August 28, 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_65222e7e-82ba-11e7-be8e-8f856be44e45.html)

The Advocate seems always pumping taxation. This time it’s “the fundamentals remain in the classroom, and the vast bulk of funding for local public schools comes from Louisiana taxpayers.”

Taxpayers are not responsible for public schools: local education departments are responsible to the people for public schools. And the people includes taxpayers and tax recipients as well as free-loaders and rent seekers.

In public education, the most notorious rent seekers are teachers and employable welfare recipients. See jstor.org/stable/pdf/30025384.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.

But that study did not include textbook companies and school administrators. For example, why does John White need to be paid some five times a teacher’s salary just because he works 12 months out of 12?

It’s not only taxpayers that suffer this failure in civic justice: It’s all citizens who are subjected to rent seeking, including the rent-seekers.

The Advocate and the press in general exacerbate the civic evil by not making it clear to the people that taxpayers do not want and do not support the civic injustice.

Further, The Advocate audaciously publishes its failure to educate the people by making a weak, political jab at the Trump administration. Where’s the clarity in “As might be expected, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos praised the Louisiana plan because it includes provisions for students in failing schools to choose another option. DeVos is a big advocate of options like that, but we do not see those as fundamental as the accountability provisions are.” I guess The Advocate is lamely whining about vouchers and charter schools.

What the people need to know is that charter schools are top heavy in administrative costs, which adversely competes with quality of education being delivered to the children, all other factors being equal. This information is essential especially in Louisiana, because John White is nationally favored for favoring vouchers and charter schools. That does not mean that Gov. Edwards is right to support rent-seeking teacher unions. They have created the integrity gap that makes schools for profit viable.

It is egregious that The Advocate does not make these competing issues plain to the people, who include taxpayers. The people need to modify the constitution for the USA so as to constrain the press to integrity respecting their obligations to the people.

If this was too much to read, so be it. I spent the time to write it for my purpose: I appreciate the people and their children. Civic justice comes only from willing, informed people, not from the press, theism or government.

Today’s thought, G.E. Dean (Genesis 1:1, CJB)

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Dean says “This says it all. We are in God’s world and we owe everything to Him.”

Long since we have known that about 13.7 billion years ago the universe began to unfold with energy, mass and space-time. At about 4.6 billion years ago the earth formed as hot gases. I won’t go on, but Dean seems obsolete. It’s not possible to pursue his ideas.

Letters

New Orleans art (Pollock) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_95dff516-8916-11e7-9fbb-c7165139fdc6.html)

I found photos of the Amtrak terminal and associated art online. Also, French Market art, including the bronze gift from Paris, France in Latrobe Park --- shamefully out of repair.

Perhaps in my next life interest in New Orleans can be restored. For now, I have been informed that New Orleans regards me as a sucker whose four-party pocket is ripe for the picking with our welfare and lives at risk. I had been gullible for five decades, and I appreciate Mitch Landrieu for informing me.

Meanwhile, if anyone proposes demolishing St. Louis Cathedral or St. Paul’s or any of the other edifices to the Church's slavery-scripture in defense of its erroneous infallibility, I’ll oppose, from my hometown, the movement. I am for comprehensive safety and security with awareness of the past rather than correcting what’s done. Let believes reform the Church while we collaborate for civic morality.

Statues (Marksbury, Aug 25)

(theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_ab02c398-8915-11e7-a3c6-ff50607a51ec.html)

To Gregory Higgins:  Not a problem with the Church: a problem with Church believers not recognizing and terminating Church policy that tries to impose spiritual comfort and hopes on civic morality --- the civic justice that can be delivered by willing people rather than God or government (A. Lincoln, 1861). In my statement, "civic" refers to people who willingly collaborate for comprehensive safety and security where they live, when they live.

In other words, the Church’s endurance for infinite time is of no value to the living person during their brief candle. In other words, hopes for the mysterious “soul” in the afterdeath count for nothing if a person’s life is ruined. In Sartre’s words, “Man is condemned to be free [and] responsible for everything he does.” The Church cannot negate the responsibility side of Sartre’s equivocation of freedom and responsibility.

  

The civic purpose is mutual, full-life living, or a civic culture wherein each human being may responsibly pursue fidelity to personal happiness. The Church dictates theism, a political ideology, and other psychological and physical impositions that in fact would restrain personal responsibility; in other words, the Church attempts to rob each person, and by extension into the civil realm every human being, of the opportunity to achieve psychological maturity.

