The preamble promotes civic discipline more than governance

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, state, nation, or other institution.

A personal paraphrase of preamble, the USA Constitution’s most neglected legal statement:  We the willing citizens of the United States collaborate for self-discipline in integrity, justice, defense, prosperity, liberty, and child development and by this amendable constitution limit the USA's service to us in our states. I want to collaborate with other citizens on this paraphrase, yet would preserve the original, 1787, text, unless it is amended by the people.

It seems no one has challenged whether or not the preamble is a legal statement. The fact that it changed this independent country from a confederation of states to dual federalism managed by the people convinces me the preamble is legal.

Every citizen has equal opportunity to either trust-in and collaborate-on the goals stated in the preamble or be dissident to the agreement. I think 2/3 of citizens try somewhat to use the preamble but do not articulate commitment to the goals. However, it seems less than 2/3 understand that “posterity” implies children. “Freedom of religion,” which government cannot discipline, bemuses freedom to develop civic integrity.

Our Views

July 5; civics (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_906626aa-7a3d-11e8-b603-fb33b1a01554.html)

The Advocate personnel illustrate that much has been lost in the 60 years since I was beginning to learn civics. The nanny state produced directors like James Comey who still seems to seek an entity to take responsibility for his integrity.

At Staub School, in the 1950s, I acquired a fascination for what I now view as the unrecognized American promise: individual liberty with civic morality. Civic citizens collaborate for comprehensive safety and security. Therefore, American literature was a keen interest in my college years.

The American promise is offered in the legal agreement that is stated in the preamble to the constitution. Each citizen may read the agreement and choose to accept its discipline or not. If not, dissidence to the discipline may beg individual woe and perhaps the promise’s failure itself.

People confuse themselves be not considering words chosen by writers. For example, “posterity” includes children, grandchildren and beyond. Debt being built for adult satisfactions hurts the children. Today, a newborn faces over $5.3 million debt: http://www.usdebtclock.org/.

America is a constitutional, representative republic. Qualified citizens vote. However, a vote for Wyoming Senator has 68 times the political power as a vote for California Senator. In Louisiana, the governor is elected by popular vote, but so is the Attorney General.

Mimicking Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, 1863, I hope discipline of by and for a civic people will not perish from the USA. However, The Advocate is erroneously trying to convert the USA to social democracy.

To Tony Dorsa: America is a constitutional, representative federal republic.

Qualified citizens vote. However, a vote for Wyoming Senator has 68 times the political power as a vote for California Senator.

Marsha Marshal

I just wish I could take The Advocate comment board trolls back to 10th grade civics class. And I mean one in the United States, not the Confederacy.

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Phil Beaver

Marsha Marshal, did you copy a profile picture of Phil Beaver, create a Facebook account with the name "Phil Beaver" then comment on Phil Beaver's posts? 

Be careful, now. The Internet has memory.

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Marsha Marshal

Phil, what the green gravy are you talking about? If "The Internet" has a "memory" of what you're talking about, then show us.

Like · Reply · 3h

To Marsha Marshal again: Do you think copying a person's profile picture on Facebook, then using that copy to open a Facebook account with the person's name then posting responses to the person's posts on theadvocate.com is a form of identity theft? 

The Advocate's online department recognized the abuse, helped me find out how to report to Facebook, and I effected terminated the identity abuse using Facebook's provisions.

I do not authorize you to call me either Phil or Mr. Beaver, as I consider your liberties abuses of my person. You may either call me Ray or let Facebook operate as normal.

To Marsha Marshal again: You insist on demonstrating abuse and progressivist regression, and I want to address three opportunities for civic morality.

First, you abuse my authority regarding the use of my name: You may either call me Ray or accept Facebook’s neutral treatment, but you cannot without violence against my person call me Phil or Mr. Beaver.

