February 11, 2018

Phil Beaver seeks to collaborate on the-objective-truth, which can only be discovered. The comment box below invites readers to write.

"Civic" refers to citizens who collaborate for responsible freedom more than for the city.

A personal paraphrase of the June 21, 1788 preamble:  We the civic citizens of nine of the thirteen United States commit-to and trust-in the purpose and goals stated herein --- integrity, justice, collaboration, defense, prosperity, liberty, and perpetuity --- and to cultivate limited services to us by the USA. I am willing to collaborate with other citizens on this paraphrase, yet may settle on and would always preserve the original text.   

Our Views (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_74fef0d8-0d03-11e8-8dc5-a32bb64b7c5c.html)

  

To Scuddy LeBlanc: Transparency must be considered before it can be enacted, and I don’t perceive a government that want’s transparency.

I’m confused about who is proposing transparency. Obviously, it is not Gov. Edwards. The Advocate reports his lies about the budget cuts and abusive retorts, like the one to State Senator Hewitt; see http://thehayride.com/2018/02/video-jbe-starts-a-sexist-war-on-senator-hewitt/.

I see the photo of LABI’s Stephen Waguespack. There’s reference to the nonpartisan Public Interest Research Group, apparently a national non-profit; uspirg.org/home. It calls itself a federation, but I could not find a Louisiana PRIG. I am aware of the Louisiana Budget Project; labudget.org/. However, I think it is a liberal-democrat if not liberation Marxist leaning effort, perhaps sympathetic to AMO. I don’t know.

The Advocate discredits LaTRAC, vaguely blaming Jindal, as usual, but I’d think Jay Dardenne is in charge, and he seems more cunning than Edwards when it comes to facts. See wwwcfprd.doa.louisiana.gov/latrac/portal.cfm. The presentation is bewildering.

Does anyone know the status of moving the Washington Street exit to help I-10 traffic? Did Gov. Edwards disappear it with a $350 million hand wave that disappears my habitual Perkins Road ramps? See theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_ffd2ec7e-5a70-11e6-b04e-abc6d38dfd0c.html.

  

Today’s thought

Beginning my new found practice. In every thought, word, and deed, first do no harm, I considered today a statement of fact that the other party could have taken as harmful. I consulted with family and we agreed that “first intend no harm” is too weak: the intention must be “first do no harm.” Deal with other people’s views as they come.

Columns

Appreciating medical caretakers (Terry Robinson) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/article_838451f4-0ab8-11e8-b827-8737de9e93d0.html)

Faith statements and commitments have their place; I prefer privacy.

However, it bothers me when grateful people don’t notice medical caretakers enough to express appreciation. It’s almost like “God and I have this.” I get a similar massage from some football-game winners.

Unlearned lesson from the Civil War (Dan Fagan) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/article_6d6eb0cc-0d0a-11e8-8644-cfa3d351b208.html)

To Scuddy LeBlanc: “Most can’t begin to understand how so many Americans of antiquity — and, in some cases, our family ancestors — could have been so wrong about slavery. How could their hearts become so hard that they were deceived into believing an entire race was less than human?”
  

They read their Holy Bible and listened to their ministers. See leefamilyarchive.org/9-family-papers/339-robert-e-lee-to-mary-anna-randolph-custis-lee-1856-december-27. Landrieu has made his mark in history as most foolish, because the history on this issue is plain. Plaques reporting the-objective-truth should be attached to the restored statues. Otherwise, Landrieu-folly would demolish St. Louis Cathedral.

People who would impose their opinion on a woman who has decided to terminate her pregnancy are making the same mistake, especially if they are inspired by Bible interpretation or clergy opinion. Civic morality conforms to the-objective-truth, and a civic culture marches toward private liberty with civic morality.  

  

News

Reverse suspension from school (Ellyn Couvillion) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/communities/ascension/article_c9602d5a-05f5-11e8-b277-d701774ad3d1.html)

  

To George Craig: Your negative intro threw me off; I am glad your witnesses was positive.

 

This novel policy, parents attending class with wayward students seems novel, and the good students in the classroom with the reverse-suspension parent seem to appreciate or at least not resent the intrusion.

I hope this is part of a better future.

BREC despots (Andrea Gallo) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_13df98d6-0df1-11e8-b8b3-03b3d2f4bdb7.html)

  

The BREC debacle reminds me of the Metro-Council’s irresponsibility regarding the Council on Aging. I hold the EBRP Metro-Council responsible, because the tyranny of the COA was plain the council when they legislated a referendum.

  

Relocating the zoo is taking on the same despotism. I have been voting for BREC taxation for five decades, but BREC has converted me to the “No” vote.

That does not mean I do not support replacing a broken, dangerous glass back board on one exercise station at Perkins Road Park. That jagged piece of glass has been there for about six months. (That risk being taken by BREC is unacceptable.)

A media lie (Chad Day and Mary Clare Jalonick) (ktvu.com/news/citing-national-security-concerns-trump-says-he-wont-declassify-democratic-memo-on-russia-probe)

  

President Trump asked the Democrats to revise the memo as a provision for publishing it. The AP falsely reports it as “Trump won’t declassify,” assuming readers will read no further.

