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Introduction: How to run your country from your washroom’s ‘throne’.

Whether you know it or not, you are a sovereign of your country.

What is a sovereign?

There are many definitions of a sovereign, but one might be: “a political entity that has no superior.”

That’s you!

Among other things, you are a political entity that has no superior.

The classic example of a sovereign of a country is that of the United Kingdom and their sovereign,  Elizabeth Windsor (Hess-Saxe-Kastle) also known as Queen Elizabeth II.  She is the sovereign.  In theory that means she owns the country and everyone that lives there is one of her ‘subjects’.

That’s “in theory.”

Elizabeth rules over all Britons from a fancy throne in a fancy throne room, in a placed called parliament, in a room called the House of Commons.

As a wealthy monarch of a sovereign, her throne is jewel encrusted, as is the hat she wears when she sits there: the hat often referred to as ‘the crown.’  The members who sit before her in parliament, though elected by the people to represent the people to her, are technically responsible to her.  It’s her country, so it’s her parliament.

Because she has a lot of money and therefore better things to do with her time, she leaves the running of her country to Parliament.

By the way, parliament means, roughly, a place where people come to talk.  It comes from the French word “parler” (pronounced ‘par-lay’) which means “to speak”, which comes from an almost exact same Latin root word meaning the exact same thing. People come to parliament to parley, to talk and hash things out and find a workable compromise. The French name for Parliament stems from the fact that for the first 300 years or so – after William the Conqueror of Normandy in France, conquered England, the royalty in England all spoke French.  After about 250 years, the English royalty’s French became so garish, that they became the laughingstocks of France, even to French peasants, so I read. At some point, to save face, the English royalty began to speak English, that is, the Queen’s English.

In the United States of America, in theory, the ultimate sovereign is the electorate, manifested in the vote.

In other words, you.

That means, you and Elizabeth II are peers.

That means America belongs to you.

It is your country. Well at least in part. You share it’s ownership with a few hundred million other people.

As a (partial) sovereign, you are of much more modest means than Elizabeth, with a much more modest ‘throne’ and a much more modest ‘throne room’ (which I presume you may be sitting on this very moment). Because you have more modest means, and are a partial owner, like Elizabeth, you can only attend to your responsibilities regarding public affairs part time, while spending your ‘full time’ attending to your meager means, in other words, your real job.

Make no mistake, though, your job running your country, though part time, is also real.

Very real.

And if you want to hang on to what means you’ve got, meager as they are compared to the likes of Elizabeth, you have to tend to it. In fact you have a duty, a responsibility to tend to this. In fact you will learn that you have a duty to pursue your own self interest, which is to increase your means, for the system to work and work correctly. (it’s an ‘Adam Smith’ thing, but that’s not really important here). The system starts to break apart if you self sacrifice and pursue other people’s interest other than you own – but that’s all about a latter lesson.

Anyway, like anything else, if you neglect your responsibility, it will fall into ruin.  Moreover, it you don’t rule it, it will, in turn, rule and ruin you, and ruin all for which you love, care for and hold dear.  After 2000, this is manifesting itself at an increasingly rapid pace.

In short you haven’t been doing your job.

Perhaps you didn’t know to, let alone know how.

You have a duty then, to yourself, to the system, and to your country (your fellow sovereigns) to maintain at least a remedial understanding of civics and economics, or what Winston Churchill like to refer to as the field of “public affairs.”

Within the field of civics, economics and politics are two separate fields that have a big influence on each other.  One could argue that the primary purpose of politics is to to influence economics and maybe even vice-versa.  But if not, it is still important.

How economics and politics are influenced are important for you to know.

As you might imagine, these fields can each become immensely complicated, in and of their own self, so much so, that you will be tempted to throw your hands up and just abrogate your duty to manage your own country.

However, the fields are not as complicated as it might first appear.  I’m here to help you with that.

Additionally what you need to know to perform your duty is very much within your grasp.  Probably you know it already.

The way we will deal with that is by emphasizing mechanisms in civics at the expense of the data. The data is often a barrage of a mess. But the mechanisms that the data acts upon are quite simple and easy to understand.  The old saying is history repeats itself. Not really – time is linear and only goes in one direction. People live, die, and then are gone, but time moves on. What repeats, in history, are the mechanisms, that is to say, the mechanisms in civics.  And, again they are quite simple for you to understand. What’s more, is  there arent’ that many of them.

You’ll soon see how nice, neat and simple mechanisms in civics helps out in understanding things in our next essay on economics.

Yes economics is complicated, but 80% of knowledge in economics comes from knowing basic mechanism of economics, which you probably already know, but even if you don’t, it only takes about 10% of the effort to understand.

The essays here are meant to equate to the length of time one spends taking their daily constitutional upon the household throne, fitting for all sovereigns, that you maintain in your washroom.  A few trips to the bathroom should provide you with all you need to know on how to run the country, from your bathroom. You can thank me later by buying more of my future books, even if they are bad or repeat more of what I have to say here.

One other thing on sovereignty, particularly the mechanics of it.  In the United States the ultimate sovereign authority is placed in the states.  That is to say, states have ‘police power’.  So the primary way that you manifest your sovereignty is through your state government.  The state governments can basically then use its police power to do just about anything and everything. There are some exceptions, manifested through the constitution of the United States.

You may then be surprised to know then that sovereignty does not reside in the federal government. Instead, states, as a party to the constitution, have agreed to cede certain delegated powers to the federal government as laid out in the constitution.  To make sure this is clearly understood, the 10th Amendment makes a point to remind us that any power not expressly given to the federal government is either retained by the state or the people. Okay, maybe you knew that already. And it’s a technical and theoretical point anyway.

And yes, there’s a lot of ambiguity there.  The job of sorting out the ambiguity has fallen on the Supreme Court. This makes seats on the Supreme Court very important. It’s also another reason why you have to pay attention to what is going on. Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel and read a few more essays here.

(Please note, I hope that this is by far the longest essay in this series)

Tages: Sovereigns and Sovereignty Economics and Politics