December 28, 2016

Our Views: Progress on obesity front. Only a couple days after I beg The Advocate to “make 2017 the year The Advocate promotes We the [Civic] People of the United States,” editors coincidentally promote “not just a personal goal, but a civic cause,” perhaps starting a dream come true. A route to public-integrity may be found by focusing on the-indisputable-facts-of-reality, such as, obesity is a civic issue.

On climate change. Good idea. I’d like to see an emphasis on viable human reaction to both the indisputable facts and best models of what is happening. For example, in flood areas, build houses only at elevations above expected future flooding using most economical means.

On Rheta Grimsley Johnson. The Advocate allows writers space to vent frustrations, often exposing personal weaknesses readers may observe. I think columnists should be allowed the same privilege.

Gender bias. The possibility for nepotism is of civic interest and knows no gender.

Cal Thomas. Beware the hidden agenda respecting non-civic schools. Most of them are faith-based enterprises, hence Thomas’s interest and that of other advocates. The beneficiaries are the enterprises that create the schools, not the children. The problem is the same with public schools: beneficiaries of most of the huge expense is adults---administrators and teachers---rather than children.

Cal Thomas. “Politicians promote faith in themselves.” The 1787 signers of the draft constitution for the USA created a civic system that would disengage from the religion-government-partnership that England established with the Magna Carta 800 years ago. However, the first Congress, accustomed to the English way of regarding lords Lords, re-established divinity for legislators and other officials who wanted lordship. In Chapter XI of The Prince, Machiavelli decried the religion-government-partnership. But elected officials still get away with it because the people remain apathetic to their misery and losses, while the religion-government-partnership picks their pockets. The perhaps 2/3 civic people are closeted ---separated---by their personal religions. Perhaps there can emerge from this dysfunction the public-integrity to establish Security at last.

Cal Thomas. It seems Barack Obama has been working to fulfill “’Black Power’: Statement by National Committee of Negro Churchmen,” New York Times, July 31, 1966, signed by 51 ministers, online at episcopalarchives.org/Afro-Anglican_history/exhibit/pdf/blackpowerstatement.pdf. He has had the Alinsky-Marxist organizing (AMO) skills that became available during the ensuing five years. AMO has operated now for five decades.

Katheryn Jean Lopez. It must be a psychological burden to express Bible interpretation that circles back to your own divinity, as Bazi seems to do. Conscientious student Ralph Waldo Emerson, age 29, resigned his pulpit in 1832, then in 1838 spoke at Harvard, emersoncentral.com/divaddr.htm . Therein, Emerson asserts that each human has the psychological power to perfect his or her person and delight may begin with that personal realization. After a couple decades re-reading, I got Emerson’s message and have been trying to behave perfectly ever since, low as I may be (quoting Emerson). The essay may be deemed American underground literature on par with or exceeding Machiavelli’s heresies.