A.G. Landry for Louisiana's 10:2 impartial-majority verdicts

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:  For discussion, I convert the preamble’s predicate phrase to nouns and paraphrase it for my proposal as follows: We the willing citizens of the United States collaborate for self-discipline regarding integrity, justice, goodwill, defense, prosperity, liberty, and children and by this amendable constitution limit the U.S.'s service to the people in their states. I want to collaborate with the other citizens on this paraphrase. I 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 discipline by disciplined 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 many do not articulate commitment to the goals. However, it seems less than 2/3 understand that “posterity” implies children. “Freedom of religion,” which civic citizens cannot discipline, oppresses freedom to develop integrity.

Our Views

Government, god and the press, August 5 (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_c2c8d76e-96a8-11e8-a053-4b60a8e9bc85.html)

Civic citizens must appreciate The Advocate personnel for alerting us to take action against government, god, and the judicial system. But they neglect a bigger responsibility on the opinion page: as fellow citizens, they may urge us to collaborate as civic citizens: to use the preamble.

One thing is obvious to the press, who have operated since December 15, 1791 with the Bill of Rights’ “freedom of the press” but no constitutional responsibility! Let me repeat that, the press responsibility is not specified in the constitution.

It is obvious after 229 years of U.S. operation that We the People of the United States barely exists if at all. The preamble to the U.S. constitution invites fellow citizens to self-discipline for civic integrity. With most people trusting-in and committing-to the agreement, the collective civic morality would empower a super-majority to discipline both state government and U.S. government.

However, most citizens rely on government, god, and the press for civic morality. The Advocate personnel, in this editorial, lay the land loss problem on the people of Louisiana: none of government, god, or the press will stop the lawyers and judges from picking your pockets as Louisiana land loss continues. Only a collaboration of civic citizens can stop the judicial (lawyers and judges) black hole.

Also, I watched 5 minutes of Fox news Sunday with Chris Wallace. After 227 years of gathering abuse of freedom, the press is faces coming civil constraint. Absolute power corrupts, and press-corruption in the U.S. begs woe. The press abused W. Bush and glorified B. Obama. When Harry Truman left the presidency in 1953, he said he was returning to sovereignty as a citizen. President Donald R. Trump tacitly states: I may be president, but first I am sovereign citizen and entitled to free expression. The press is losing their freedom to simply admit Trump has a point. I want legislation to penalize the press when they behave like a gossip business.

Congress could shut down CNN, for example, in order to respond to world-wide media complaints and the NYT management’s fears.

Letters

Citizen Jeff Landry (Brenda Williams) (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_daa2c852-9b2d-11e8-8a6c-37eac3c0f68a.html)

Readers may accept that Jeff Landry is first a citizen, and any citizen may evaluate the brilliance of Louisiana’s majority verdict rule. The U.S. emerged from 800 years of English colonialism with its constitutional church-state partnership and many emotional influences, including the often unjust unanimous jury. U.S. data, wherein 48 states have not yet reformed from obsolete English influence shows juries get it wrong 13% of the time.

England terminated its unanimity requirement in 1967 (88 years after Louisiana’s 9:3 majority rule), accepting 10:2 majority verdicts to help defeat vigilantism and organized crime.

History shows that Louisiana’s 18^th century French dominance during colonization uniquely empowered the 1879 State of Louisiana to accept the 1791 U.S. Amendment VI’s call for an impartial jury as a national rejection of the English tradition; the Senate rejected James Madison’s bid for unanimous juries.

Louisiana was not alone in the concern for transitioning slaves into citizens who choose to accept their opportunity to join We the People of the United States and collaborate for civic integrity according to the purpose and aims of the agreement. That challenge remains, but moreover, few citizens do anything but neglect the preamble’s legal power to establish civic integrity. As a consequence, such people beg the woe of discovering the preamble’s power. Without such neglect, perhaps the Civil War could not have happened.

Jeff Landry seems to understand citizenship as well as constitutional law, both Louisiana law and the documents that are bound by considering the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. That includes Johnson v Louisiana, 1972 and associated decisions. Constitutional law is established deliberately and ought not be taken lightly.

The 2018 Louisiana Legislature and Gov. John Bel Edwards, in Act 493, stand in defiance of the people of the Great State of Louisiana as well as the U.S. Citizens elected A.G. Landry to protect the citizens from such tyranny.

(With the cartoon that accompanies this letter, The Advocate elects classification with gossip periodicals rather than a free and responsible press. In fact, if a policeman tied a hangman’s noose, he’d lose his job. What not a draw person for the press and the newspaper itself?)

To Greg Yokum: I agree.

