August 2, 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 paraphrase of the 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 preserve and cultivate the rule of law for the USA’s service to the people in their states.
 
Composing their own paraphrase, citizens may consider the actual preamble and perceive whether they are willing or dissident toward the preamble.  
   

Our Views (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_0632b582-76d0-11e7-90ff-0bca00ef97fe.html)

To JR McQuitty. Often, I wonder what The Advocate holds “we” to mean. There’s no doubt they’re exercising freedom of the press, so I’ll never know.

  

Today’s thought, G.E. Dean (Psalms 143:5-6, CJB)

“I remember the days of old, reflecting on all your deeds, thinking about the work of your hands. I spread out my hands to you, I long for you like a thirsty land.”

Dean says “Take time to spend with the Lord; It will pay great dividends.”

To me, David seems to be telling the Lord what to do---to act for David. Maybe that’s what Dean suggests. I perceive it is best to accept my person and make the most of him.

BRAVE (Mayor Broome) theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_d5f46948-77be-11e7-95f7-473d7d1b6627.html

 I once thought I paid for hometown news. The Advocate is trying to convince me they report other writer's pseudo news. I'm losing interest and am reading elsewhere.

All along I’ve been casting Mayor Broome’s politics of church and dialogues on racism as vigilantism. The evidence is starting to become public information.

  

Other forums 

libertylawsite.org/liberty-forum/collapse-of-the-self-governing-ethos/

Professor Paquette also overlooks the neglected power of the preamble to the constitution for the USA and what humankind has learned since that civic agreement was offered. Humankind may focus on the leading edge of discovery more than on the past.

 
Paquette reviewed James Madison’s concerns during the time after nine states had established the USA and negotiation of the promised Bill of Rights had begun. Madison perceived that only the people could preserve the liberty they had won from England: that power could not be conferred on the federal government. “Wherever sovereignty lies . . . there lies the danger.” Only a willing people could resist “overbearing majorities” that arise in politics. Postell and others assert that the will that existed after the war for independence declined such that the USA lost leadership in civic virtue and ask, what happened?

 
Montesquieu opined that republics foster virtue but only in “a small territory.” The framers designed federal institutions that would manage for the public-good factions arising from the states. But civic virtue is not always popular, so the framers assured there would be no federal democracy. “The 85 essays of The Federalist [employ negatively] the word ‘democracy’ . . . 10 times.”

 
Paquette introduces the contradictory phrase “popular rule in a republic” to explain John C. Calhoun’s assertion that humans have primary obligations to community—to preserve themselves.

“Different communities beget different vital interests. Society precedes government, and government must be made to restrain itself.” However, a community, in Madison’s terms has factional interests, and popular vote can promote an interest that that does not “preserve themselves,” returning to Paquette’s phrase. By vote, opinion may overrule preservation, and “public opinion . . . can be manipulated by power.” The possible error here is in looking to society to discover virtue.

 
Kendall asserts that “civilized society” entails “public orthodoxy.” Paquette suggests that the USA public orthodoxy began as ”certain understandings of limited government, religious toleration, voluntary exchange, private property, and civil liberty.” British Americans feared that the liberty they experienced and would protect in their community was under attack from afar—by England. Under Kendall’s theory, “internal structures would ensure that key national decisions were made by supermajorities, that is by a broad consensus, worked out through compromise, in a hierarchy of bodies in which representatives of the people would patiently deliberate under God.” Since no two persons have the same God, theism cannot possibly yield civic virtue without unlikely luck.

 
But Madison, in Federalist 39, asserted that the states retain “a residuary and inviolable sovereignty.” Madison’s statement comes not from the states but from the people in the states, according to the preamble: “We the People of the United States” . . . “do ordain and establish” the USA. Alexander Hamilton, referencing the preamble in Federalist 84 wrote, “Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain every thing they have no need of particular reservations.” Thus, the willing people in their states are sovereign. In other words, the preamble is a civic agreement with specific goals, and civic citizens are willing to agree to those goals.

 
Paquette quotes perhaps Murray Rothbard and Alexis de Tocqueville to assert that the American people embraced democracy. “Democracy fostered equality; equality fostered individualism. As a member of an increasingly lonely crowd, the sociable person seeking the public good metamorphosed into the atomized individual demanding equality.” However, government cannot deliver the expectations of democracy: “Since the reality of life yields inequality from the inborn differences of human capacity, the resulting inequality stokes envy and grievance.” Yet government, using the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, makes “private property insecure” for the sake of redistribution. The assumption that, with the ratification of the constitution, the people accepted the responsibility for political power and civic justice is not valid.

 
By neglecting the agreement stated in the preamble, the people have allowed the federal government to usurp the people’s sovereignty. The people can take back their sovereignty and that is what President Donald Trump has promised to administer. He is counting on willing people, as defined in the preamble, to lead. Voters may vote for their personal interest by comprehending and exercising the civic agreement stated in the preamble. The politicians they elect may work for the people rather than themselves or the government or theism or be dissident.

 
The self-governing ethos never got started. Perhaps the negligence has reached a nadir and a super-majority of the people may be willing to take advantage of what humankind has learned during the 228 years of USA operation. Perhaps the civic agreement is evolving toward discovering the-objective-truth as the means to establish civic morality. Perhaps social morality is a matter for personal associations, and the people can be served not by civilization but by an overall culture that embraces the ineluctable march toward comprehensive safety and security for human beings. In such a culture, there will yet be dissidents, so the need for republicanism will persist.

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.