August 4, 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_5158eb1e-7705-11e7-8a34-bbdfff72bde6.html)

It does not get better than your hometown newspaper reviewing a book and creatively thinking about private integrity that leads to public integrity.

The Advocate encourages citizens to add willing participation in civic self-governance to their regimen of personal development, comfort, and satisfaction: “reform rests in the hands of citizens willing to get involved in their own political fates.”

We think 230 years of neglect of the civic agreement that is stated in the preamble to the constitution for the USA is responsible for our present, dire need for reform. The preamble establishes Personal Independence predicated on trust in and commitment to the goals stated in the preamble.

It is appropriate to read, consider, paraphrase for 2017 living, and celebrate the promise of comprehensive safety and security offered by the civic agreement in the preamble, in anticipation of Constitution Day, each September 17.

The mutual quest for comprehensive safety and security unites willing people and distinguishes most of “we, the people” from dissidents. Safety and security is The Advocate’s easy: comprehensive is the hard.

To JT McQuitty: "democratically" worries me.

We the People of the United States specified a republic, having considered the evil of democracy.

 

Churchill extolled democracy, but he was an Englishman, and the English do not understand the American republic to this day.

 

Whereas California has 53 representatives Wyoming has only one. However, both states have 2 senators. That's only one of many democracy spoilers built into the constitution for the USA.

   

Today’s thought, G.E. Dean (Revelation 16:7-11, CJB)

“Then I heard the altar say, ‘Yes, Adonai, God of heaven’s armies,
your judgments are true and just!’  The fourth one poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was permitted to burn people with fire. People were burned by the intense heat; yet they cursed the name of God, who had the authority over these plagues, instead of turning from their sins to give him glory. The fifth one poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom grew dark. People gnawed on their tongues from the pain, yet they cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and sores, and did not turn from their sinful deeds.”

I do not understand “Adonai” and “God” in the above interpretation.

Dean says “It is truly sad how people even in the midst of God’s judgement can continue to resist the Lord. Don’t allow your heart to get hard like this.”

Dean seems to suggest that people who flooded out have hard hearts. I don’t trust Dean’s thinking.

Letters

Health care (Bardwell) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_4554b534-779e-11e7-a6db-db3bef629576.html)

Personal care can make health care feasible. As long as people are paid to nourish adult appetites, both the AMA and insurance companies will give them propaganda to hang themselves on.

There must be incentives for private attention to personal wellbeing.

My company never said a word about my 1972 smoking habit. However, each smoke break took attention from my engineering assignment. It seemed logical for me to quit for the sake of professional advancement. The integral of my salary curve without smoking is probably tens of thousands of dollars. Also, I’m in my eighth decade (or mid-seventies).

Personal health care (Adams) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_cc6c38e2-779b-11e7-9991-43bfc2486abf.html)

I doubt the sustainability of the Massachusetts system, and find reports to that effect each time I check. See, for example, bostonglobe.com/business/2017/01/05/massachusetts-immune-trump-health-care-changes-think-again/AYBKfvrfsdr8KjwX4IPR5O/story.html .

“It’s just not true that the Affordable Care Act is a national version of the universal health insurance plan pioneered in Massachusetts. Yes, the Obama folks adopted the same three-part structure as Romney’s team: require people to buy insurance, reform the private insurance market to make this easier, and subsidize those who can’t afford it. And sure, many of the key architects of Romney’s plan went to D.C. to set up the national program. But there is one enormous difference. Obama paid for his plan by raising taxes, particularly on high earners. Romney didn’t do that. While there were some penalties for people who refused to buy insurance — and also companies that didn’t offer it — the Romney plan relied heavily on federal aid.”

Citizens who are “willing to get involved in their own political fates” may check the facts rather than accept propaganda. In the case of health care, personal care is at least four times more effective than health care.

  

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

  

Facts are facts (Clarence Page) chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/page/ct-michelle-obama-racism-perspec-0727-20170726-story.html

The press made fun of George W. Bush, and he often seemed too clumsy for a president. However, their jokes did not create a burden for me. Page does not burden me with other people’s behavior.  

Conflicting visions (Walter Williams) creators.com/read/walter-williams

“On the eve of the 2007 minimum wage increase, 650 of my fellow economists, including a couple of Nobel laureates, signed a petition that read, "We believe that a modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well-being of low-wage workers and would not have the adverse effects that critics have claimed." At the time, I wrote that I felt professional embarrassment for them; however, I felt proud that not a single member of our distinguished George Mason University economic faculty signed the petition.”

 

Other forums 

libertylawsite.org/liberty-forum/rebuilding-the-institutions-of-self-government/

It is good that Professor Postell summarized the forum and expressed appreciation for Reinsch and the informative responses by Alexander, Paquette, Kuznicki, and Peterson.

I think professorial propriety obfuscates discovery and confines students to narrow pasts. Fortunately for the students, some are dissident to official education. The professors, by focusing on isolations of the past, stonewall themselves from the leading edge of the people’s slow march toward civic morality. But egregiously, by overlooking the preamble to the constitution for the USA, professors retard possible progress. Institutional neglect of the preamble is intentional. It empowers the theism-government partnership. Only the people can reverse the 230 year American trend.