Second, corporate failures come 85% of the time from management. The “DuPont Museum” you cited is not the work of chemical engineers. Further, TEL is the efficient anti-knock (AK) compound. AK makes internal combustion efficient, reducing pollutant emissions. TEL’s toxicity was known and controlled from the beginning: that’s chemistry and biology. Chemical engineers know how to contain hazards yet allow the public to develop economic viability, both in manufacturing and in product applications. Progressives, in their usual AMO substitutions of facts imposed data on harm to children from leaded paint to attack TEL use. Environmentalists railroaded an increase in combustion emissions by forcing the automotive and other industry to use less effective antiknock compounds. The less effective AKs introduced new hazards of their own. I do not pretend to know the-objective-truth regarding the moral balance and the TEL story; I’ve been retired nearly 20 years. Perhaps somebody knows the civically moral balance, but not you. Pretense is your method of operation.

Third, you honestly create your personal record of privation of integrity. Can you even define integrity according to civic morality? To give your AI a lead, check Stephen L. Carter’s essay at https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/bruce.brogdon/engl1301/bruce.brogdon/201cthe-insufficiency-of-honesty201d-by-stephen-carter/view and realize that Carter missed the mark. He proposes personal understanding as a surrogate for integrity. Chemical engineers are trained to both professionally and personally insist on actual reality rather than accepting personal understanding. Yet ChE’s are human; some ChE’s learn and adopt their university, ChE training and some don’t. I did. Some choose reliable employers and perform so as to serve for thirty-five years and some don’t. I did. Nevertheless, Carter, a law professor, makes it clear that someone may honestly expose their privation of integrity, as you do with abandon. So read Carter and see if you can phil in Carter’s lawyerly gaps.

BTW: I think I am suggesting, coaching, guiding and encouraging you to reform from an AMO practitioner to an advocate for the self-discipline that is proposed in the preamble to the constitution for the U.S. and its promise of individual independence with civic morality rather than factional conflict for dominant opinion. However, I perceive even yet you do not understand which rotation of the earth hides the sun each evening.

To SandraandMichael Evans: Please comment on my suggestion that educators owe it to children to encourage and coach them to develop integrity.

If you appreciate the request, would Louisiana's system need change to effect the aforementioned encouragement and coaching.

If so, then please consider one more question: Would the U.S. Constitution need amendment to support Louisiana-education's encouragement and coaching children to develop integrity?

To SandraandMichael Evans again: I come back to encouraging “children to develop integrity.” I searched the eleven pages of https://www.cde.ca. gov/sp/cd/re/itf09cogdev.asp#cae for "integrity" and did not find one entry.

Honesty is coaching and guiding according to personal or institutional opinion. Integrity is coaching and guiding according to the-objective-truth. When students ask about mysteries, like, "does America really trust in a god"? The honest coach and guide is ready for the next question, "Which god?" Probably the institution instructs honest coaches and guides to say, in effect, "We don't discuss mysteries in class," probably not admitting to mystery. The consequence of a nation with "In God We Trust" propaganda but silence in the classroom is confused and conflicted students.

The coach, guide and encourager who understands integrity answers the first question perhaps like this: “No. A faction of Americans erroneously think "In God We Trust" can unite us. However, the god, or God, remains an unknown, and humankind is too psychologically powerful to trust the unknown.” (Consider that a draft; if you want to create a statement for classroom use, let's collaborate to make it safe for children at every grade level.)

The challenging question remains: If the US or Louisiana decided to coach, guide, and moreover ENCOURAGE children in their natural tendency to discover, rely on, and share the-objective-truth, in other words, develop integrity, how fast could new curricula be developed?

To Marsha Marshal again:

As I understand #metoo, abuse is in the opinion of the offended person. You have no civic need to address me. Facebook does that for us. Your opinion has no standing when I say you cannot call me Phil or Mr. Beaver but may call me Ray.

At the first post in this thread, you refer to fellow citizens as trolls. I understand a troll to be someone who monitors a forum and jumps into a dialogue to promote their agenda, business, or cause. I consider your jump into my conversation with Ms. Evans an act of trolling.

So you added to your other failings in civic morality hypocrisy respecting trolls.

Second post: I oppose The Advocate personnel’s promotion of social democracy, or chaos, rather than the rule of law.

On my way to studying the preamble, becoming a preambler, and listening to fellow-citizens’ responses to the discoveries, I fortuitously got distracted by a 35-year career in chemical engineering. It was with one company: Ethyl Corporation’s spin-off, Albemarle Corporation.