  

There are believers who understand the need to limit Church influence and effect personal limitations on the institution. However, they erroneously feel satisfied to allow others to discover the posture of “believe only to the extent of common sense.” George Washington, a theist, took such a posture when he omitted theism from his four pillars for national survival, expressed on June 8, 1783, a few months before the 13 colonies were declared free and independent states, and 5 years before nine states established and authorized the USA (June 21, 1788).

One of the most egregious offenses against (and by) believers and non-believers I know of is the Church condoning slavery, when Frederick Douglass’s idea that in my paraphrase “slavery is OK for everyone but me” has always been known: Unlike men, God knows the-objective-truth --- with God there’s no discover of reality. For arguments about Church infallibility and slavery (vs Douglass’s common sense), see for example, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_slavery#Did_Church_teaching_on_slavery_change.3F .

The Church has freedom to conform to the morality of believers. That is, if believers stop paying money for the Church’s errors, the Church will reform.

If the Church converts to black power and whites are forced to brook slavery, will God’s institutional truth be at last proven? How long will it take for black contributions to the Church to exceed white contributions and effect change in “God’s institution” respecting slavery?

I don’t want to wait to learn answers to these questions. I want Church squabbles isolated from my opportunity for responsible freedom. I want believers to squabble in privacy so as to collaborate for comprehensive safety and security in civic life. I want separation of church and state, including Church and state.

To Gregory Higgins again: Here's Douglass in 1852: "But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason and Dixon's line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women and children, as slaves, remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the star-spangled banner, and American Christianity."

The "American Christianity" is based on the Church’s Bible, which condones slavery. The American colonists realized they were being enslaved by England to be the overlords of African slaves Europe had placed here for colonization. They knew that by winning their independence, they would, by civic morality, have to emancipate the slaves. They were victims of the Church's doctrine of discovery with African slave trade.

I perceive that you are writing as a Church apologist rather than a citizen who is willing to collaborate for comprehensive safety and security so that each human may pursue private hopes and responsibility during their lifetimes. Attempting to impose theism into civic morality rather than leaving theism as a private interest is dehumanizing to say the least.

Traffic (Town) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_13579926-8918-11e7-bab3-5b1757b6695a.html)

This is a prime example of the people being responsible for civic justice rather than relying on theism or government to provide. When most of the people rebuke Sartre’s idea, “Man is condemned to be free [and] responsible for everything he does.” Sartre wasn’t around in 1861 when A. Lincoln asserted that ultimate justice comes from willing people (my interpretation).

Statues (Bender) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_a516fd60-8914-11e7-9130-531087ca27f2.html)

Bender’s point about misspending is misdirected. It’s no longer a question of parties and votes. The statues issue is about political power. Specifically, black power. Moreover, it’s about collective democracy’s bid to overthrow the republic that is the USA. In other words, it’s about conflict for chaos rather than collaboration for justice; rule of the mob vs the rule of law: demands vs assertions; tyranny vs security. It is neither pretty nor desirable.

Real problems like the abuse of children increase while collective democracy draws harmful attention, as Bender kindly points out.

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

  

High P/E (Robert Samuelson) (washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-stock-market-crazy--or-just-giddy/2017/08/23/949bbd7c-8815-11e7-961d-2f373b3977ee_story.html?utm_term=.84a4916c25f5)

Samuelson turns Cline’s positivism and turns it into two silly negatives. Nevertheless, 24 vs a 17 norm does invite a typical September to October correction.

Cline’s statistics on unemployment rate, inflation rate, and interest rate on 10-year treasuries says these are not typical times. I hope he is more in tune than Samuelson.

Trump polls? (Dana Milbank) tahlequahdailypress.com/opinion/columns/measuring-and-mismeasuring-the-trump-conundrum/article_7d08b6e2-b3a5-5482-9073-54867e19df22.html

As viewed on television speaking about the wall at the Mexican border, I am motivated by President Trump and could care less about opinions about the opinions generated about opinions for polls.

Other forums 

facebook.com/groups/classicalsociologicaltheory/?multi_permalinks=1874242216235996&notif_t=group_activity&notif_id=1503901896738848

“Democracy as we know is definitely . . . failing to hold good its basic principles of equality, liberty and justice. At the same token the capitalism equally responsible to demolish democratic principles. We have to find a way. I am looking for an opportunity for research in this field. If anyone has any information, please let me know.”

You might start by shaping the view of "equality, liberty and justice" to accommodate Sartre's point, "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

    

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.