I served on a jury and one member, because the accused party was deep-pocketed Exxon, sang the chorus, "Just give him the money." Thank goodness the impartial eleven did not have to try to convince the insistent, irresponsible fellow-citizen.

To Scuddy LeBlanc: Scuddy, I don't think the 1879 decision to use 9:3 majority verdicts was racial. Uniquely, in French-influenced Louisiana, legislators in 1880 were able to accept the 1791 U.S. Amendment VI's rejection of James Madison's bid for unanimous juries to specify impartial juries. Somebody calculated that 9:3 offers impartiality then, and it holds true now. If anything, we should be voting to restore 9:3 rather than keep 10:2.

Also, England reformed to 10:2 in 1967, 88 years after Louisiana saw the impartial light.

Columns

Church scandals call for pope to resign (Kathryn Jean Lopez) (https://www.uexpress.com/kathryn-jean-lopez/2018/7/27/mothers-and-the-church)

“It’s a reality that was part of the reason Pope Benedict stepped aside . . .”

Francis may resign the papacy to express once and for all that human constructs in honesty rather than fidelity to the-objective-truth are corrupt.

Posted on the site.

  

News

Family disturbance (Charles Lussier) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_7f14074c-2951-11e8-8c9b-47f9ed22cbaa.html)

   

Landry has better access to data and Louisiana judicial history than citizens have. Citizens elected him to collaborate for both civic morality and civil integrity.

But we have FBI homicide data from 2013; https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide. Of 12,253 murders, 2,654 had black offenders with 5496 victims. In the details, 3005 white victims suffered 409 black offenders; 2491 black victims suffered 2245 black offenders (Table 6). Thus, blacks are offended by a black 90% of the time, and blacks offend whites in only 15.4% of black offenses.

Overall, black participation in homicides was 45.3%. The 2013 population was 73.7% white and 12.6% black. Thus, offenders misrepresent the black civic population 360% in disproportion.

A 2007 study shows mostly unanimous juries (48/50) get it wrong 13% of the time; https://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2007/06/juries.html. Using the above studies, 53 white victims and 292 black victims suffer false acquittals. That’s 550% disproportionate black-victim injustice. Adding the injustice that the murder is still free, black victims suffer another 11.7 % compared to white victims additional 1.8% or 660% disproportionate black-victim injustice.

It seems to me the Louisiana Bar Association, the majority Louisiana Legislature, the Governor, the GOP central committee, Gene Mills, and The Advocate personnel sincerely bemused themselves with Ed Tarpley’s passion for Thomas Aiello’s 2015 book. The book ignores the people of Louisiana, both blacks and whites with French influence. The state, freed from Reconstruction oppression, not unexpectedly found it easy to comply with U.S. Amendment VI’s call for an impartial jury rather than John Adam’s emotional, unanimous British utopia. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Louisiana’s 9:3 verdicts in 1972. Britain reformed in 1967, citizens might say, “Following Louisiana’s 1879 lead.”

  

Other fora

https://constitution.laws.com/we-the-people?fb_comment_id=fbc_1031173896974992_1716704631755245_1716704631755245#f1a703388b8d5c

To Jim Kilpatrick:

I agree that the people are subject to an "occupying government." It’s a Machiavelli, Chapter XI church-state-partnership that is maintained by the Supreme Court, for example, in Greece v Galloway (2014) but patterned after England’s constitutional Canterbury-Blackstone partnership. Further, I understand that Congressional rules prevent the people from holding a constitutional convention. So, indeed citizens subjugate themselves.

However, we may view U.S. citizens as two major special-interest groups: 1) We the People of the United States as defined by the preamble and 2) fellow citizens. The preamble specifies purpose and goals for individual liberty with civic morality. Most people don’t think so, and behave diversely. For example, in 1987, Thurgood Marshall said, “I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document . . . protecting individual freedoms and human rights.” Marshall erroneously overlooked human responsibility.

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln perhaps erred to say “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” I wish he had said “collaboration” or “discipline” rather than “government.”

Most citizens may practice the preamble’s purpose and goals. Thereby, most would collaborate for civic morality, vote, and promote their best individual interests based on the-objective-truth than someone’s party or a dominant opinion. Thereby, both state and federal government would be disciplined by the people.

A better way of life is possible because the preamble, despite the people’s negligence is a legal document that 1) dissolved the 1774 Confederation of States and established the 1788 Union of nine states and 2) offered each citizen a civic agreement with purpose and goals on which civic justice may be developed.

When civic injustice is discovered by the people, laws and law enforcement may be amended to establish civil justice or civic integrity.

