Opportunities for civic integrity

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 individual happiness with civic integrity more than for the city, state, nation, or society.

Consider writing a personal paraphrase of the preamble, which offers fellow citizens mutual equality:  For discussion, I convert the preamble’s predicate phrases 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 grandchildren 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 and theirs. 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 a union of states deliberately managed by disciplined fellow citizens convinces me the preamble is legal. Equality in opportunity and outcome is shared by the people who collaborate for human justice.

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 grandchildren. “Freedom of religion,” which fellow citizens have no means to discipline, oppresses freedom to develop integrity.

Our Views

The U.S. Constitution and the Church October 12 (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_c4bda678-cc0c-11e8-989b-2beff4388cfe.html)

Fairness?!!!
 
What We the People of the United States would like to hear from the bishops is the order for Catholic-student school uniforms to protect the child’s innocence rather than provide priestly titillation.

Second post

The bishops aside (where they belong regarding civic integrity), The Advocate personnel struggle to persuade We the People of the United States in Louisiana to forego impartiality for fairness. I’m voting for impartiality.

Attending an event at the LSU School of Journalism, I heard that public policy is determined by public opinion and public opinion is controlled by the press. When I spoke up for both the U.S. Constitution and We the People of the United States defeating the press, a professor in the audience abusively instructed me to take a university course in social science or political science (as though I had not, thanks to JTM).

One of the unheralded techniques the press employs is to appeal to human emotions, passions, and sympathies in order to undo statutory justice that is opposed by personnel within to press for reasons they may or may not understand. It’s the sinister side of freedom of the irresponsible press! In this case, fairness would supplant impartiality.

The Advocate personnel seem to have taken erroneous university courses when they could have developed integrity. Every human being has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to either develop integrity or not. Unfortunately for our grandchildren, this culture does not encourage and coach students to develop IPEA, leaving the student to choose integrity or crime.

It seems Louisiana influenced England to reform from unanimous juries, and The Advocate personnel know that, because I recently submitted letters and columns for them to publish. My purpose is to encourage fellow citizens to collaborate for individual happiness with civic integrity.

England used unanimous juries to pretend fairness as they abused subjects in British colonies including the thirteen Atlantic seaboard colonies here. Those British colonies dubbed themselves states and declared independence from England. France combined the American revolutionary war with their second hundred years war with England and won the battle at Yorktown, VA, 1781, helped by the continental army. The 1783 Treaty of Paris agreed that the thirteen were free and independent states. But four years later, the thirteen were at war with each other and therefore proposed the U.S.

In 1791, the U.S. negotiated the constitution’s Amendment VI, rejecting James Madison’s bid to require states to provide impartial juries. Former French colony Louisiana became a state in 1812 and in 1879 reasoned that an impartial jury can be provided if 9:3 unanimous-majority verdicts are authorized. In 1967, England reformed to 10:2 unanimous-majority verdicts in order to reduce organized crime’s power over juries. Some people continually challenged Louisiana law, and in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9:3 verdicts constitutional. In 1974, Louisiana unfortunately attuned to England with 10:2 verdicts. So far, 48 states remain obsolete to both Louisiana and England.

The purpose of criminal jury trials is---under the civic and civil agreement stated in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and developed in the balance of the constitution---to provide statutory justice when a fellow citizen actually suffered real crime. The stakeholders are the victim, the accused and indicted, and the fellow citizens, civic or not.

The judicial system serves the stakeholders. Can you imagine selecting 36 from the list of qualified citizens with the intentions to provide an impartial jury of 12 fellow citizens? In the first place, citizens of good will are mixed: some are habitually impartial, some are persuadable, and some are indecisive. The system tries to eliminate bigots and covert criminals. Yet the process is competitive: the prosecution and the defense vie for favor.

Some brilliant person in Louisiana in 1879 reasoned that the U.S. Amendment VI requirement of an impartial jury can be provided with 9:3 verdicts. The British passion for twelve could have been maintained with 12:3, but at 25% higher jury expense, a point Attorney General Jeff Landry tacitly made. After 88 years, England reformed to Louisiana’s way of providing impartiality despite criminal influence: the unanimous-majority jury verdict.

Fairness is no substitute for impartiality and what The Advocate publishes is no substitute for integrity. If you think I want The Advocate personnel to reform, you are correct.

I Louisiana trashes its treasure, it will join the 48 states that now need to reform from an obsolete British tyranny over colonists. Undoing injustice sometimes takes centuries, and it would be a travesty to swap impartiality for priestly fairness.