Since then, I’ve studied and written about the preamble for two decades, lately in EBRP-library discussions during five years. Here are some recent discoveries, accomplished by reading, writing, preaching, and LISTENING to nearly 100 collaborators at the library and elsewhere.

In 1774, farmers as a militia liberated Worcester, MA, from England. The people inspired the first Continental Congress. Thus, the inspiration for the American Revolution came from civic people more than from “fathers”, not to diminish the brilliant events from 1763 to June 21, 1788. Some events starting in 1789 were regressive, restoring Protestant-Blackstone political partnership. That English stain may be overcome after 2018.

The preamble is the first civic and legal statement in the 1787 Constitution. The people’s representatives in the required nine states established the preamble’s legality on June 21, 1788. On that day, the 1774 Confederation of States became four dissidents to the United States rather than thirteen collaborators. When the United States began operation on March 4, 1789, people’s representatives of another state had ratified. There were ten. The ten increased to fifty.

The preamble also legally divides the people between willing citizens and dissidents to the purpose: civic discipline. The willing citizens, who I refer to as a civic people in each era, authorized the United States and now collaborate to amend the constitution when they recognize injustice. The dissidents vary in character from citizens living unaware of the preamble, to rebels for dominant opinion rather than civic justice, to people who prefer crime and worse. A civic people coach and encourage dissidents to join the civic culture.

The preamble’s promise is individual liberty with civic morality through self-discipline. By individual liberty I mean the freedom to responsibly pursue individual happiness rather than the vision someone else or an institution may have for the person. The words in this essay inspire mimicking Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 words at Gettysburg: soldiers sacrificed so that civic self-discipline of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the United States. In other words, “consent of the governed” is just another bad English idea (Milton and Locke at least). It’s as irresponsible as the English error of unanimous juries for America’s diverse yet habitually impartial citizenry.

Each human being has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority to develop integrity. But many people don’t understand much less develop integrity.

The human being is so complex and the state of knowledge so overwhelming that it takes three decades for a person to acquire the understanding and intent to embark on a complete human life. If so, through development of integrity, he or she may develop fidelity to the-objective-truth.

It is a comprehensive fidelity that extends to self, immediate family, the people (nation), humankind, and the universe.

The Advocate personnel has a unique, hometown opportunity to promote the civic discipline that is offered fellow citizens by the agreement stated in the preamble to the U.S. constitution using collaboration to discover and benefit from the-objective-truth.

To Marsha Marshal: Ethyl Corporation gave me the opportunity to work with people of forty different ethnic backgrounds as well as overseas assignments. I was the foreigner in my work-peers' land. I learned their language.

Consequently, much of the development of integrity I write reads like pretense to you, MW, and The Advocate personnel.

Like · Reply · 1h

To Marsha Marshal: You insist on demonstrating that lawyerly dissidents are slow; to behave with civic morality. I authorized you to call me Ray, but neither Phil nor Mr. Beaver. Of course, you can let Facebook eliminate your abuse.

I respond to the chaos of your insincerity for my purposes rather than yours. For information, TEL was discovered at General Motors; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Kettering.

That gets close to my integrity experience in a foreign land at my age 29. It’s among the reasons I feel lucky to have chosen chemical engineering rather than journalism or law for my education: ChE schools teach integrity. It takes someone of integrity to understand integrity developing integrity by example, so I will not waste the story here, but it does involve TEL.

Also, you failed the “sunrise” test by not solving the riddle of which of earth’s rotations hides the sun each evening. Artificial intelligence has its limitations. It seems that both law school and journalism school teach that there's no need for integrity: What's important is perception. I think the people of the U.S. are disproving both law school and journalism school. Of course there's no integrity in applying the obvious to every school, but in 2018, it seems best to start from the impression that a school is dominated by liberal democrats and gather the data hoping to disprove the assumption.

Chemical engineering school? Integrity is essential. I appreciate ChE at both the University of Tennessee and at LSU.