Other forums

Steven Pinker, “The Enlightenment is Working,” Wall Street Journal, Febrary 10-11, 2018, page C1. wsj.com/articles/the-enlightenment-is-working-1518191343

  

Pinker is one of today’s most admirable speakers. Yet his momentum is negative, and I’m not certain it can be reformed. His entire essay has one purpose: “. . . the policies of President Donald Trump . . . are alarming.” What a wasted opportunity!

The essay is built on falsehoods. By cunning statistics, Pinker illustrates opinion-based evidence, in other words using statistics to support an opinion---even though he is aware of, for example, “data-driven policing.” He, perhaps accurately states that from 1818 to 2018 world literacy improved from 12% to 85%. However, those numbers correspond to an illiteracy increase of 21% in the 200 years beginning 30 years after The Enlightenment! Is it better to be one of 0.95 billion illiterates then or one of 1.14 billion illiterates now? How much more personal regress does Pinker want? I contend that social democrats like Pinker keep The Enlightenment from working as certainly as American Christians oppress personal liberty by erroneously working to impose religion as civic morality.

On one point, Pinker agrees with me: President Trump’s favoritism for freedom of religion instead of freedom of the individual human is erroneous. However, Trump seems to have a habit of rejecting ideas he discovers civic immorality, and he may reform. Compare Abraham Lincoln. It seems he never expected the CSA would attack the USA. Once they did, it took him three years to admit that organized civic attack against the USA is nevertheless war, and only inflicting death and destruction would end it. Lincoln’s three-year awakening was necessary, even though in his first inaugural address he said, “that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.”

Pinker’s list of uses for the individual’s brief lifetime reflects cosmopolitanism that I doubt every individual would choose. Interests in development of your person and your family certainly come before sampling “the world’s cuisine, knowledge, and culture.” Shouldn’t that be “cultures?” The one culture individuals need is a civic culture: mutual, comprehensive safety and security. And that culture does not have to be global. One country has no prerogative to force comprehensive safety and security on another country, but this country has that obligation to citizens. That’s what President Trump strives for, and he erroneously thinks Christianity enhances comprehensive safety and security. (That’s my opinion about Trump’s motive, and not the-objective-truth.)

But Pinker’s honest errors come with “Our ancestors replaced dogma, tradition and authority with reason, debate, and . . . truth-seeking . . . superstition and magic with science.” What ancestors? In the USA, the signers of the draft constitution offered, in the preamble, a civic agreement. The first Congress obfuscated that agreement by restoring Blackstone (common law) and American, factional Protestantism. They hired ministers to restore the impression that legislators have divine authority. The US Supreme Court reinforced that opinion in Greece v Galloway (2014). Law professors who claim they are originalists yet cite the work of the First Congress may realize that the original originalists signed the draft constitution for the USA on September 17, 1787. The remaining third of delegates were dissidents, and some of them contributed to the First Congress’s harm.

And who “shifted values . . . toward universal human flourishing?” Is humanity flourishing in China, Russia, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the USA, Africa, or Australia? I don’t think so.

The Pinker statement I most oppose is “forced” in his list of developments. He states, “Oppression and discrimination . . . start to corrode when educated, mobile, and connected people exchange ideas and are forced to justify their practices.” Perhaps Pinker has in mind the professors of Harvard, who compete for dominant opinion, never caring whether or not they are 1) increasing the possibilities for people living now to benefit from the white tower thoughts and words or 2) approaching the-objective-truth. Perhaps he’s citing the CEO’s who strive for million dollar incomes with billion dollar wealth and whose families’ jet around the world in privacy, tasting the world’s diversity for variety’s sake.

But what is this practice-justifying “force” Pinker speaks of? Apparently it is migration to “secular liberal democracies.” I may think of Norway, with high individual wealth from distribution of GDP from oil, fishing and shipping, but with a population 5 million, mostly Norwegian Christian (secular) and almost closed borders. Pinker is extolling a way of living that is available to 0.07% of the world’s population. He goes on to say that sympathy is on par with knowledge in “enhancing human flourishing.”

 
Pinker is (I could have chosen “seems”) wrong minded to extol sympathy. At best, he is citing rapport, tolerance, affinity, empathy, harmony, accord, compatibility. What many people prefer is public privacy. Coercing people to spend their lifetime to develop sympathy is the worst idea I have encountered. Pinker has my sympathy.

No person or institution can usurp a human being’s authority on how to spend the energy involved in his or her lifetime. At best it’s only 90 years, and the person may make the most of it.

 
The human being is so physically and psychologically powerful that it takes about three decades for him or her to acquire the understanding and intent to live a full life. If he or she decides to work, he or she has the opportunity to connect with humankind and discover personal preferences for his or her person. To distract him or her from that opportunity is the worst kind of tyranny.

  
This concept---personal authority during personal lifetime---cannot be taught: it can only be realized by the human individual, perhaps with coaching by appreciative family and friends. Harvard may begin to coach people in personal liberty with civic morality anytime enlightenment kicks into their cloistered debate.

Phil Beaver does not “know” the actual-reality. He trusts and is committed to the-objective-truth which can only be discovered. He is agent for A Civic People of the United States, a Louisiana, education non-profit corporation. See online at promotethepreamble.blogspot.com.