Also, I think voting for injustice to supplant statutory justice was unconstitutionally devised.

Third post

Maybe The Advocate personnel feel both desperate and empowered by the erroneous U.S. Supreme Court opinion, Greece v Galloway (2014). It states that my objection to the imposition of religion rather than support for integrity is niggling. When tradition is called forth, they say I am welcome to sit quietly or leave the room. Both they and The Advocate fellow citizens are responsible for their own folly.

Much as R. E. Lee was blinded by southern ministers preaching that abolitionists were evil for trying to schedule the Almighty’s punishment of the sins of black fellow citizens (https://leefamilyarchive.org/9-family-papers/339-robert-e-lee-to-mary-anna-randolph-custis-lee-1856-december-27), The Advocate personnel pretend that Judeo-Christianity is a firm foundation when it is a concept anyone may use any way they want.

Cornel West and Robert George tell us about a radical idea, African-American Christianity; https://www.wsj.com/articles/dr-kings-radical-biblical-vision-1522970778. Jeremiah Wright opined that black church is white church’s fault and government must be overthrown; https://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2015/02/jeremiah_wright_tells_a_southe.html. It does not take much imagination to think Wright, West, and a lot of other “leaders” read with approval 1 Peter 2:18-25 envisioning black masters with white slaves; https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Peter+2%3A18-25&version=NIV.

The Advocate personnel could learn from fellow citizen Frederick Douglass, 1852: https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/2945. “Fellow-citizens! . . . the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes.”

“But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines, who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion, and the bible, to the whole slave system. - They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for christianity.”

Over 2400 years ago, Athenian Greeks claimed they were better than Spartans: humans under the law are equal. The framers of the U.S. Constitution created, the signers signed, and the people in nine ratifying states enacted an agreement that is both civic and civil under which willing citizens are equal. The preamble to the U.S. Constitution is neutral to Judeo-Christianity, religion itself, gender, race, and ethnicity. The Advocate personnel’s neglect of the agreement under which willing citizens are equal is their travesty and responsibility. They cannot pawn their folly off on the Catholic bishops.

We’ll see how the vote goes, but I’m betting Louisiana will shine the light of a unique gift to the world: the unanimous-majority criminal-jury verdict.

News

Are you kidding? National groups want to dictate Louisiana fairness? (Advocate Staff) (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/article_a398df0c-cd70-11e8-b300-2fc825295fee.html)

Fairness? The perpetrators and promoters of the November referendum to terminate Louisiana’s constitutional 10:2 verdicts may be shamed out of the civic arena. It seems to me the primary culprit is the membership of the Louisiana State Bar Association: see both http://files.lsba.org/…/LSBAHODPoliciesUPDATEDThruJanuary20… entry at 6/9/2016---and the related resolution at http://files.lsba.org/documents/HOD/RES4JUNE2016.pdf.

But primary responsibility for tyranny is to the Louisiana Legislators who converted the LSBA resolution into Act 493 with its public referendum inviting the people of Louisiana to pick their own pockets so as to redistribute state revenues to judges, lawyers, and other judicial servants of the people for human injustice.

I was appalled on April 1, 2018 by The Advocate personnel’s massive push to “reform” Louisiana law so as to favor crime’s influence (12:0 unanimous jury verdicts) rather than maintain U.S. constitutionally required impartiality using the existing unanimous-majority verdicts (10:2). If anything, the people should be voting to restore the U.S. constitutionally approved 9:3 unanimous-majority verdicts. The Advocate’s incomplete statistics gave the impression that the 10:2 verdict is effective 40% of the time! That’s great for the people. There’s refutation of The Advocate’s promotional claims in national statistics, dominated by 12:0 verdicts.

Remarkably FBI data shows that blacks are murder victims 20% more than whites even though there are nearly six whites for every black. Quoting FBI data for 2015 at https://www.usnews.com/…/race-and-homi cide-in-america-by-th…, “Of the 13.455 cases [listing] a victim’s racial information, 7039 victims were black [and] 5854 [were] white. [W]hites account for 77.1 percent of the overall U.S. population of roughly 321 million, while blacks comprise 13.3 percent.” Thus, black fellow-citizens are 697% disproportionally hurt by 12:0 verdicts. Here’s the calculation: 7039 divided by 5854 times 77.1 divided by 13.3 times 100% equals 697%. Applying The Advocate’s 40% to the 13,455 cases, the 5382 citizens would benefit from 10:2 verdicts, including 2815 blacks and 2341 whites. The 48 obsolete states may reform.

