leading from the front. As all forms of disposable plastic were banned in Delhi in 2017, Castoropolis has done likewise, and residents of Patria’s capital have learned to bag their groceries in cloth bags supplied from home and sip their Diet Coke or Thums Up in a reusable cup without a straw. The precincts of Caesarea, Nova Columbia and Antioch have followed suit along with several other cities in Patria. On the First Session, 51^st Congress order paper, there should be legislation that would ban single-use plastic items such as straws, cutlery and drink stirrers Patria-wide as the UK is planning to do, India vows to achieve by 2022 and New York City is considering.

Last but not least among Patria’s environmental initiatives: breaking the addiction to fossil fuels by reducing our dependence on cars, by using public transportation whenever possible for our daily trips. Patria’s roads, bridges, railways, subways – particularly the Castoropolis Metro which is celebrating its centennial this year – and other public transportation infrastructure must be improved and renovated as  bicentennial projects, with private-public partnerships if possible. Patria Rail as its bicentennial project should roll out high-speed trains that link Castoropolis with the capital cities of all thirteen Precincts.

Forty years ago today the Forty First Congress was inaugurated at this very place. While there have been other failed administrations over the past 200 years, the 41^st Congress failed virtually right out of the box. One of the main reasons for its failure: the wrong choices made in post-secondary education. Even forty years ago, university was not a place to float aimlessly for three or four years. But at least in those days, even with a liberal arts degree more often than not postwar baby boomers could get a fairly good job after graduation. To state the obvious for millennials, those days are never coming back. Therefore, in Patria’s colleges and universities there must be a near-total emphasis on STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – rather than the arts and humanities, which have become almost irrelevant to today’s job market. While a basic grounding in the arts and humanities, not to mention a working knowledge of at least one foreign language, should still form part of a college education, the goal of a liberal education can be accomplished by a few non-STEM elective humanities courses and a year or two of studying Sanskrit and a foreign language of strategic value such as Russian, Mandarin or Arabic, not majors or specializations in such fields that are unlikely to lead to meaningful employment. For those who work at Patria’s colleges and universities as faculty, library technicians and support staff, there must be a better deal and an end to precarious part-time positions and one-year contract teaching positions that have virtually no chance of becoming full-time.

To those tough-as-nails National Union men, Amma says: Men have also suffered greatly as a result of the exile of the feminine principle from the world. Because of the oppression of women and the suppression of the feminine aspect within men, men’s lives have become fragmented, often painful. Men, too, have to awaken to their feminine qualities. They have to develop empathy and understanding in their attitude towards women, and in the way they relate to the world. Statistics show that men — not women — commit by far most of the crime and killing in this world. Only love, compassion, and patience — the fundamental qualities of women — can lessen the intrinsically aggressive, overactive tendencies of men. Similarly, there are women who need the qualities of men, so that their goodness and purity don’t immobilize them. Today when competition and anger are the norm everywhere, it is the patience and tolerance of women that create the harmony that exists in the world. Women are the power and the very foundation of our existence in the world. It is therefore crucial that women everywhere make every effort to rediscover their fundamental nature, for only then can we save this world. What today’s world really needs is cooperation between men and women, based on a firm sense of unity in the family and society. Wars and conflicts, all the suffering and lack of peace in the present-day world, will certainly lessen to a great extent if women and men begin to cooperate and support each other.

While Patria has moved on from the tired old “safe place for social conservatives” evangelical-style calls for modest dress for women and bans on public displays of affection by the Chads and Staceys, Patria must still be a safe place for so-called Incels. Of course Patria has zero tolerance for misogyny or violence against women, but this generation of lost boys, these socially inept men, more often than not on the autistic spectrum, who are unable to experience intimate relationships despite failed attempts to do so – hence involuntarily celibate – will not be ignored and ridiculed to the point where they become radicalized by the far right and take out their frustration by committing violent homicidal crimes. Each precinct’s Ministry of Health should take action to address the needs of Incels, perhaps by offering subsidies for the purchase of Real Dolls.

Notwithstanding the fear-mongering during the recent election campaign and the proliferation of “Faith Family Freedom” tweets, Communist hordes waving red flags and brandishing hammers and sickles are not standing at the gates of Patria. But as witnessed by the plurality of seats won by the Social Democrats, citizens of Patria have voted for a renewed commitment to liberal democratic socialism as modeled by Bernie Sanders, the US Senator from Vermont who should have been elected president in 2016 but instead became an honorary citizen of Patria.

Democratic socialism does not mean that the government is coming for your wealth, confiscating your holdings of gold and silver, giving your luxury car to a struggling single mother and turning your mansion into a collective farm. You can be a billionaire, member of the one-percent club or super-rich plutocrat in Patria. You can keep on riding in your chauffeured limousines and private jets. Your mansions and gated communities in East Castoropolis and Crozier Heights are safe from the unwashed hordes. Patria does not begrudge wealth, but it must come with humility. And more importantly, wealth can never be a measure of worth. Patria does not condemn those who earned their wealth through their own initiative and hard work or even those who inherited much of their riches. Patria asks of its plutocrats only that they pay their fair share of taxes, pay their employees living wages and allow them to join unions, and of course – in the noblesse oblige tradition of the Carnegies and Rockefellers – to dedicate at least a small portion of their wealth toward making Patria a better place for those less fortunate. As US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned early in the last century, “we can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both”.

