July 5, 2017

Phil Beaver works to establish opinion when the-objective-truth has not been discovered. He seeks to refine his opinion by listening when people share experiences and observations. The comment box below invites readers to write.

Note 1:  I often dash words in phrases in order to express and preserve an idea. For example, frank-objectivity represents the idea of candidly expressing the-objective-truth despite possible error. In other words, a person expresses his “belief,” knowing he or she could be in error. People may collaboratively approach the-objective-truth.
 Note 2: It is important to note "civic" refers to citizens who collaborate for the people more than for the city.

A personal preamble by & for Phil Beaver:  Willing people in our state routinely, voluntarily collaborate for comprehensive safety and security: continuity (for self, children, grandchildren & beyond), integrity (both fidelity and wholeness), justice (freedom-from oppression), defense (prevent or constrain harm), prosperity (acquire the liberty-to pursue choices), privacy (responsibly discover & pursue personal goals), lawfulness (obey the law and reform injustices); and to cultivate justice in the constitution for the USA.

On this statement, or their own paraphrase, citizens may perceive whether they are willing or dissident to the preamble.

  

Our Views (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_1dae8216-4572-11e7-987e-17aac9980507.html)

To Pascanal Petreoff: I agree with you and the others who have commented so far. Are we to be notified of Sterling family events, like Alton's fatal day for an eternity?

The Advocate gave a proprietary review of the consequences of a man with a long history of offenses entrapping the public’s first responders in a perhaps uncharacteristic escalation of resistance to authority into the perpetration of violence.

Missing are several issues.

There’s the immorality of the media escalating world attention to a felon’s unfortunate demise and the subsequent, perhaps consequential vigilantism against police here and in Dallas. The media appetite for notoriety may be constrained.

   

There’s the perhaps Alinsky-influenced President Obama, whose racial attitudes during his adulthood empowered him to the heartless, inciting expression in Dallas, “But even those who dislike the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” surely we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling’s family.” People with black lives may collaborate for comprehensive safety and security rather than community vigilantism.

There’s Obama’s Attorney General, who came here and made promises she did not keep.

 

There’s the judicial cottage industry of “[the felon] was black, and the officer who shot him is white,” picking the pockets of the people when the court system can succeed.

There’s the liberal-democrat appearing Gov. Edwards, who socially convicted two of the public’s first responders the morning after the Sterling’s violent offenses.

There’s the Alinsky-Marxist organizers (AMO), who draw attention to themselves and disrupt the moral order over the unfortunate demise of a long-time felon who for unknown reason turned violent. Perhaps leading them is Together Baton Rouge. “Together Baton Rouge was organized by the Industrial Areas Foundation, a group founded by Saul Alinsky to promote urban socialism,” 2/7/14,  capitalcitynews.us/?p=1898. There’s the long list of AMO visitors to Baton Rouge since 2012, many of them giving fiery speeches to inspire AMO soldiers to take the risks while the AMO bosses read the news in their offices. The Advocate could justify a Pulitzer Prize by writing that story. I think the story features Kip Holden as an advocate for comprehensive safety and security as described by the preamble to the constitution for the USA, and therefore unpopular in some communities.

There’s La. Rep. Ted James, who would legislate elimination of the people’s protection of the office of chief of police under Civil Service, in order to thwart that public protection from a “popular” mayor.

There’s the Jetson-Broome-partnership that strives to impose “church” and dialogues-on-racism on the Baton Rouge public.

  

I think Mayor Broome gravely erred when she wrote a nasty letter to Police Chief Carl Dabadie, and his prompt response was exemplary. Thank goodness the public is protected from Mrs. Broome.

And the very idea that The Advocate would assume (much less publish the assumption) that Louisiana’s Attorney General is inefficient is outrageous. I admonish/thank The Advocate on acts rather than expectations.

For today, I’m tired of thinking about this. Maybe some readers will add-to/detract-from my list. Others may apply Alinsky Rule No. 5: Ridicule the person and his opinions.

  

Today’s thought, G.E. Dean (Proverbs 29:25, CJB). “Fearing human beings is a snare; but he who trusts in ADONAI will be raised high [above danger].” 

Dean says “Faith in God can overcome any fear we face in life.”

Word choices are important. The ancient writer speaks of trust, but Dean ignores trust for fear. Why does Dean do that? Because I do not trust Dean, I do not fear him or any other clergy.

Why does The Advocate publish Dean’s blasphemy?

Letters.

Unjamming  (Winkler). (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_4b67e21e-5dce-11e7-ab6a-ffa06a715a02.html)

Obamacare jammed health care. Unjamming it will be difficult. But personal care is more important.

The problem is that some people don’t recognize that behavior that fosters well-being is a human duty more than a right. Without question, behavior is a right: No one can tell me not to exercise, maintain expected weight for my height and build, control sugar intake, salt, alcohol, buy healthy groceries, see the doctor regularly, etc. However, I know that if I misbehave, I will pay the price.