Among civic fellow citizens there are individuals of varying psychology: habitually impartial, persuadable, and indecisive. Additionally, there are bigots and criminals to consider. The history of England's discovery, thanks in part to Louisiana, that the unanimous-majority provides impartial justice is as follows: the English empire, as a consequence of Magna Carta, 1215, used unanimous juries to abuse British colonists; in 1791, in Constitutional Amendment VI, the U.S. (former English colonies) rejected “[absolutely] unanimous” and required states to provide impartial juries; a former French colony, Louisiana gained statehood in 1812 and in 1879 uniquely created the 9:3 unanimous-majority verdict; England reformed to 10:2 unanimous-majority verdicts in 1967 in order to lessen organized crime’s power; Louisiana won U.S. approval of 9:3 verdicts in Johnson v Louisiana (1972).

There is no excuse for Louisiana to join the erroneous 48 states whose people have not demanded reform to unanimous-majority verdicts.

The usnews article cited above is well worth reading, as it shows the murder record is fairly steady. Note “The most detailed racial data . . . are confined to cases in which one person was killed and one person did the killing. . . . Also . . . thousands of cases left unsolved and with no description of the person who committed the crimes are discounted. In total, about 61 percent of the 15,696 homicides committed in 2015 are excluded.”

In 2015, 500 blacks killed whites, and 229 whites killed blacks. “Of the 13.455 cases [listing] a victim’s racial information, 7039 victims were black [and] 5854 [were] white” or 12,893 black and white victims.

“The number of whites killed by other whites was 2,574 [81.3% or 3166 total including the 500 black murderers]. “The number of blacks killed by blacks [was] 2,380 [89.3% or 2665 total including the 229 white murderers].”

I will vote to keep a Louisiana’s impartial 10:2 unanimous-majority verdicts.

To King Alexander:  A factual review of history informs that the racial issues so heavily touted in this bid to undo statutory justice in Louisiana pale before the U.S. Constitution’s triumph over English tyranny.

An ancillary development from Magna Carta (1215) was the British Empire using unanimous juries they selected to abuse subjects in the British colonies. The thirteen British colonies on N. America’s Atlantic seaboard dubbed themselves states, declared war from independence, incorporated France’s Second Hundred Years War against England in the deciding battle at Yorktown VA, negotiated their global status---free and independent states---in the Treaty of Paris, failed as a confederation, so nine of the thirteen states established the U.S. on June 21, 1788.

The first U.S. Congress began with eleven states on March 4, 1789, and right away, traditionalists unjustly started re-establishing Blackstone common law with Protestantism. (Many Americans are not aware that the protestant-politician-partnership is required by the English Constitution. In America, the partnership unconstitutionally survives by tradition; see Greece v Galloway, 2014.) When traditionalists negotiated the British-mimicking Bill of Rights, 1787 originalists seeking statutory justice prevailed in Amendment VI, supplanting the requirement that states provide 12:0 juries with the requirement that the states provide impartial juries. The impartiality requirement went unheeded until in 1780, former French colony now state Louisiana, reformed to 9:3 unanimous-majority verdicts. Traditionalists fought it from then on, but Louisiana’s 9:3 verdicts became U.S. Constitutional law in Johnson v Louisiana (1972); eights years past the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In other words, the U.S. Supreme Court found the 9:3 verdicts do not deny civil rights. England reformed to 10:2 verdicts in 1967 in order to lessen organized crime’s influence on trials. Most former British colonies have effected the reform; https://www.revolvy.com/page/Hung-jury. But 48 U.S. states remain obsolete.

A vote against a Louisiana gift to the world, the unanimous-majority jury verdict, is a vote against self, loved ones, friends, and other fellow citizens. Special interest groups whose leaders do not have the integrity to comprehend and support the purpose and goals of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution are bad influences. The worst offender is the church, which falsely labeled the preamble a secular agreement, whereas the preamble is neutral to religion, as well as gender, race, and ethnicity.

Leaders in the interest groups you mention, Alexander, know the advantages they hope to gain from unanimous verdicts. However, I think We the People of Louisiana and the United States as defined in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, the transcending special interest group, will prevail, encouraging the people in the 48 U.S. states still under obsolete British tyranny to require their states to reform to impartial juries using the unanimous-majority to defeat criminal or bigoted absolutism.
 