The power of the preamble lies fallow because the people allow it and the politicians like it that way. I work to encourage the people to collaborate for civic morality using the preamble and the-objective-truth.

https://www.quora.com/What-small-actions-do-you-try-to-take-daily-to-bring-positivity-to-the-world

The question: What small actions do you try to take daily to bring positivity to the world?

My response begins with personal development and expands to civic collaboration for political discipline. After attending to family essentials, I promote two political powers: the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and the-objective-truth.

I have a schedule of activities, aimed at developing integrity so as to develop fidelity:

1.    Take care of my daily needs and responsibilities, such as paying bills.

2.    Attend to well-being.

3.    Assist wife and daughters as I may.

4.    Assist extended family and friends as I may.

5.    Attend to the tasks that are essential for maintaining our property. (I clean house but do not rid the house of the books with notes stacked around or the memorabilia from five decades developing a family.)

6.    Read, write, talk, and meet at public libraries to promote the preamble to the U.S. Constitution as an offered, agreement for citizens to freely develop civic integrity. The agreement is consistent with the human, innate-desire for individual liberty with civic morality.

History shows that, so far, only We the People of the United States---U.S. citizens who, cognitively or not, use the preamble’s purpose and goals to guide daily civic decisions---gradually develop civic integrity. Call such people “civic people,” where “civic” refers to collaborating for mutual living during life.

The confederation of thirteen free and independent states, formerly British colonies, used the Continental Congress to ratify the 1783 Treaty of Paris on January 14, 1784. The treaty was negotiated in Paris because the deciding battle in the American Revolutionary War, Yorktown, 1781, was substantially part of France’s second hundred-years’ war with England.

The U.S. federal republic, the Union rather than confederation of states, was specified with options for U.S. constitutional amendment by 2/3 of delegates from 12 states on September 17, 1787. One state and 1/3 of delegates were dissident to the agreement. Some deemed the 1787 Constitution a radical break from British common law with its constitutional church-state politics.

The U.S. was established by representatives from nine states on June 21, 1788, on the condition that the First U.S. Congress would add a bill of rights---a relatively new British tradition (1689). Operations began on March 4, 1789 with 10 states, 3 states remaining free and independent. 

Consequently, the settled, initial U.S. Constitution, a combination of the open-minded, closed-door debates in 1787 Philadelphia and proprietary competition for dominant political opinion by Congress is dated September 15, 1791. It represents 14 states, all east of the Mississippi River and north of Florida and Louisiana. Canterbury and Blackstone were not as dominant in the larger part of the continent. For example, France-influenced Louisiana adopted 9:3 majority verdicts for criminal juries in 1880, and England followed with reform to 10:2 in 1967, primarily to defeat vigilantism.

British civilization dates from the 6^th century B.C., and thus is at least 2600 years old. The U.S. opportunity to establish an independent civilization dates from September 17, 1787, now some 231 years ago and thus under 10% comparative development time. Perhaps the U.S. has progressed 10% in its quest for civic integrity rather than Blackstone opinion.

We may view U.S. citizens as two major special-interest groups: We the People of the United States as defined by the preamble and other fellow citizens. The preamble specifies purpose and goals for individual liberty with civic morality. Most people don’t think so, and behave accordingly. For example, in 1987, Thurgood Marshall said, “I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document . . . protecting individual freedoms and human rights.” Marshall erroneously overlooked human responsibility.

Within the “other fellow citizens” of 1788, were factional colonial Protestants who, accustomed to Blackstone common law, 1) knew not how to suddenly discipline themselves to the purpose and goals of the preamble, and 2) were subjugated or accustomed-to church-state partnership. The former British subjects behaved much like a teenager becoming a parent---doing things the way Mom and Dad did until the errors become obvious in Mom and Dad’s grandchildren. We’re some twelve generations away from 1788, and it seems a progression of Chapter XI Machiavellianism in America has been:  Canterbury, factional American Protestantism, Evangelisms, Judeo-Christianity, and Judeo-Catholicism with competition by African-American Christianity. Based on the chaos we are experiencing in 2018, there must be a better way.

The preamble is a civic sentence that is neutral to “sex, race, color, national origin, and religion,” quoting the 1964 employment rights act. The preamble’s civic principles include integrity, justice, goodwill, defense, prosperity, liberty, and children. As goals, all but “integrity” seem comprehensible. Extant cultures do not promote integrity, a process.

The practice of integrity is both individual and collective and starts with the discovery of an-objective-truth; behaving so as to benefit from the-objective-truth; publically sharing understanding; listening for fellow-citizens’ improvements; collaborating for mutual benefits that accommodate individual preferences; and remaining open-minded to new discovery that requires change. The practice cannot be taught, but can be encouraged and coached, depending upon the individual’s intentions or preferences.