Letters

Exemplary immigration (John Harling) (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_31d8be16-7a5d-11e8-a469-17d0f3f09de7.html)

To Marsha Marshal: "This is a civic nationalist country." What's wrong with social democracy to express the civic chaos you desire?

https://study.com/.../what-is-civic-nationalism.... "Civic nationalism is directly tied to liberalism, the political ideology that elevates liberty and equality above all else."

I prefer individual liberty with civic morality.

Woe surely comes to those who invite it  (Dylan Waguespack, July 3) (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_2f9082e0-7bb3-11e8-a89a-ab5e578fbc28.html)

When two people fall in love and commit to each other in monogamy, individual fidelity is served and everyone may either celebrate or appreciate the privacy of the partnership. I do. Monogamy is so hard to discover, everyone may celebrate! 

However, some people choose to subjugate themselves to gender technologies and ancillary services. For example, gay partners with child may enter a lifetime contract with a woman who’ll surrogate for life to coach both the child and his or her child in heterosexual monogamy. Or the gay partners may merely neglect the child’s equality and dignity.

The world celebrates the couples who undertake the awesome challenge of bonding for life not only with each other but with their progeny. To bond during conception, attachment to the womb, gestation, delivery, care and coaching from feral infant to young adult with understanding and intent to live a complete human life. Sometimes the couple encounters challenges that benefit from professional assistance. However, the proposal to reject gender is subscription to services offered by entrepreneurs seeking profit from the subject. The world can neither celebrate nor long endure such destruction of limited resources. Subjects are on their own.

Moreover, when someone proposes, through technology or other adult contracts, to deny a child the equality and dignity of lifetime-care with the couple who conceived the person, woe is begged. For example, the contractual child is an unobjectionable candidate to 1) fall in love with one of the partners and 2) terminate that partnership to form another. All’s fair in love, and more imaginable infidelity becomes possible.

Justice Kennedy retired, and while I don’t wish ill for anyone, I hope he is convicted by his oversight of the child who is deprived of dignity and equality by adult contracts. Kennedy had the benefit of Judge Martin Feldman’s September 2014 opinion that the same-sex marriage experiment was ongoing but long-term consequences for children were too unknown for civil acceptance: http://media.nola.com/politics/other/SAME-SEX-RULING.pdf. But Kennedy was the self-appointed, erroneous lord of equality and dignity.

Waguespack and all people who choose to promote technology and adult contracts to change what-is may live their own lives and proclaim like Billy Joel, “Just leave me alone.” The rest of us practice the-objective-truth and do not support the change entrepreneurs. Heterosexual monogamy takes courage, hard work, and collaboration. I adored my bride, and awesome being with the potential to generate some 400 viable persons in her fertile years. Becoming an authentic man challenged me like nothing else in my 75 years. In my 48^th year of marriage, I feel I am developing integrity. Let gender technologies develop their own markets and discover the consequences of their businesses, but let the customer beware.

It seems self-evident that every human has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to establish integrity. Humankind is on a march toward ultimate justice that may never be achieved. However, everyone either comports to the-objective-truth or begs inconvenience and woe. The-objective-truth exists and conforms to neither arrogance & meanness, proprietary or not, nor emotionalism, hostile or not.

Human justice according to the-objective-truth is available to people who accept it.

Columns

Establish the constitution among impartial people (Cal Thomas) (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/2/back-to-the-constitution/)

Thank goodness for the Internet, as The Advocate confused me to think that Thomas Sowell could have written Cal’s words about Bible and prayer in school. But this is one of my favorite Thomas columns for information, so I want to list some special items:

1.    Sixty years ago corresponds to my estimate of the emergency of AMO: Alinsky Marxist organizations. That it corresponded to the establishment of the legally active court helps me understand a confluence of factional powers.

2.    Wikipedia: “The Warren Court expanded civil rights, civil liberties, judicial power, and the federal power in dramatic ways. The period [ending 1969] is recognized as the highest point in judicial power that has receded ever since, but with a substantial continuing impact.”

3.    “The left has used federal judges to engineer society . . . through the legislative process while conservatives have fought to prevent the court from exceeding its constitutional role by making law.”

4.    Abraham Lincoln: “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Searching for this quote led me to http://www.selfgovernment.us/ on which I might like to collaborate. However, recently I have focused on self-discipline as the purpose of the preamble and disciplining the governments as the role of the citizen. This resolves for me the idea that neither personal gods nor government should prevail over my opportunity to pursue integrity.