Statutory justice comes hard, and most citizens are too busy living to earn it. The harm done is borne by grandchildren and beyond (the preamble’s “Posterity”). This generation has the opportunity to change a changeable trend.

Baton Rouge: best for your grandchildren (Terry L. Jones) (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_146265d0-cca6-11e8-beb5-8345ffb45e1f.html)

Congratulations, Baton Rouge Metro-Council on a promising future!

“Before the panel took up ExxonMobil's tax cut request Wednesday, Councilman LaMont Cole said he and Councilman Matt Watson were working to develop standards for future exemptions." Now people may not agree with them, but they can live with them," [Cole?] said. "In the meantime, we have to send a message to the world that Baton Rouge is place to be."

“I'm so glad to see there is so much support here; from a variety of people," Watson said. "This sizable investment in our community is not only going to protect what we have now, but the economy we’re going to leave for our children."

As many readers know, I write to promote another special interest group: We the People of the United States, as defined in the preamble. The presentations for our 5^th annual Constitution Day celebration at local libraries improved each time. By the sixth event, we were emphasizing that we can establish a culture wherein today’s families (parents and children) intend “to leave for our [grandchildren and beyond],” the “our Posterity” goal in the preamble. Such a culture would not accumulate massive debt for posterity.

This writer is an interested B.S. chemical engineer. Some local PhDs---historians, constitutional lawyers, doctors, statisticians, anthropologists, civic-political scientists, psychologists, philosophers, elected public servants, appointed public servants, economists, physicists, and other fellow-citizens could join---lead---the library meetings and help develop A Civic People of the United States, Baton Rouge. (Google “A Civic People” and click the first URL to learn more.)

By practicing the civic agreement that is offered in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution to discover the-objective-truth rather than compete for dominant opinion, Baton Rouge fellow citizens may indeed message the world, “This is the place to be.”
 

Note: our next planned meetings will be our 6^th annual Individual Independence Day celebrations. We annually commemorate that day in 1788 when 9 of 13 eastern seaboard states among this country’s territories legally established the world’s first nation of its kind. The U.S. is predicated on a people who are individually offered an agreement for self-discipline so as to collaborate to manage governance of each their city, their state and their nation. Fellow citizens may adopt the agreement or not, but ones who cause actually-real harm may face continually developing statutory justice. This is the time for interested citizens to get involved in the planning for June 21, 2019.

 Cloud over the capital or doom for Edwards? (Melinda Deslatte) (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/article_5c6647fc-ccbf-11e8-8339-7bf96535f95a.html)

Count on The Advocate personnel to call good news for fellow citizens of Louisiana a cloud over the capital.

I don't know more about Rispone than I read online. At this point, he has my vote.

I want Kennedy and Landry where they are (unless they don't want the offices they were elected to).

I want Edwards to seek a role where his talents are useful for We the People of Louisiana and the United States.

The pope ought to withhold heaven from actual child abusers (Ben Myers) (https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/news/article_7fab2908-cb2f-11e8-b83e-1742caf5ee60.html)

In keeping with separation of church and state as practiced by the Church, while the civil issues are being deliberated, I hope the pope will amend the Catholic canon to assert that priests who behave this way receive banishment from heaven.

Additionally, I encourage the Louisiana Legislature to require school uniforms be reformed so as to protect the intimacy of students rather than titillate priests, teachers and other school officials.

Letters

No surprise (Mary Morain) (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_0f8f46d0-ccb6-11e8-ae3f-77a16d363ea4.html)

I don’t fault Mary Morain for perhaps not understanding the U.S. Constitution, but how can The Advocate personnel be so egregious as to caption Sen. Kennedy’s question "important", especially with a positive bias?

“Do you believe in God?” is pertinent to the fellow-citizens faction that wants to maintain 18th century British-colonial tyranny, but it is unconstitutional in the U.S. Congress and beyond. To this day, England has a constitutional Canterbury-Lords partnership in Parliament. But the U.S. Constitution states, “. . . no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Congress defies the U.S. Constitution by tradition. Many citizens don’t know this, but political factions and regimes know it very well.

Many fellow citizens remain bemused by the colonial British hold on U.S. integrity. Integrity is proposed in the civic, civil, legal agreement that is offered in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. So far, U.S. political regimes have not the integrity to support their own agreement on which individuals are discovering and developing the rule of law.