Human beings are distinguished among the species by the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to either establish integrity or not. Persons who choose to establish integrity may develop fidelity. It’s a comprehensive fidelity that begins with the-objective-truth and extends to self, family, other people, and things.

At any point in time, humans are widely distributed in their use of IPEA to develop integrity or not. The preamble tacitly invites the reader to discover IPEA and use it to develop integrity then fidelity. The mature human is so cognitively powerful it takes about three decades for a person to transition from feral infant to young adult with understanding and intent to live a human life and another three decades to approach fidelity. With most adults so using IPEA, U.S. citizenship might asymptotically approach the totality, We the People of the United States.

With the two political essentials---the essence of the preamble’s civic agreement and collaboration for civic integrity---this better way of living is available to every living person, more or less, depending upon the freedom-from oppression in his or her country. Individual liberty with civic morality is a private pursuit.

Some readers complain that I write too much, some say, in order to distract the questioner. However, I responded in the second paragraph, “After attending to family essentials, I promote two political powers: the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and the-objective-truth.” Anyone who stopped reading there did right for him or her.

I am grateful to everyone who read the entire post, a brief August 11, 2018 update of my work, and would appreciate comments.

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-you-believe-that-you-are-an-asset-to-society

The question: Why do you believe that you are an asset to society?

In the middle of my eighth decade, in every thought, every word, and every action I neither initiate nor tolerate actual harm to or from any person. In every connection and transaction, I offer good will and accept what the other person offers. If there is no response, and it seems intentional, I accept the privacy. If the response is an offense, I object appropriately.

As a consequence, I have lots of good dialogue, some of which leads to collaboration to develop civic integrity. I do not consider myself a member of “society,” as that implies something other than individual liberty with civic morality.

It seems few individuals appreciate other civic people as they are where they are. When you express human appreciation by speaking, most people like it.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-philosophical-basis-for-liberty-and-equality-being-important-political-ideals

The question: What is the philosophical basis for liberty and equality being important political ideals?

I’d like to modify the question a little so as to answer as follows. Human beings need freedom-from oppression so that they may take the liberty-to develop integrity.

Human beings are distinguished among the species by the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to either establish integrity or not. Persons have differing innate abilities and origins, and thus their potentials for developing integrity are not equal. Beyond having  IPEA to choose integrity or not, there is no human equality.

At any point in time, humans are widely distributed in their use of IPEA to develop integrity. Most cultures do not promote development of integrity, so individuals must discover the possibility then choose to develop the practice.

Humans have the potential do develop integrity, but no further equality.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-something-that-is-seen-as-wrong-in-society-makes-you-think-of-otherwise

The question: What is something that is seen as wrong in society makes you think of otherwise?

Being a non-believer is egregiously frowned upon in America. While it’s true that a speech a week is informative, and association with other humans is critical to well-being, church is exclusive to adult believers.

Every human being has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to either establish integrity or not. By establish integrity I mean to adopt the practice of 1) discovering the-objective-truth (often that humankind does not know), 2) behaving so as to benefit from the-objective-truth, 3) publicly sharing the understanding that motivates your behavior, 4) listening to public responses and announcing agreement-with and change-to any improvement, and 5) remaining alert for any discovery that requires change in your understanding and behavior.

Unfortunately, there is no culture that inculcates IPEA for integrity. The practice leads to fidelity, which can be encouraged and coached but not taught. Where there are arbitrary laws, rather than statutory justice based on the-objective-truth, many citizens use IPEA for crime, evil, and worse.
I was reared in communitarianism on the second verse of “Amazing Grace”:

“T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear/And Grace, my fears relieved/How precious did that grace appear/The hour I first believed.”

In adulthood, I realize I did not collaborate on the emergence of my ovum and spermatozoon, and doubt I will collaborate on the termination of my body, mind, and person. Beyond that (soul, for example), I do not know and accept that I do not know. Yet I love to study, read, write and talk for mutual well-being.


If I went to church again, I might be called on to sing Amazing Grace as a belief rather than great jazz music, which I’ll do any day. I can sing music on a believer’s behalf or request. But in church services, I’d be remiss to either commiserate or collaborate on mysteries believers cherish. The community of my birth does not agree with my civic humility.

It matters not the particularity of the community. Whenever a communitarian encounters a non-believer, they assume civic division. In my case, it stems from application of John 15: 18–25 to both church and state. There’s no excuse for the word “hate”, and I deny neither believers, nor Jesus, nor God. I am too humble to deny my doubts yet don’t fault anyone who does not doubt but causes no actual harm.

In civic integrity, believers appreciate civil non-believers. Americans seem to resist separation of church and state and I consider it a ruinous practice.

    

 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.