February 20, 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_a3d365de-e4d0-11e7-adff-bb153adee05d.html)

I appreciate this timely reminder by The Advocate personnel.  

Riley’s article is at wsj.com/articles/lsus-lazy-river-and-the-student-fee-sham-1513381917, and The Advocate, in a December article attached data on the 10 year growth in “mandatory fees” added to tuition from 2005 through 2015.

A recent tabulation for LSU Fall Semester undergraduate tuition and fees for 15 hours of courses is below:

Year_	Tuitn	Reqd	AETB*	Studnt	__Total	_Fees
2005	_____	____	_____	___	_______	___530
2013	2952	540	___448__	___	____3940	_988
2014	3346	585	___448__	___	____4379	1033
2015	3783	630	___448__	___	____4861	1078
2016	4023	632	___448__	305	____5408	1385
2017	4023	642	___448__	575	____5688	1665
*Academic, excellence, technology, and building use fees

Total fees were $530/semester in 2005, and they are 314% higher in 2017. Currently, the lowest TOPS award is $3731. The Student Excellence fee was introduced in 2016. See lsu.edu/bgtplan/Tuition-Fees/fee-schedules.php.

In addition to the administrative promotional issues Riley raises, there’s the LSU focus on social democracy. For example, a course on dialogues on racism and F. King Alexander’s symposium “Moment or Movement?”

Social democracy seeks continuous dysfunction or chaos over “human rights” that rebuke human responsibilities. Social democracy creates conflict for dominant opinion rather than collaboration for fidelity to the-objective-truth.

I do not think any money should be spent on LSU as long as its administrative priorities are so misplaced.

Today’s thought, G.E. Dean (Mark 8:36-37 CJB), The Advocate, February 20, 2018, 5B.

"Indeed, what will it benefit a person if he gains the whole world but forfeits his life? What could a person give in exchange for his life?”

Dean says, “Your soul is more valuable than anything in this world. Get right with God.”

Here’s a significant difference in the Complete Jewish Bible (life) and Dean’s edicts (soul). I found peace for myself when it occurred to me that I am body, mind and person. When my body, mind and person stop functioning, there will remain my accomplishments.

It has taken my seven and a half decades, but I discovered that a human being has the physical and psychological power to accept the authority to behave according to personal preference. To put it another way, a person may spend his or her life’s energy pursuing personal preference. For example, someone who thinks crime pays may be a criminal so long as their harm is covert. However, most humans may discover they prefer fidelity.

In the face of unknowns, individuals seek hope and comfort and therefore tend to associate fidelity with like-minded people. They tend to seek higher power in society or civilization. Invariably, the cultures that have evolved are flawed with Elmer Gantry’s, pedophile priests, cut throat Jihadists, tyrants, elites, excess taxation, and other errant aspects of the higher power.

Happy is the person who first realizes that he or she has the authority to behave and chooses fidelity to the-objective-truth rather than some doctrine or tyranny. This fidelity is comprehensive and extends to every connection the individual may need or want. With repetitive fidelity, the individual may continuously commit in thought, word, and action to first do no harm. That is, the individual neither imposes nor tolerates harm. He or she neither lies nor assists liars.

Happy is the person who defends his or her person rather than chases Dean’s mysteries. The Advocate could choose not to assist Dean.

Letters

Discovering the future (Cobb) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_f53af668-0784-11e8-b566-0ff5d9754c62.html)

To Joe Diogenes:  I would not have appreciated "Our Views" if the caption had read "Reversing Obama oil-patch injustice influenced by Cassidy, Kennedy and Graves.

Unless I oppose The Advocate's irresponsible freedom, I have no reason to expect better from their writers or to hope a free and responsible press will startup in my hometown.

Other forums

Review & Outlook, “Trump and the Dreamer,” Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2018, page A18.

quora.com/What-is-the-greatest-social-moral-problem-in-our-society-today

The question: “What is the greatest social/moral problem in our society today?”
My answer: widespread failure to understand the physical and psychological power of a mature human being and therefore failure to enjoy humankind’s progress. The mature human is independently, mutually just in his or her transactions and connections. By “mutually” I mean he or she neither imposes nor tolerates force. Thus, I call the human who, during his or her lifetime, develops maturity a civic person and his or her behavior civic morality. The elder human who does not aspire to civic morality is a dissident. People who think crime pays are dissidents.

Humankind evolved grammar and therefore has the potential to enjoy the earth and accommodate civic individuals. To enjoy the earth, humankind may justly balance subsistence. In other words, individuals may live in justice.

In justice, the adult human earns his or her living, behaves with civic morality, and collaborates for a civic culture. A civic culture constrains dissidents by statutory justice. Statutory justice makes sense to the individual who caused harm, the subject of law enforcement, because he or she is no less physically and psychologically powerful than civic humans. These principles cannot be taught except by personal experience and observations of other humans’ misery and loss. However, the individual can be coached to develop fidelity.

A human begins to develop maturity when he or she intends to behave in fidelity to the-objective truth. It is a comprehensive fidelity that extends to the person, his or her immediate family, extended family and friends, the people (nation), and the world, and beyond.

The-objective-truth exists. Humankind’s noble work is to discover each objective truth, include it in the interconnections of the-objective-truth, in other words the theory of the-objective-truth, and amend it if new discovery demands amendment. For example, humankind once perceived that the earth is flat and imagined it was the center of the universe. However, Earth is now known to be like a globe and a planet in rotation about our galaxy’s sun. Ours is one of billions of galaxies which are members of super galaxies, which appear as stars in our skies. In a moral example of the-objective-truth, civic people do not lie so that they may communicate with each other. In its corollary, civic people do not assist liars.