And know this: democratic socialism does not mean that political correctness will be in vogue in Patria. Just because this Congress is the most liberal and left-leaning one ever elected in Patria’s history does not mean that PC buzzwords and jargon such as “intersectionality”, “micro-aggressions” and “patriarchy” will be bandied about. Democratic socialism does not mean that so-called social justice warriors will be running rampant as self-appointed thought police censoring constitutionally protected non-violent views and opinions expressed in the public squares and on social media. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough: Patria must remain a beacon of free speech and open debate of even the most unpopular politically incorrect topics, much to the chagrin of overly sensitive thin-skinned snowflakes who are offended by almost anything and can’t seem to take a joke.

Patria says NO to the elites, NO to “our betters” in the corporate boardrooms and ivory tower think tanks who believe that they know better than the hard-working common folks struggling to make ends meet, NO to the dishwater-dull mainstream establishment liberals and conservatives alike. To the fullest extent possible, the Fifty First Congress shall serve a forum for grassroots populist dissident voices, both right and left, and shall enact legislation that addresses the needs of the common man and woman first and above all. Government exists to serve the people, people do not exist to serve the government.

For the SRM and their “Patria First” friends who have marched to “take back Patria”, we ask “take Patria back from whom?” Take it back from Muslims? Blacks? Gays and lesbians? Illegal immigrants? Bogus refugees? You are looking in the wrong places. You should try taking Patria back from the Koch Brothers, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. From their boardrooms in New York, these amoral banksters, plutocrats and one-percenters own not only America’s economy but that of Patria as well even if they refuse to recognize the micronational world. The Wall Street elites have taken it from you. Sure, Patria has changed and you are still feeling screwed almost a decade after the Great Recession. But don't be so lazy. Find out who is screwing you and do not blame the wrong people. It is not undocumented immigrants who broke unions. It is not Black people who closed your factory and shipped your job to Mexico or China. It is not Syrian refugees who decided that despite your employer’s making huge profits you don't need a raise. It was a white person, usually a heterosexual white male. Just like you, but wearing a bespoke tailored suit and driving a gas-guzzling super luxury car. And you are playing right into their hands. From their boardrooms in New York and their lobbies in Washington DC, they look and see you marching. And the counter protesters show up to fight with you, and they smile. Because they know as long as that ancient technique of divide-and-conquer keeps working, they will keep winning. You are middle class and poor. And as long as they can keep the middle class and poor left-wingers and right-wingers fighting each other in Patria as well as in America, they will keep screwing you harder and harder while laughing all the way to the bank.

Finally, in response to inner voices saying that now is the time for another Premyatra, now is the time to re-light the torch in the spirit of the original Premyatra in December 1995, know this: any time spent in the embrace of Bharat Mata is a nice-to-have, not a must-have, and even if funding is available for appropriation, visiting India will not be a priority in this administration. In a real sense, there is no need for a pilgrimage to Amritapuri, Madurai, Kanyakumari, or any other holy sites in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The most sacred shrine is within and this inner place of pilgrimage can be accessed 24/7 at no cost.

There is no path to peace. Peace is the path. Selfless service is the path. Hands that help are better than lips that pray. May contentment reign within Patria’s borders, health and happiness within Patria’s homes. Strengthen the bonds of friendship and fellowship among all the inhabitants of Patria. Plant virtue in every soul and may the love of Thy name hallow every home and every heart. Let the mantra resound: not my will, O Lord, but Thine – Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya – and the word of Thine ancient seer be fulfilled: The Lord will reign forever, Thy God O Patria, from generation to generation, Hallelujah! May the tree of our lives be rooted in the soil of love. May good deeds be the leaves, kind words be the flowers, and peace be the fruit. May the world flourish as one family, united in love. May we thus be able to create a world in which peace and contentment prevail. JAI MA! May God bless all of you and God bless Patria!

© 2018, LI 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!

Tenrecs get some love as 50th Congress adjourns "sine die"

On the last sitting day of the 50th Congress, the tenrec has become Patria's official animal symbol. Efforts to designate the tenrec as such go back well over a century, following Patria's failed attempt to claim Madagascar as part of its colonial empire in the 1880s. The Act of Congress noted that the tenrec is to Patria what the beaver is to Canada, the bald eagle is to the US, the kangaroo is to Australia and the kiwi is to New Zealand. Patria's national soccer/football team - if there were a micronational World Cup - could now be nicknamed the Tenrecs.

Following the ratification of the "Tenrec Act", the final act of the lame-duck Congress: debate on Patria's financial health, leading up to the ratification of Patria's fiscal 2019 budget. Traditionally, the budget is the final item to be debated and ratified by Congress before summer adjournment.

At 11:28 PM Patrienish Local Time (PLT) immediately following ratification of the budget (declared by the Clerk of the House to be ratified unanimously) and a call for any further business or member's bills to be brought forward (there were none), the Speaker of the House slammed the gavel on the dais, the Sergeant-at-Arms blew the ceremonial vuvuzela, and the words everyone had been waiting to hear rang through the House chamber: "Under the power vested in me by the Constitution of Patria, I declare the Fiftieth Congress of the Inner Realm of Patria adjourned sine die".

Hi, I'm a tenrec. It took over 100 years for Congress to ratify, but I am Patria's official animal!

Tomorrow, June 30, 2018 is Inauguration Day. Ave atque vale, L Con. Pat.