I’m no hero to have understood this in the middle of my eighth decade, but The Advocate personnel, as purported journalists are villains for not knowing and coaching: fellow citizens are equal if they collaborate to live (behave) under the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

The question, “Do you believe in God?” is the most violent psychological affront known to man: that’s why the U.S. Constitution opposes its use. Kennedy is a disappointment, but not a severe a disappointment as The Advocate personnel. Understanding the constitution should be in their professional literature, mission statement, and code of integrity.

I write for reform and don’t think I know the-objective-truth: I welcome actually real correction and collaboration.

Throwing the children to the wolves (Steve Gardes) (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_d2e35d24-c829-11e8-96c2-6f6de3a818ba.html)

Everyone knows that goodwill is appreciated among fellow citizens. Gardes does not offer goodwill when he proposes to impose Christianity on children. A civic people is responsible to discover: How can most newborn humans acquire appreciation for goodwill so as to habitually appreciate responsible human life?

We the People of the United States may establish independence---may reform---at last. The English empire imposed religion on all its colonies, and to this day, England’s constitution requires a church-state partnership. ”In the House of Lords, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and other senior bishops of the Church of England play a full role in the work of the House. Bishops have sat in Parliament since its inception. As the Lords Spiritual, they are independent members who lead the House in prayer at the start of each sitting day and speak on many issues of concern. Their work is informed not only by their role as Christian leaders, but as people with deep roots in the communities that they serve. Their position reflects the constitution, with the Queen as the Supreme Governor of the established Church of England. The bishops are different from other members of the Lords as their numbers are capped by law at 26 and they have to retire at the age of 70.” https://www.churchofengland. org/more/policy-and-thinking/church-parliament

The framers of the 1787 U.S. Constitution had both suffered England’s religious tyranny and established the impossibility of resolving differences of opinion among factional American Protestants, most of whom rejected both Catholicism and Canterbury. Therefore, the framers created a nation that treats religion as a personal pursuit that civic people could manage within their state rather than a national demand beyond mutual, comprehensive safety and security.

The committee of forms stated the purpose and goals in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. I speculate that the committee created the preamble out of the consequences of the convention more than from a prior initiative. The preamble offers a civic agreement that is neutral to religion, race, gender, and ethnicity and is one of the greatest political sentences ever written. Because it does not acknowledge religion and for other reasons, some framers would not sign the US Constitution; only 2/3 of delegates were signers. Subsequently, religion falsely labeled the preamble a secular sentence.

Unfortunately, the First Congress knew no better than to reinstate English tradition---Blackstone but with factional American Protestantism to mimic Canterbury. The unconstitutional was made traditional and codified by both factional Protestant Congressional chaplains and the religion clauses of the First Amendment. The decline to the present profound abyss is evident to mindful citizens. We the People of the United States may amend the religion clauses so as to protect civic integrity, an individual’s human-obligation, rather than religion, a business institution.

CONTINUED

CONTINUATION

I appreciate Gardes for raising the religions issue, but neither the Church nor Canterbury could ever be trusted with our grandchildren. Our children partner in their parent’s and grandparent-in-law’s care rather than some external entity’s care. At least, that’s what the preamble to the U.S. Constitution means in its “Posterity” clause. Grandchildren are counting on not one but two families for favorable ovulation, conception, gestation, birth and future. Adult contracts that deny a child these privileges deny the newborn person the dignity and equality of human individuality in his or her genes and memes.

Religion is too corrupt for the grandchild task. Religion is an activity for adults who know no better than to expect a mystery to provide integrity. This writer, having labored to adopt Mom’s and Dad’s factional Christianity prefers MWW’s Christianity for MWW but chose, for my person only, to trust-in and commit-to the-objective-truth. I will not again turn my back on what actually is; in other words, actual reality. The-objective-truth is that I am neither wise enough to select a Christianity nor to select an opposing theism nor to attest to none. With the-objective-truth, I can look in the mirror and say to the person there, “I do not know the-objective-truth regarding the existence of a god, God, or none.”

However, we have seen the products of religious belief in government, and they are not tolerable. The Civil War is hopefully the U.S. prominent-example (leaders in the South thought abolitionists were woefully interfering with God’s plan to punish blacks for past sins; https://leefamilyarchive.org/9-family-papers/339-robert-e-lee-to-mary-anna-randolph-custis-lee-1856-december-27), but I’m not prescient about extant menacing beliefs, erroneous or not.

