Where dreams are born

The Dito Ako Program
is waged in the mind.

As with any product being proffered to the public, the battle is in the mind, and the battlefields are media and the classroom.

There is an initial tight focus in terms of target market: While the overall vision asks for more Filipinos embracing the country as a cause to fight for, the campaign desires to instill or awaken love for country in people whose lives have impact on others. The instructor has his classroom of students, the businessman his employees and their families, the political leader his constituency and his country.

It will require a fast-burn effort, vociferous and aberrant in form, to break through the clutter with efficiency and with minimum expense.

UniversiTV is your channel.

The programs on UniversiTV are all about you and the channel won’t exist without your participation: your videos and short films, your antics and stunts, your jokes, your photos and art, your thoughts and beliefs -- do share them.

Challenges to the Nation-State

There are those who say that nationalism does not belong to the twenty-first century. They contend that nations are simply protective reactions to others in the vicinity, or a coming together of people of the same color or religion, or a creation of a colonial power so the conquerors of mother country can choose to live there and sell their wares there.

The nation-state and national culture, it is often said, are being eroded, and swiftly, by the changes in transportation and global communication. The Internet, doomsayers say, will dissolve nations. There are forces changing nations in a far greater way than communications. Increasingly, factors such as economic interdependence, ethnicity, supranational organizations like the APEC and the EU, successful multi-cultural states, and the declining utility of territorial war are reshaping boundaries.

If the shape and definition of a nation are changing, then Nationalism will lose its cause – the nation itself.

There are, of course, new economic forces that strengthen nationhood. Today’s economies require greater government involvement in providing local services, in helping or subsidizing industries, protecting provinces or regions from the onslaught of predator governments. The power of globalization is a specter that coerces vulnerable nations to gird themselves. Conversely, nationalism is a wind that great nations like the United States exploit in conquering others, hence their need to refocus their energies and strengthen their nationhood even more.

If the forces of economy are besieging the nation’s integrity, the people up on the ramparts, the nationalists who invoke Rizal and the names of other heroes and ask that blood be shed in defense of this nation, should first examine the virtue of their position today.

The Morality of nationalism

Is nationalism a position that is moral and unassailable in the world today? Or, on the other hand, is it a State Selfishness?  Historically, it is defined by the leading class, usually the national bourgeoisie born into industries and businesses: the ruling class defends what happenstance has dictated and seeks to protect a current state of affairs, prevent foreign countries from fishing in our seas, dumping cheap consumer items into our supermarkets, and to facilitate entry of our produce into the markets of other countries.

The Dito Ako! Movement lists several measurable goals.

1. It wishes to see Nationalism incorporated in the elementary and high school curricula, and young nationalists as one of the desired products of our educational system.

       a. Laws will have to be enacted to require a larger share of classroom time and teacher education.

The nationalism that we know and celebrate on Rizal’s death anniversary and on similar occasions for parade and stentorian oratory is quite different, and really about political freedom and democracy. Now these concepts have always been called upon to aid the cause of economic nationalism, and to give it moral authority. The nobility and righteousness of a fight for freedom is unassailable from any point of view, save that from the conqueror-nation’s, whose own need to expand borders is also nationalistic (the impetus for colonizing heathen lands and baptizing their pagans, to increase natural resources by claiming other people’s properties, the great imperialism of past centuries, was fueled by the reigning monarch or ruling class’s need to provide for their people).

The True Left assert that the country has yet to be truly free from colonialism, pointing to globalization as its most recent and perhaps final permutation. The condition and the plaint are universal, being a consequence of the world choosing the capitalist road. For instance, the wine-producing people of France, decrying cheap wine imports from Australia and the Napa Valley, suffer the same consequences of “free-market forces” as we do.

Nationalism is a necessary, protective mechanism, a means to preserve national interests and not merely sovereignty. It is an instrument one uses to search notions like globalization for probable value or lurking mischief. Simply stated, it is an ache to see a particular people fed, clothed, sheltered, educated, and provided the opportunity to fulfill individual dreams. We need this mechanism, especially in a cutthroat globalized world, especially today.

Unfortunately, the Filipino knows only of the nationalism that is required to free a people from the yoke of foreign rule, and from blatant oppression, and, since he lives in relative peace and freedom, there is no stimulant for him to stand when the national anthem is played. There are no threats of invasion, no foreign bases, no Governor-General to revolt against. The only possible manner through which we may lose our freedoms today is to vote a closet dictator into office (which apparently we have).  War may be the only force vigorous and influential enough to galvanize and unite a country, but, alas, there is none brewing anywhere in the horizon, no conflict we can turn into a conflagration.

There is no foreign object in this oyster, no irritant around which the pearl of a true and great brand of nationalism may be created.

continued: Rizal Who?

      2. It intends to launch Compensatory Education on Media within the year.

a. The Movement will request Media Partners to include a nationalistic color in their broadcast.

b. Advertising and program content will be launched on all friendly media venues.

c. It will commence a strategically-designed public relations program to increase discussions and debates on television programs.

3. It will promote use of visible signs of fervor: flags outside homes, pins, bands.

TEXT us.

Text your comments and suggestions to