So far, humankind as we know it enjoys some seven to eight trillion man-years of discovery. Discovery breeds discovery, so the process is exponential not only in time but in growth of the population. Humankind’s time past is perhaps 2.8 million years, and current population is 7,455 million individuals; Population Clock. As a consequence, in 2018, there are so many fields of knowledge with so many details in each field that no one entity, whether human individual or institution can report the-discovered-objective-truth let alone the-objective-truth. For the individual to know what he or she would like to know is an astounding challenge for even the most aware adult, let alone a newborn baby, who has his or her lifetime of learning to come.

We may look at human maturing in stages of a complete life, which I can only begin to imagine but will do my best to describe. By “complete,” I mean achieving all that can be expected in a well-coached, full life of perhaps ninety years. By “well-coached” what I mean is an infant 1) with parenthood grounded in awareness of the leading edge of civic morality, 2) who develops personal authority with alacrity, and 3) who chooses to develop fidelity to the-objective-truth rather than struggle for favored opinion or doctrine. For example, a person who hopes for a favored afterdeath does not behave unjustly during life; and a just person does not denigrate a civic person’s hopes and dreams.

With these considerations, the life stages for a person may be: learning to walk and talk by about age 3; establishing awareness by about age 7; accepting personal autonomy and intent to learn by about age 10; understanding human reproduction and appreciating well-grounded human connections by age 11–13; taking charge of personal comprehension and intentions by age 17; beginning to assimilate experiences and observations as wisdom by age 23–25 and entering the workforce; embarking on young adulthood, perhaps choosing a mate, together embarking on the discovery of your persons, and building wealth for major life events including retirement; beginning to build a family around age 35; completing the time of career service to humankind at age 65 or beyond; perhaps grand parenting while switching to individual endeavors that continually enrich your persons according to preferences. Fortunate is the person who never subjugated or compromised the individual, human authority to behave with justice rather always sought civic collaboration.

In maturity, the civic person thinks: In every thought, word, and act, I will first do no harm. In other words, he or she will not think, speak or act, knowing that harm is possible.

During the evolution of humankind, civilizations, cultures, and societies have evolved that inculcate human obligations to higher powers: governments, Gods, societies, and more vaguely “fellow-man.” These aspects of order are part of the long-term quest for justice, and the scope of progress has been in hundreds if not thousands of years. For example, Christian literature has erroneously explained the master-slave relationship for 1700 years: Humankind knows better from Frederick Douglass’s assertion that slavery is acceptable everyone but the slave.; “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

Improvement in thousands of years does not serve the person. The individual infant may emerge a mature adult at the leading edge of civic morality by accepting his or her human authority to develop fidelity to the-objective-truth, maintaining the hopes and dreams for the future that he or she develops. The fact that few cultures coach children in these principles is humankind’s greatest travesty, so far.

We think we are at the nadir and are in the struggle for ascent to civic justice.

facebook.com/brian.schlindwein.7/posts/10156145819039140?comment_id=10156156497354140&notif_id=1519170698330403&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic&ref=notif

So far, the USA has saddled its children and grandchildren with 20 trillion dollars in debt. Who is the USA if not the people?

I would love to have a conversation with President Trump to try to interest him in private liberty with civic morality, where "civic" implies just transactions and connections in all behavior more than for "society." 

If I had that chance my expressions would be sincere. By sincere I mean well grounded, verifiable, and pure: integrity. I think what I would receive from Trump is integrity. Too many people approach him with lies, and he rebukes them with lies---will not allow them to touch his integrity. 

His kind of caution is described in Matthew 7:6, which I paraphrase, "If you trust a liar he will trample your integrity." I would not have dreamed of applying the principle as he does. I also may be dreaming to think he is that shockingly smart---that is, to interpret pearls as integrity and pigs as liars.

libertylawsite.org/2018/02/20/religion-currently-poses-less-danger-to-democracy

Professor McGinnis uses mystic phrases---“the sense of wonder about nature” and “children of God”---to try to convert the physics of pollution and the physics and psychology of racial discrimination into mysteries on par with the divinity of God.

Most egregious is his dysfunctional, pandering statement, “Democracies need all the help they can get, including religion, to muster the better angels of ourselves for the sacrifice that sustains a politics focused on common goods.” Only statutory justice, the developed American republic or equal, can promise a better future. Democracy brings chaos and dysfunction, as we observe daily.

 

The “common goods” phrase is obsolete:  Clearly, the individual needs compressive safety and security. Many relatively permanent groups---people who think crime pays, the evil throat-cutters and random bombers, and the Alinsky-Marxist disrupters---will never collaborate for civic morality, where “civic” means people leaving a connection or transaction in mutual justice. The dissident individual will always try to oppress the civic person.

Religion may be relegated to its proper place: the minds, hearts, closets, homes, and assemblies of believers. Each Christian may accept that to be civic citizens he or she must accept their human authority to use their life-time energy collaborating for fidelity to the-objective-truth. The-objective-truth exists, and humankind’s opportunity is to discover, understand, and benefit.

Opinions about whatever may control the-objective-truth and what an individual’s destiny may be are OK for the individual as long as he or she does not try to impose opinion as competition with the-objective-truth. Michael Polanyi (Personal Knowledge) was right to say his worship of his God is valid, but he was uncivic to disparage my trust-in and commitment-to the-objective-truth. I think McGinnis is in Polanyi’s camp.

   

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.