I do not want anyone to impose religion on governance, and I want existing impositions ended; see Greece v Galloway (2014). Only civic integrity will suffice for mutual, comprehensive safety and security for fellow citizens, including those who need to reform from the belief that crime pays.

Other fora

Abortion a consequence of physics (https://www.quora.com/Is-abortion-a-basic-human-right?)

The question: Is abortion a basic human right?

No. Abortion is physics correcting its errors so as to prevent untenable human life. Corrections may occur before or after ovulation, after conception, after implantation, during gestation, and after delivery. Physics---both biology and psychology---charge the mom with the responsibility to remain pregnant or not.

Of course the mom who wants to terminate her pregnancy should consult with experts of her choosing, but otherwise, it is singly her dreadful responsibility to decide. It is not a right but a burden if the decision is controversial to her.

That’s the actual reality, in other words, the-objective-truth, and that is how the Supreme Court reached its opinion in Roe v Wade. The fact that abortion is a consequence of physics (physics the object rather than the study) is the reason the Court seems to consider it a closed question.

I write my opinion, not knowing the-objective-truth, and hope for constructive comments.

Language for proprietary readers (https://www.pottsmerc.com/opinion/kathryn-lopez-stop-the-trashing/article_3292756c-c8ec-11e8-bf4c-8f3c73f4762c.html)

I appreciate the post; think I could learn from the book, but do not find it represented as liberal toward the-objective-truth.

“Karen Swallow Prior educates readers in the . . . the forgotten virtues of prudence, temperance, courage, and wisdom, those lauded in classical thought, as well as the theological and heavenly virtues of faith, hope, love, chastity, patience, kindness and humility.” The allocations of those characters seems arbitrary to this reader.

Where’s the humility in “When it comes to virtue, we are on the wrong road [in] a time that is after virtue.”

With an open mind, I interpret, for example, Agathon’s speech in Plato’s Symposium as follows: Appreciation is a human psychology that neither creates nor brooks coercion or force to or from anyone. Perhaps Agathon provides evidence that when Jesus said, “I am,” it was actual reality. Humankind does not know.

By letting go of virtue as defined in the past, readers may use their individual power, individual energy, and individual authority (IPEA) to develop integrity, which is discovered rather than constructed. Integrity answers not to reason.

Stop trashing We the People of the United States (https://www.pottsmerc.com/opinion/kathryn-lopez-stop-the-trashing/article_3292756c-c8ec-11e8-bf4c-8f3c73f4762c.html)

In 2006, I spoke on “Faith in the Truth,” at LSU and at the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge “freethinkers” group. Kind Harold Weingarten, in the visitation after the talk, asked, “Phil, are you speaking of absolute truth, ultimate truth, objective truth, God’s truth, or just what?”

I answered, “Harold, it’s none of those.”

Harold asked, “Is it Phil’s truth?”

I answered, “Not at all. I don’t know the objective truth.”

A few years later, I wrote “the-objective-truth,” spoke the hyphens, and am still searching for a better expression. However, “the truth” is insufficient.

Lopez writes, in approval of Ed’s truth, “By God's grace, the wisdom of experience and the process of maturity, hopefully we move beyond [but] shameful behavior continues today in our national life and in our politics.”

 “The denial of truth is certainly not a new phenomenon," Ed said. "But in the communication age, it is spreading like a virus.”

I assert that the people are discovering the-objective-truth at an exponential pace. Separation of church from state is happening as I write. Integrity is on the march at last, and civic integrity is emerging.

The truth is yielding to the-objective-truth. Society is adopting integrity. We live in the best of times. We the People of the United States as defined in the preamble might emerge.

Note: I commented on other aspects of Lopez’s column at https://www.lawliberty.org/2018/10/09/the-professors-letter-against-kavanaugh-undermines-the-legal-academcy.

(Posted on the site.)

Arrogance and hubris (https://www.lawliberty.org/2018/10/09/the-professors-letter-against-kavanaugh-undermines-the-legal-academcy)

“. . . any notion that anyone should pay any attention to legal scholars when they speak . . . on an issue of public concern.”

Every civic citizen knew on watching the event that Kavanaugh had addressed Dr. Ford’s claims civilly and kindly but the Democrats’ evil against Ford and Kavanaugh with well-earned contempt. That is too easily written to justify an essay about biased scholarship. Actually I just wrote a redundancy: scholarship is unwanted bias when what is needed is integrity. Neither scholarship nor honesty is a surrogate for integrity.