5.    Justice Antonin Scalia: “It means, today, not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.” This statement holds only for the 1787 Constitution, which is subject to amendment. The latest occurred in 1992.

6.    Oliver Wendell Holmes: “The provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form; they are organic, living institutions transplanted from English soil. Their significance is vital [in] their origin and the line of their growth.”

7.    Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes: “the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”

The court’s arrogance, the Congressional irresponsibility and the administrative state is possible only because most people never accept the civic self-discipline the preamble offers. Our preambling may adopt the title “Civically Disciplined People of the United States,” rather than “A Civic People of the United States.”

Regardless, Thomas’s column, especially the Holmes and Hughes quotes, helps us realize we need to do something to highlight the legal power of the preamble in order to discipline the federal government---all three branches.

  

News

No journalism: fourth grade writing for eight grade readers (Elizabeth Crisp) (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/legislature/article_cebc9048-7c8f-11e8-adb7-ab057ea7c767.html)

   

What is The Advocate’s motive for fourth-grade writing for eighth-grade readers? Or worse, does The Advocate nourish diabolical freedom of the press? “When Congress approved its major federal tax overhaul six months ago, state income tax collections in Louisiana automatically went up because of a quirky link between state and federal policy.”

What’s wrong with “because federal tax reduction effects Louisiana tax increase,” rather than “quirky link”?

One political problem is that it’s embarrassing to recall that the Louisiana benefit is at least $200 million per year. That estimate is as accessible to Crisp and the editors as to me and other readers; https://www.theadvocate. com/baton_rouge/news/business/article_87b57e06-133c-11e8-b37f-23fb56a51e3c.html.

It’s additionally embarrassing that the above referenced article by The Advocate is dated February 16, 2018. At least it indicates that The Advocate (perhaps) reads five-week old local news; https://www.nola. com/politics/index.ssf/2018/01/louisiana_government_will_gain.html , dated January 8, 2018.

One might think The Advocate is just innocently indolent and finds it easier to publish “quirky link.” But it’s possible that The Advocate is diabolically political and favors social democracy rather than the American republic.

It makes a reader wonder what the writer’s schools dubbed “journalism schools” intend. Perhaps it’s: Publishing subtle ignorance and pretended mystery empowers the press to control the public. I do not think governance by the press will prove successful.

  

Other fora

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-biggest-mistakes-to-avoid-in-life/answer/Phil-Beaver-1

Would the people benefit from changing the required majority to 6-3 instead of 5-4?

The 6-3 rule could allow 5-4 when a justice recuses.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-biggest-mistakes-to-avoid-in-life/answer/Phil-Beaver-1

Charles Keyz

Thank you for such well spoken words of wisdom. It is unfortunate that most people fail to realize that quality is THE ONLY investment in this lifetime with actual return on it. What you call comprehensive fidelity I have been calling cognitive empathy. After reading your advice I think I have started to understand the difference and the relation of the two values.

Phil Beaver responds

I appreciate your kind words about my work. I’m intrigued by your use of “quality” in the expression. Are you saying that my work is an investment of time and energy that promises actual return?

Moreover, I appreciate the introduction to cognitive empathy. I learned a little at Emotional Empathy and Cognitive Empathy. “Cognitive empathy is the largely conscious drive to recognize accurately and understand another’s emotional state. Sometimes we call this kind of empathy ‘perspective taking.’” I think that describes personal arrogance.

Long ago, I concluded that 1) my fidelity to the other person is best expressed by self-discipline and 2) the other and I are better off if I accept his or her explicit expressions. Therefore, I work to clarify language barriers. For example, if someone speaks of democracy, I ask, “Are you referring to the right to vote or to a form of government?” Sometimes, such questions are conversation stoppers, but not often. Usually, there’s clarification.

I offer and propose iterative collaboration, wherein each party willingly clarifies statements until both parties perceive each has communicated. It’s an act of mutual appreciation without manipulation. It is not easy to enter such a dialogue, because the concept is not widely known or practiced. Also, some people reach a point of frustration and stop the dialogue.

