January 7, 2017

Request: Phil Beaver works to establish opinion only when the-indisputable-facts-of-reality have not been discovered. He seeks to refine his opinion by learning other people’s experiences and observations. Please use the comment box below to share facts and opinion.

Our Views: 

Persuade Gov. Edwards and The Advocate to work with Senator Cassidy on Medicaid.

 

LPB (Courtney). Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood sounds like contemporary liberalism, so I would be cautious. I’d like to understand why children’s shows should be designed for parental involvement: Children will face times parents cannot imagine (Gibran).

Electoral College (Regan).  I appreciate the valid baseball analogy.

The “framers” signed the draft constitution in 1787. It states “We the People of the United States,” agree to act. The tacit claim is that the civic people (in their states) created the USA. So far, twelve generations of the people have been satisfied to neglect the literal preamble, letting the Administrative State run roughshod over the people. The neglect seems to produce divergent dysfunction.

A conditional ratification on June 21, 1788 (9 states) empowered congress to negotiate a bill of rights. What might have happened without (perhaps unconstitutional) compromise? I suggest unconstitutional because some states had bills of rights, and there was no need to impose them on the USA. Might some of the people in the four states that had not ratified by June 21 ratify later, completing ratification without a bill of rights? If so, there’d be no question that the signers were the only framers. 

The preamble would have explicit importance. See Federalist 84: The preamble "is a better recognition of popular rights, than volumes of those aphorisms which make the principal figure in several of our State bills of rights, and which would sound much better in a treatise of ethics than in a constitution of government."

The Democratic Party has been taken over by contemporary liberals (for hypothetical equality rather than liberty) or social-democrats (for nanny-state instead of individual-independence) or communitarians, socialists, communists, and other collectivists' collections.

Clarence Page column. CureViolence and its “interrupters” is just a social-democrat’s mendacity for vigilantism. Vigilantism is now the major problem with law enforcement. First responders are caught between vigilantism by church-led communities and vigilantism by judges and lawyers. It’s as though neither a civic people nor their representatives, the police, have a say in enforcement of statutory law. A civic people may keep churches and church coalitions out of negotiations for law enforcement.

Congressional religion (Page 1D, Pew). Nearly 96.3 % of the 115^th Congress describe themselves as Judeo-Christian. The next largest group is the 1.9% who declined to say. See the table that compares US demographics at pewforum.org/2017/01/03/faith-on-the-hill-115/ .

Congress acts on majority votes, and the majority may beware the hazards of regarding social morality as civic morality. We have as evidence the failure of 1996 DOMA’s “moral conviction that heterosexuality better comports with traditional (especially Judeo-Christian) morality,” quoting bc.edu/content/dam/files/centers/boisi/pdf/Symposia/Symposia%202010-2011/HouseReport104-664.pdf . 

Religion bases for Congressional acts are clearly unconstitutional, and on common sense, tradition that is civically immoral may be reformed. In DOMA, it is stated that two rather than three persons beget children. Purged of the “traditional” references, the arguments for DOMA represent a good start toward defending 1) marriage for forming families with 2) civil-unions for granting partners  rights equivalent to spousal rights. Heterosexual partners who do not intend to procreate could choose civil unions. Thus, the Judeo-Christian Congress single-highhandedly ruined marriage.

In addition, “with the overwhelming support of both parties in Congress, H.R. 1150 amends the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA), which established a watchdog commission to monitor and report on abuses of religious freedom around the world. The amended law includes this provision defining "freedom of thought, conscience, and religion": The freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is understood to protect theistic and non-theistic beliefs and the right not to profess or practice any religion,” quoting http://www.snopes.com/2016/12/21/obama-signs-law-protecting-atheists/ . I have urged for two decades for amendment of the religion clauses of the First Amendment so as to protect the person’s duty to think rather than the institution of religion. I hope IRFA reverses Greece v Galloway (2014).

In summary, 96.3% of Congress may keep in mind that the USA is a republic rather than Judeo-Christian theocracy.

Cultivating peace (Page 3D). How long have religious groups deluded "cultivate peace," all the while competing for dominant opinion. For example, as a singular faction such as sectarian-Protestant Christianity? It is amusing to watch Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Catholic, spar with black-church ministers. I wonder if the ministers are advocates of a skin-colored god. With social-democracy, you can't tell when someone is advocating black power and black theology. But in civic morality, skin-color does not matter, whether the skin is human or divine.

I would like to suggest to Baton Rouge citizens that it is time to eliminate religious competition from the civic agenda. If joining the "cultivate peace" events, ask yourself and others who will talk why public collaboration may not turn to broadly-defined-civic-safety-and-security, for every willing person---hereafter Security. Thereby, dissenters who cause real harm subject themselves to statutory law. But each person, civic or dissenter, may practice their real-no-harm religion in the privacy of mind, closet, home, and religious association.

Don't get me wrong: This would not be normal behavior by a civic people, who now suffer false divisions that keep them from appreciating each other for civic morality. The idea that We the People of the United States can exist has been discouraged since a civic sentence, the preamble to the draft constitution for the USA, was written in September 1787. However, we propose admitting to ourselves that there are dissenters and using the goal of Security as a way to motivate We the [Civic] People of the United States to appreciate each other and collaborate for civic morality without compromising private religious beliefs. Religious beliefs that do no harm are not subjects of civic negotiation.

Phil Beaver does not “know”. Phil trusts and is committed to the-objective-truth of which most is undiscovered and some is understood.