March 8, 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 want to collaborate with other citizens on this paraphrase, yet would always preserve the original, 1787, text.   

Our Views (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_bceac392-0ab3-11e8-8a1d-0792a8c7d8b4.html)

Often, I hope to write a simple “Thank you” for The Advocate’s “Our Views” but alas cannot. Today, instead of inspiring students to protect home and family, The Advocate encourages them to leave. What lemmings The Advocate employs!

Non-fiction writing professors taught:  Write for the audience. For the press, use eighth-grade words and phrases.

I doubt The Advocate’s “lemmings” passes for anything but obfuscation. The Advocate knows its intentions, but I think “lemmings” means “a person who unthinkingly joins a mass movement, especially a headlong rush to destruction.” The Advocate wrote, “Little wonder that this year’s graduates, looking at the lemmings who are supposed to lead their state, will decide to live and work elsewhere.”

Regarding its leadership respecting “their state,” the students’ Louisiana, The Advocate personnel make themselves lemmings. I expect encouraging words from history, perhaps a mild mimic of Thomas Paine: These are the times that try Louisiana youth: The social democrat and the LSU sports fan will, in this crisis, shrink from serving Louisiana; but he or she who stays home deserves the love and thanks of We the People of the United States. Also, The Advocate may write plainly about AMO.

 

The harm done to the United States in the past five decades by AMO, Alinsky-Marxist organizers, is in the literature The Advocate could read, too. AMO’s method is to recruit social democrats for their movement, watch the crowd action from afar, and leave the recruits to their own defense when passion draws them into harm, be it arrest, bodily harm, property loss, or even death. LSU’s own, F. King Alexander sponsored the infamous symposium “Moment or Movement?” The institutions that have made AMO possible include the Congressional Black Caucus and its affiliates, black power, black theology, and black failure of the promises of the 1964-5 civic rights acts. The current prince of AMO is Barack Obama; nbcnews.com/storyline/democrats-vs-trump/obama-aligned-organizing-action-relaunches-trump-era-n719311. The goal is chaos. Citizens may beware AMO movements.

Frederick Douglass saw the preamble to the 1787 Constitution as intentions to include every individual. The 1789 Congress sidelined that intention with the condition “under theism,” in other words, under belief in God. They hired factional Protestant ministers to self-proclaim divinity on par with the English Parliament’s claim to divinity. Now, many black ministers argue that the Christian God’s chosen people are black-skinned. The historically evil influences of the Holy Bible can be confronted by candid conversation. The opportunity for reform is ours.

Baton Rouge can have public integrity through candid talk. We are preparing now for our fifth annual library meeting to celebrate Personal Independence Day. The purpose is to promote the civic agreement that is offered in the preamble to the constitution for the USA. The agreement divides the people as those who collaborate for private liberty with civic morality and dissidents, who hopefully will reform because they perceive, from the evidence rather than exhortation, a better way of living. In a civic culture, every no-harm religion flourishes, including the factional Christianities.

Today’s thought, G.E. Dean (Psalms 51:10 CJB), The Advocate, March 7, 2018, 7B.

“Create in me a clean heart, God; renew in me a resolute spirit.”

Dean says, “God will answer this kind of praying.”

One of David’s mistakes was to pray this way. He could have prayed gratitude for the authority he had to behave with fidelity. Instead, he killed a man for his wife among other very bad things. 

Dean may reform, but more importantly, The Advocate ought to reform from publishing such bad advice.

Letters

Change (Flournoy) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_067750b0-222a-11e8-8379-b314cb4e1a2b.html)

Flournoy seems as open minded as a brick wall, even when a person shows up to help an agreeable cause, such as a woman's responsibility to not remain pregnant when she should terminate: No one should intervene.

 

The Advocate's caption on Flournoy's letter reminds me of President Obama's change for chaos. I don't wonder why.

  

Independence (Brown) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_6160bdc4-222d-11e8-af1a-cf5bb5ca1fc8.html)

Dale Brown uses data to motivate reform.
 
We offer the “immediate and massive action” citizens may take: Use the agreement that is offered in the preamble to the constitution for the USA to collaborate for civic morality with private liberty and vice versa. Require government to serve a civic people as well as dissidents.

To Thomas Winn: I think there should be evidence of responsibility to qualify for voting.

 

I already suggested the ability to responsibly paraphrase the preamble to the constitution for the USA then sign that you agree to trust-in and commit-to your paraphrase.