In iterative collaboration, both parties are explicitly communicating for quality, to reflect on your comment. I question mutual cognitive empathy. I am averse to both the imposition of empathy toward a person and the tolerance of empathy toward me. It seems to me empathy is an invasion of privacy. It’s much like tolerance, which I do not tolerate. Among human beings who are developing integrity, no one has the higher ground: When the-objective-truth has been discovered, both parties behold the evidence.

Please comment on these ideas, and perhaps send me a new URL if my citation was off base or my comments reflect my ignorance about a fascinating practice: Cognitive empathy practiced on another human being.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-relationships-between-religion-culture-economics-and-politics-in-society

Your scope is too unlimited for me. Let me define what each term means to me then try to summarize how I deal with them. My object is civic integrity.

Religion is a practice involving the imagination or adoption of a concern, taking it so seriously as to construct a theory of its actual reality, creating a doctrine about how to effect a good outcome, and practicing the doctrine, never discovering the verity or falsity of the concern. A classic example is concern for a spiritual world involving individual souls. No one has ever in actual reality discovered a soul.

Culture is humankind’s development of integrity, where integrity implies fidelity to actual reality: the-objective-truth. The-objective-truth exists, can only be discovered, and does not respond to human imagination. Often, imagination is instrumental in discovery, but it cannot create the-objective-truth. Human constructs change the path of development, but the consequences of change follow the-objective-truth. A classical example is W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, an infidelity that changed history in ways that continue to unfold according to actual reality.

Economics is the expression of the balance between benefits and cost of humankind’s endeavors. If benefits outweigh cost, viability increases and vice versa. For example, a man who unexpectedly fears his wedding vows may get counselling and resume his path to manhood rather than subject his family to judicial ruin. Again, a man who subjects himself to the avaricious gender industry may get counselling and follow a path to manhood or spend his chance at life pursuing gender change.

Politics is the art of persuading individuals to subject themselves to power. The soul is the basis of many political practices. The Church both instills and nourishes concern for the soul, offers a plan for salvation of the soul, and builds institutional wealth at the people’s expense. The Church politically persuades individuals to forego personal wealth.

None of the four authorities in question, religion, culture, economics, and politics, encourages and coaches the person to be a human, the most advanced species on earth. The human being is so physically and psychologically powerful that it takes three decades for him or her to acquire the understand and intent to live a full human life. Few accomplish early adulthood, and it takes another three decades experience to begin actual humanity. Few individuals can describe a full human life. Perhaps Charles Krauthammer, who died last week, could have attempted to describe one. I cannot imagine a complete human life. Steve Jobs might describe full humanity, but I doubt the short time allowed him. I would doubt William F. Buckley Jr’s assessment. I wish I could interview George Washington and Thomas Jefferson about the complete human but not so much John Adams, James Madison, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Abraham Lincoln, much as I might miss something. I would also enjoy a conversation with H. A. Overstreet. I think human self-discovery barely begins near age 65 and takes a few decades to run its course.

Each human being has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to develop integrity. It’s a comprehensive integrity involving both individual fidelity and collaboration for statutory justice in human connections and transactions or civic integrity.

Civic integrity conforms to the-objective-truth, which can only be discovered and does not respond to opinion or any other human construct. A human may perceive he or she is developing integrity when his or her focus turns to fidelity.

Then, the individual, in every thought, every word, and every action, behaves so as to neither initiate nor tolerate harm to or from any person or institution. The suggested practice excludes violence except in actual self-preservation, and it shuns both coercion and force. The practice is suggested by Agathon in his speech in Plato’s “Symposium,” some 2400 years ago.

Midway to my eighties and approaching our fifties in marriage, my wife and I discussed and think we are developing integrity. We hope to have another four or five decades’ chance.

I write to learn, so please comment.

https://www.quora.com/What-would-you-say-the-leading-cause-of-the-moral-decay-in-modern-society-is

I will answer a related question: What led the world to the divergence we are experiencing?

My answer is, theism; the belief in a god. The alternative is to admit to self that no god has been discovered; to answer the god question, “I don’t know.”