For well being, personal care is four times more effective than medical care: My life is in my hands.

Liberal-democrats, socialists, say, “That’s right. And my life is in your hands, too.”

Their doctors say, “Yeh, Phil, they’re right. You need to pay their medical bills, too.” Meanwhile, my doctors do everything they can to protect me from them.

I disagree with Winkler: unjam the system as soon as possible. Start emphasizing that personal care is many times more effective than medical care.

Secondary smoke hurts children (Wallace). (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_20ec24be-5cfc-11e7-9690-cf0dd7688261.html)

I support the smoking ban.

Also, it pains me to read Wallace’s letter. I smoked in the home when MWW was pregnant with two children, but not with the third. I had learned from the surgeon general how bad smoking is and quite cold turkey after a great lecture over dinner by friends who had attended a clinic at LSU.

Some physicians promote medical care when personal care is more effective (Hebert). (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_bf8d4874-5dc8-11e7-9ed4-ffbb4cc7a996.html)

ACA gives doctors a base business with guaranteed income and expanding subjects---people on the dole. Some of them promote personal profits more than public interest. I appreciate Hebert’s attention to it.

Also, at F. King Alexander’s promotion, “Moment or Movement?”, October 3, 2016, I was informed in a session by the LSU School of Mass Communication that public policy is determined by public opinion and the media control public opinion. A similar argument is made by “social scientists.”

I commented that in the USA, we have the rule of law and was told to take some social-studies courses. So much for civic discourse. Happily, the media did not determine the presidential election, and I really don’t care how long it takes them to discover integrity: It’s their business.

Education fights crime (Cooper). (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_584b2c04-5cfa-11e7-86f3-57ec12c08fc6.html)

Willing people ether empower the abuse of children or not. Parenting is not a right: It is a duty. It is barbaric for adults to abuse children, and when they do, willing people may defend the children.

I hope the USA is reaching a nadir in public education. It may ascend so as to coach willing children into personal autonomy to take charge of acquiring the knowledge and comprehension on which to base understanding to embark on a full life in collaborative association.

The people in charge now aim to satisfy adults and train “the workers we need.”  

   

Columns. (The fiction/non-fiction comments gallery for readers)

  

Obsolete tools (Robert Samuelson). washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-next-recession-being-postponed/2017/06/28/ad0bee14-5c2c-11e7-a9f6-7c3296387341_story.html?utm_term=.87ad130f0f52  

Samuelson seems motived by earlier writers, but did us no service in covering this non-issue drawing on an obsolete model. For example, here’s an article with 8 explanations: bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-19/unemployment-in-the-u-s-is-falling-so-why-isn-t-pay-rising. 

This reason makes plenty of sense: “If workers demanded big wage hikes, employers could try to pull people off the sidelines into the workforce. “ President Trump wants to put slackers to work, and resisting illegal immigrants is just one of the administration’s approaches along with reducing liberal welfare.

Samuelson’s review is not all waste. His report of changes in percentage of world labor force is astonishing to me:

Year                                         1990    2015   

Advanced economies                  41       18

Other large countries                  59       82

Thank goodness the USA is now led by a presidential president. President Trump is both acting on the important data and communicating with the people.

Traitors? (Walter Williams). creators.com/read/walter-williams/06/17/were-confederate-generals-traitors

Williams chose a controversial question: “Did the South have a right to secede from the Union?” I think it’s as erroneous a question as “Why does anything exist instead of nothing?”

Williams answers that King George III would have held George Washington to be a traitor against England, and similarly might hold R. E. Lee a traitor to the USA: both fought for independence.

However, Williams poses a false comparison. England was an empire that was unjustly ruling a colony---enslaving the loyal colonists to benefit loyal subjects in England---whereas the states were in a perpetual confederation. Williams overlooks this document of perpetual commitment by the colonies turned states:

             Agreed to by Congress 15 November 1777

Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

XIII.

Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.

A critical phrase is “perpetual Union.”

Also, Williams overlooks the evil done by the Catholic Church, which created the US slavery problem to start with. The evil of African slavery has always been known:  chains, whips, brutality and rape to slaves with physical burdens to masters and psychological burdens to owners. The Church is without excuse for including books that condone slavery in the 300 AD to 400 AD canonization of the Christian Bible. They are also without excuse for assigning Portugal a monopoly on African slave trade in the east and Spain in the west in the 15^th century and for the doctrine of discovery.

Objections to the African slave trade was included in the colonists’ decision to become statesmen. From 1720 to 1765, they accumulated the courage to confront England’s injustices, debating how they would emancipate the slaves once they gained states independence. Once they became thirteen independent states, they soon realized they must establish a nation. They negotiated an organization with federalism: The people would govern their states and a limited nation would serve the people in their states. The draft represented a drastic change from a Union serving the states to a Union serving the people in their states.