Columns

Leading concern (Rich Lowry) (patriotpost.us/opinion/54543-the-lefts-farrakhan-problem)

Lowry, publishing on 3/6 seems quick on this one.

Today, 3/8, others came out: theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/womens-march/555122/  and vox.com/identities/2018/3/7/17082030/womens-march-louis-farrakhan-tamika-mallory-anti-semitism-controversy and http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/377363-senate-dem-denounces-farrakhans-remarks and salon.com/2018/03/08/the-womens-march-has-an-anti-semitism-problem-and-a-louis-farrakhan-one/ and finalcall.com/artman/publish/National_News_2/article_102946.shtml .

And yesterday, 3/7, washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/03/07/louis-farrakhan-is-haunting-the-left/?utm_term=.4053c15f02dc and http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/is-it-so-hard-to-denounce-louis-farrakhans-anti-semitism.html with tweets from 3/3.

There are lots of movements but one need: private liberty with civic morality. The human being may develop the authority to collaborate for justice rather than conflict for dominant opinion.

   

Other forums

libertylawsite.org/2018/03/08/madisons-notes-at-last-a-new-and-improved-look

  

I appreciate Professor Uzzell’s contributions to history studies.

  

But I am twice troubled by “the U.S. Constitution is more than a fundamental law; it reflects who We, the People, actually are.”

  

The subject of the 1787, draft preamble is We the People of the United States rather than We, the People. But the people of Rhode Island had not collaborated in creating the individual civic agreement that is stated in the preamble, and only nine states ratified with the intention to add a bill of rights---leaving a total of four dissident states on June 21, 1788. Virginia joined the USA a month later, and USA operations began with ten states on March 4, 1789. By the time the bill of rights was negotiated, a fourteenth state had joined. Thus, the constitution for the USA was not complete before ratification on December 15, 1791. The best history can say is that the inhabitants of the United States “actually are,” and always were, divided.

  

The constitution is both controversial and amendable. At no time does it reflect who We the People of the United States actually are. In 1787, We the People of the United States had experienced some 180 years of freedom-from European oppression and some discovered the liberty-to pursue the happiness they individually perceived rather than the dictates of a patriot, like James Madison (federalist) or Patrick Henry (statesman). Henry opposed ratification and urged changing “We the People” to “We the States.”

  

The 1787 Constitution intended ending slave trade, effecting abolition of slavery if economic feasibility became evident, and separation from British law and religion. However, beginning in 1789, Madison collaborated with the First Congress in reinstating Blackstone but with American, factional Protestantism rather than the Church of England. We the People of the United States paid no attention to Congress’s tyranny, perhaps because among citizens, about 80% of inhabitants, 99% were factional Protestants. We the People of the United States has suffered freedom of religion, in particular freedom of Christianity ever since. Our generation may end that misery and loss.

  

The people of 1787 in no way wanted democracy to replace monarchy and the signers promised in the constitution a republican form of government. These 231 years later it is common for leaders and writers for the media, such as the Wall Street Journal, to cite “our democracy.” There’s a zeal for social democracy or socialism rather than the rule of statutory law. The constitutional law scholars debate the past while the nation is being lost in the present. (This is another view of Professor Uzzell’s civic concern.) Losing originalism is trivial to losing republicanism as the rule of statutory law. But American republicanism’s standard of justice is the-objective-truth, established by discovery, rather than religion, a matter of opinion.

  

Madison was such a shrewd politician he wanted no public notoriety for statements like, “During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.” Yet in the same document, he perhaps collaborated on “Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe.” See founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0163, especially the “Editorial Note.”

  

That was in 1785, and many civic people of 2018 are more impressed with Albert Einstein’s view that physics---as energy, mass and space-time---governs the universe. Even religion derives from speculation about what is imagined but undiscovered in energy, mass and space-time. Madison’s opinions pale before the-objective-truth, which existed and can only be discovered rather than being constructed on reason and emotions.

Each human being may possess and admit-to the authority to develop personal judgement on which to spend the energy of his or her lifetime. It is an individual quest, and humankind may or may not benefit from the choices made. It seems unlikely that verifying the opinions of James Madison can do much for an achievable, better future. But I must admit to many hours trying to understand what is attributed to him and to earn my sparse opinion. The prospect that Madison honestly had not discovered integrity seems to pale before humankind’s discoveries during these 231 years.

In 2018, most students of justice can attest that honesty is insufficient: a civic person may pursue integrity. I hope these thoughts advance an achievable better future.

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.