Each human being has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to develop integrity.

Integrity is the process that empowers each person to collaborate to discover the-objective-truth, understand how to benefit from it, and develop fidelity to it.

Fidelity means publicly expressing personal understanding of the-objective-truth and listening to other people’s responses so as to benefit from their views —-perhaps modify personal practice. It means remaining open minded to new discovery that may require change.

Comfort-in a god and hope for the related promises bemuses and discourages a person’s acceptance of the IPEA he or she cannot alienate.

It has taken all that happened before to bring humankind to this actual reality.

Of course, I do not know the-objective-truth about my adaptation of the question, and I welcome comments.

http://www.libertylawsite.org/2018/07/02/is-classical-liberalism-pernicious-why-liberalism-failed-deneen-reply

I think scholarly study of classical liberalism is pernicious. In the first place, it claims to be proprietary rather than pretentious. For example, nature is a sophist’s term that empowers vague thinking.

The point I get from this essay is, for example: A person may acquire the feeling that his/her psychology was erroneously placed in the wrong gender then have the will and intent to change his/her body. A culture that intends to survive opposes the industry that imagines gender-change services, much as it opposes the development of nuclear weapons. The person who subscribes to the gender-industry’s imagination, may pay the bill, even though the civic culture opposes the business.

“Whilst it is true that progressivism is wed to environmentalism, it is certainly not the case that nature has any internal control on human willfulness. To the liberal, so far as nature is concerned, human freedom is akin to that of angels. This idea comes to fruition in contemporary liberalism with selves free to reimagine their being and harness the power of the state to ensure private re-imaginings are ratified publicly.”

The above paragraph is ruined by “nature,” a relic of classical liberalism and its erroneous promotion of reason. Physics is a study and its object is physics: mass, energy and space-time, from which everything emerges. Biology, mathematics, economics, religion, fiction, lies all emerge from physics. Actual reality is known by discovery and lies and such are derived from the absence of discovery. Albert Einstein informed us of this nearly 80 years ago, so it seems foolish to harp on Adam Smith’s thoughts 240 years ago.

“Innovation lays a geometry upon the land – whether stemming from the numbers of a rate of interest, a railway timetable, or a compost’s chemical formula fostering an average yield – and the land redoubles its fertility: this is because, as Shaftesbury puts it, the imagination defers to numbers and proportion. Deneen could do worse than being allied with Smith and Turgot.”

Ahh, but classical scholars could do better to consider Albert Einstein’s mysterious expressions. Perhaps in “The Laws of Science and The Laws of Ethics,” (https://samharris.org/my-friend-einstein/) Einstein said: discovery lessens the misery and loss that is begged by proprietary reason. Perhaps in "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind," Einstein’s message was: studying physics without fidelity to the-objective-truth is futile; fidelity without the-objective-truth is ruinous.

“Nature and imagination are twins, argued the great economists of classical liberalism. This inner proportion does not hamper liberty and wealth creation but it does avoid the internal contradiction of modern progressive liberalism.”

Physics does not yield to imagination, and they are in no way related. Physics exists and humankind does the noble work to discover the-objective-truth and how to benefit from it.

Scholars do themselves a favor by asking, “Is my work helping people or fruitlessly costing money?” If the latter, change studies.

If I got McAleer’s point about gender change, good. However, it seems to me anyone who uses the 400 year old term “nature” is not really trying to communicate. Einstein’s physics theory is now a law!

https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Why-is-the-US-important-to-the-social-and-economic-structure-of-our-society

I do not conform to the constraints in the question, especially “society,” and “social.” I will answer my mimic of your question: Why do so many people think the U.S. holds promise for humankind? Perhaps humankind perceives the promise of the preamble to the constitution for the USA: individual liberty with civic morality.

The first (legal) sentence in the constitution for the USA, a republican federalism that was established on June 21, 1788, offers a voluntary civic contract that proposes self-discipline. Self-discipline is essential for a human being to discover himself or herself in the brief time he or she may live. Few persons achieve the psychological maturity of self-discovery.