They provided for the end of slave trade and for representation of slaves in Congress but did not emancipate the slaves. When nine states ratified the draft constitution on June 21, 1788, the four lagging states had to decide whether to remain independent and confederated or join the USA. The laggards included Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island. Their ratification debates become moot as to effects on the USA, except insofar as the nine states had agreed to include a bill of rights to be negotiated by the 1^st Congress. The 1^st Congress neither proposed nor effected revision of the preamble.

The preamble does not break the commitment in perpetuity on which the thirteen states declared and won independence from England. The perpetual Union remained, but responsibility had been transferred from the states to the people in their states. So far, the people have neglected that responsibility. Some look to government as surrogate and some depend on their personal God. Yet there are some people who, for civic justice, willingly trust in the purpose and goals stated in the preamble.

Returning to religion’s role in the injustices, America seems a victim of the canonization of the Bible, the Atlantic Slave trade, and the doctrine of discovery. It is difficult to separate the historical facts from the outcome. However, if most people adopt the preamble to the constitution for the USA to establish integrity for discovering civic morality, the outcome can be favorable, and the past may be put aside. Under that outcome, every civic morality, whether religious or not may flourish.

Rather than candidly rely on the-objective-truth, at each major step, authors, all but one, appealed to God---however, the authors chose to refer to whatever God is. They started vague, in the Declarations of the first Congress, 1774:

That the inhabitants of the English colonies in North-America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following RIGHTS . . .

Specific in the Declaration of Independence, 1776:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

In the Articles of Confederation, 1777:

And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union.

It disturbed dissidents during 1787 through 1791 that the preamble did not invoke God, and dissidents to this day strive to change it. The preamble states the purpose “to form a more perfect Union.”

In the South Carolina Declaration of Secession, 1860:

. . . the non-slaveholding States . .  have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery. Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.

President Lincoln, on March 4, 1861, responded to the threat of war without appealing to God:

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.

This last item in the progression of appeals to God is Lincoln’s explicit claim that God, mysterious as God may be, leaves the consequence of war to the people.

The confederate states, at that time seven states against 27 states, believed God would answer their prayers rather that the USA’s prayers. Having accused the North of “more erroneous religious belief,” they embarked on a war that shows that their interpretation of the Christian Bible cannot be trusted. I count them victims of the Catholic Church more than traitors.

However, I don’t want apology or reform from the Catholic Church beyond in the USA adopting the preamble more than church doctrine. 

I want most of the people in the USA to adopt the preamble as a tool for establishing public integrity in the USA. After 229 years, the USA is still in the drastic change from a Union serving the states to a Union serving the people in their states: the people may accept that responsibility and collaborate for comprehensive safety and security.

 

Vetting voter registrants (Page 1A, July4). To J. R. Madden: That’s it, JR.

"You must submit your current Louisiana driver's license, if you have one, or your birth certificate or other documentation which reasonably and sufficiently establishes your identity, age and residency.

 

If you have no picture ID, you may bring a utility bill, payroll check, or government document that includes your name and address."

 

Local philanthropists have contacts who know how to produce the necessary documents and give the illegal alien the confidence to use them.

Other forums 

quora.com/Which-comes-first-equality-freedom-or-justice?__filter__&__nsrc__=2&__snid3__=1204038347

Justice, freedom, and equality at conception are companion quests by a civic people, whereas equality of results does not seem feasible for persons, who are unique. “Civic” refers to people who collaborate for living more than for a municipality, ideal or society.

The collaborative aspects are expressed, for example, in the civic agreement that is the preamble to the constitution for the USA. It divides citizens into two groups: the willing and dissidents. The willing work hard to establish and maintain freedom-from oppression, such as subjugation to crime. The willing collaborate for comprehensive safety and security so that each person may acquire the liberty-to pursue personal preferences; in other words, in each moment of their life the willing person responsibly pursues the happiness he or she perceives more than an ideology, government dictate, or civilization. To civic people, “posterity” means their children, their grandchildren, and beyond, and they intend fidelity.

In such a culture, equality of outcome is not expected, because each person has unique abilities, preferences, and intentions. A newborn is uniformed and has no idea what his or her preferences may be. Fortunate is the newborn who is coached into both personal autonomy and intent to acquire the understanding needed to choose preferences. Fortunate still is the adolescent who is coached into collaborative association. A person so coached may perceive the opportunity to, during the course of his or her lifetime, perfect his or her person. Unfortunately, it seems there will always be dissidents.

The idea that a human being may perfect his or her person is expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Divinity School Address, 1838. Read at The Divinity school address. Delivered before the senior class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday evening, July 15, 1838 : Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive, for example. Emerson revealed the source of the idea he expressed.

Another source for understanding these concepts is H. A. Overstreet’s book, The Mature Mind, 1949.

Phil Beaver does not “know” the-indisputable-facts. He trusts and is committed to the-objective-truth of which most is undiscovered and some is understood. He is agent for A Civic People of the United States, a Louisiana, education non-profit corporation. See online at promotethepreamble.blogspot.com.