Most people want peace so that they may pursue personal interests during their lifetime and for their children’s lives and grandchildren’s lives and beyond. Some want to take advantage of the-objective-truth and are eager to benefit from the discovery. Some are willing to collaborate for comprehensive safety and security during every decade of their lives. Some are dissidents. The willing address justice for now and the future but do not want to master the debates of the past. They regret the use of force, but realize the rule of law is necessary to constrain the dissidents who cause harm. The theism-government partnership keeps the willing people from collaborating.

It is impractical for every person to attempt to discover the-objective-truth; it is a collaborative, human quest. Societies form on shared opinion and therefore cannot be trusted to focus on the-objective-truth. However, individuals and particular societies may iteratively collaborate to discover the-objective-truth and use it to lessen human loss and misery. The factions agree that the goal is discovery and the consequence is utilization of the results.

If the discovery accommodates everyone’s personal pursuits, there is no need for regulation or law. On the other hand, if one party has goals that conflict with the-objective-truth, constraint may be needed. A super-majority appreciates laws that constrain theft. However, denial that a child is a person is more controversial: Some people think it is alright to deny a newborn human equality and dignity. Concern for ova is almost non-existent, and that is an error in civic morality. Neither theism nor political systems can be counted on to discover civic morality. Only willing people can discover and offer ultimate justice (a phrase borrowed from Abraham Lincoln, 1861).

Rather than working to advance a theory from the past, professors could be working to help extant people live at the edge of the inexorable march toward comprehensive safety and security. In the USA, that quest could be ordered by the preamble to the constitution. It is a civic agreement that covers as many categories of civic morality as 325 million people can publicly handle. The preamble addresses civic issues, leaving private any personal practices such as religion. The-objective-truth may be used for discovery leading to public integrity.

Willing, informed Americans, who created the preamble and the articles that follow, included the promise of republicanism. Only 2/3 of delegates signed the draft, and the 1/3 dissidents had reasons. Many details assure that democracy cannot spoil the republic. For example, in Congress, a continually fixed number of Representatives, now 435, reflect populations, but each state has 2 senators. For example, California has 53 representatives while Wyoming has one. However, to assure the people’s sovereignty, as declared in the preamble, articles can be amended so as to replace republicanism with democracy. I think the people who would like that amendment are disruptive dissidents---collectivists, much like Saul Alinsky.

By repressing the power of the preamble, institutions suppress self-government. That is the point of falsely labeling the preamble “secular.” The preamble offers a civic agreement that leaves religion for individual privacy or chosen association. It makes no sense to expect civic virtue to arise from a religious society, or any other society. Not all religions have theism, and no two doctrine have the same God. Civic virtue can come from a culture of collaboration for comprehensive safety and security. In a comprehensive culture, every no-harm society may flourish according to factional interest. Some literature cited in the forum supported the preamble, but beyond me, the word did not occur in the forum. The professors do not recognize the agreement offered in the preamble.

Reference to Kendall was especially surprising, because Kendall seemed so attracted to theism as the source of civic virtue. The focus on theism as a basis for civic morality was disproved by American Christianity’s advocacy for slavery, as witnessed by Fredrick Douglass in a citation by Kuzniki. In fact, approval of slavery calls into question the Church’s canonization of the Holy Bible. If the Bible is the Word, slavery may prevail; mankind may discover who is master and if race is involved. But the important failing by Kindall is to extol congressional debate. In civic justice, willing people discover the-objective-truth and how to benefit, and Congress acts accordingly. The President administers the law, and the court recommends constitutional amendment if the law conflicts with the-discovered-objective-truth. In a civic culture, Supreme Court opinion does not overrule the-objective-truth. A free press is constrained to represent the-objective-truth. Albert Einstein, in 1941, pointed out that liars cannot communicate, but the press keeps on lying. Professors may be constrained to represent the-objective-truth.

It seems Peterson and Paquette coerced Postell into accepting “America’s transition from republic to democracy,” as a done deal. How foolish! Further, the subject morphed to “congressional self-government” with blame to the people. Above, I asserted that civic virtue cannot come from social institutions, theism, or government, but may come from willing people---willing individuals. People collaborating to live in peace every decade of their lives solves the problems Madison noted, in Federalist 10. Madison did not offer a grounded solution. And Hamilton seemed prescient as to Congress behaving such that “they would blush in a private capacity.” The Democratic Party, Libertarian Party, and Republican Party each seems worse than Congress.

Saul Alinsky and Alinsky-Marxist orgainzations (AMO) have demonstrated how “groups of people are prone to excesses.” And AMO works to combine factions into collectives that disrupt civic virtue altogether. AMO  generates conflict for chaos. Google “D.L. Adams+Alinsky” to review the history through 2010. “The wise legislator” stays focused on conforming to the-objective-truth rather than demands, collective or not.

This forum has shown that civics professors are so isolated by particular faction or competitive scholarship that they have lost sight of the limited, amendable authority granted the constitution for the USA and the institutions it created. The subject of the preamble and thus the constitution is We the People of the United States. It’s true that the people neglect the preamble. However, they are coerced to do so by the theism-government partnership that lives high on the hog on the people’s backs. The people do not take the time to make certain their vote will advance civic morality---the person they elect will serve the people rather than self, faction, and the theism-government partnership. It’s a matter of propriety. Professors seem to forget they are citizens and get so far out on their limbs it is hard to imagine them finding their ways home---to the preamble and the willing people. Professors could help willing people push the edge of civic morality.

I think students are aware of professorial folly, but young adults are dedicated to graduating and can’t perceive, through a scholarly fog, the power of the preamble. It is a vicious tragedy.

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.