Every human has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to develop integrity. Few people are aware of IPEA; it takes about 3 decades for a person to acquire the understanding and intent to live a full life, and no civic entity encourages IPEA. But persons who discover and accept IPEA develop fidelity. Fidelity varies with an individual’s personal preferences.

Some people prefer to assign their IPEA to another authority: a person, an institution, an ideology, a scholarly pursuit, wealth, power, banal appetites, and so on. If a person prefers crime, that’s where IPEA is spent. But a few develop fidelity to the-objective-truth.

In all matters, the-objective-truth exists, and it is humankind’s noble work to discover it and live so as to benefit from it. For example, knowing that the earth is like a globe and is in motions that are subject to Einstein’s general law of relativity, a person has no fear of sailing around the earth—no fear of falling off. When something is imagined that has not been discovered, the individual admits, “I do not know about that.” For example, to the question, does something control the unfolding of the universe? The individual may answer, “I do not know.” Morality comes from awareness of what has been discovered and empowers the individual to never lie, by responding, “I do not know,” when he or she does not know. (That idea, in my paraphrase, was expressed by Einstein in 1941.)

The individual who in some measure grasps such concepts uses his or her IPEA to manage, more or less, the lesser authorities humans contend with: appetites (banality), societies (coercion), government (force), comprehensive safety and security (survival), and humankind (collaboration and appreciation). [Please fill in my gaps.]

Abraham Lincoln, in 1863 did not have the discoveries that have happened since then, especially Albert Einstein’s civic ideas. If Lincoln had been prescient, he might have said that Gettysburg was hallowed: the promise of civic discipline of by and for the people might not perish.

So far, that promise is perishing, but aware people in the world hope it will revive and thrive. Our group, presently few are working to interest fellow citizens in using the preamble to collaborate for individual liberty with civic morality. Happily, the purpose, goals, and agreement for civic discipline that are offered in the preamble are available to every individual on earth at all times.

http://www.libertylawsite.org/2018/06/29/the-curious-awkwardness-of-the-argument-in-federalist-10/

To Paul Binotto again:

Mr. Binotto, thank you for the interest and good wishes.

You enriched my presence for the next presentation of my model. I will state that the subjective 87% covers failures on both acquittals and convictions and my awareness that the 87% is tainted by uncertainty regarding firmly biased jurors.

A couple additional observations you prompted. First, accounting for the firmly biased jurors would increase the courtroom influence closer to 100%, let’s say halfway, to 93%. The theoretical 12-0 jury would be accurate only 98% of the time, and with one firmly biased juror, still no theoretical chance for an impartial jury.

Second, my assumption that 67% of citizens are habitually impartial is a dream I work for; (most Americans may practice the civic agreement that is offered in the preamble to get to a civic demographic). The reality is expressed more by the 2016 presidential popular vote, 51.1% for the favorite vs the winner. (Thank goodness the USA is a republic rather than a democracy.) Using 51.1% “habitual impartiality” in my model yields no theoretical impartial jury unless the super-majority rule is at 8 or less.

My 67% assumption is based on the delegates to the Philadelphia who signed the 1787 Constitution, the delegates to the state ratification conventions, the 9/13 ratifying state requirement, the total delegate favor once all 13 original states had ratified.

Then, 99% of free inhabitants were factional American Protestants, freed from their homeland religions such as Canterbury, but only 5% could vote. Today, only 14% believe in those traditional American Protestantisms but 100% of non-felons may vote. Due to the influences of dissidents to the preamble’s agreement, interest in the opportunity for civic integrity is obscure. People are crying for relief from enmity when the civic agreement for self-discipline has been available since June 21, 1788. Lincoln helped hide it by not thinking of self-discipline of by and for the people rather than governance. It’s also hidden by “consent of the governed,” which could be “civic integrity of by and for the people.”

I appreciate your collaboration—helping me think, and if there are no objections, at an appropriate time I will acknowledge the improvements you instigated.

   

 Phil Beaver does not “know.” He trusts in and is committed to the-objective-truth which can only be discovered. Conventional wisdom has truth founded on reason, but it obviously does not work. Phil is agent for A Civic People of the United States, a Louisiana, education non-profit corporation. See online at promotethepreamble.blogspot.com, and consider essays from the latest and going back as far as you like.