Unfortunately many professors seem to never accept that they are fellow citizens. While they enjoy the higher bargain in the classroom---respect for grades---they may be equal in public collaboration, depending upon whether or not they accept and collaborate-in the civic agreement.

In this country, the civic agreement is stated in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, most scholars do not admit that the preamble is also a civil agreement and thereby a legal document in its completeness: civically-disciplined fellow citizens manage both their state and the federal government.

On the preamble’s legal strength, the existing confederation of Atlantic seaboard states northeast of both Spanish and French territories had the opportunity to join the Union that was established on June 21, 1788 by only nine of the aforementioned states. The other four states remained, according to the 1783 Treaty of Paris, free and independent countries in the world. The nine-state Union had the authority, granted by ratifying the preamble and its articles, to begin operations on March 4, 1789. By then there were eleven states in the Union, with only two Atlantic-seaboard countries.

The Union’s people were mostly unaware of the civic agreement that was offered them, and the elites have tried to keep it that way ever since. Political regimes’ most egregious offense has been to label the preamble “secular,” whereas it is neutral to religion as well as gender, race, and ethnicity.

Religion, in particular Christianity, has been spectacularly ruinous opposition to the civic agreement. To the point, people in the south, for example R. E. Lee, held that abolitionists were attempting to force an end to God’s plan to redeem blacks;  https://leefamilyarchive.org/9-family-papers/339-robert-e-lee-to-mary-anna-randolph-custis-lee-1856-december-27. Lee had access to both Frederick Douglass’s 1852 claim that Douglass was a fellow citizen and the determination of Massachusetts abolitionists who became “free soilers” in Lawrence, KS. The military power of We the People of the United States proved that the “more erroneous religious belief” was in the south.

The preamble’s essence is in many Americans’ genes and memes, even though most cannot articulate the its purpose and goals---might even denigrate the subject with the “we, the people” font rather than We the People of the United States.

Yet civic people as well as many dissident fellow citizens could watch both Ford and Kavanaugh and the Republicans’ interrogator and conclude that the Democratic party had done evil to Dr. Ford, a person whose concern should have been addressed in privacy as soon as the California Democrats---her representative and her senator---learned of her errant beliefs (errant in absence of corroboration much less proof if not errant in fact).

 
 
And it takes awareness rather than scholarship to recognize that Judge Kavanagh was sincere when he said, “We wish Dr. Ford no harm.” And he was equally sincere when he objected with the wrath of a god facing death when he turned over the Democrats money table in the Senate temple.

Individuals who hold scholarship above fellow-citizenship are dissidents to the civic agreement by which willing citizens collaborate for ultimate statutory justice.

The writers in this forum have a pivotal opportunity to elect personal equality as fellow citizens under the preamble to the U.S. Constitution: equality under the law.

To Bart O'Kavanaugh:

O’Kavanaugh, acting as an erroneous civilization’s legislator, enforcer, indictor, prosecutor, and judge, castigates the human-civilization side of Justice Kavanaugh’s actual reality.

My hope is that Justice Kavanaugh will help the nation practice the civic and legal power of We the People of the United States as defined in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. He has the necessary experience, observations, and obligations to his grandchildren and beyond (the preamble’s “our Posterity”) to help establish separation of church from state at last.

Perhaps unintentionally, then Judge Kavanaugh described the victimization of adolescents in this civilization. Adults manipulate existence to instill and nourish banal appetites. One of the worst is taking so much from GDP that you can be a “philanthropist,” or civil manipulator. That is, have enough power to manipulate the GDP in personal favor, claiming to help the poor. Just now the national debt is 21.619 trillion dollars; http://www.usdebtclock.org/.

Philanthropic businesses often have very dark sides. Catholic schools dress little girls in short skirts so as to satisfy the intimate imaginings of both males and females in whose care the girl’s parents erroneously trust. When the girls get bigger, they mysteriously sense the sexual powers they have without sufficient understanding to avoid the predation that surrounds them. High school boys and girls understand the evil they are in but have no guidance for how to handle it:  Some parents themselves behave as adolescents---have no thought for grandchildren and beyond.

How can anyone imagine rare adolescent integrity in this culture? The human body does not complete the construction of the wisdom parts of the brain until a quarter-century has passed. Given a little time for experience and observations to influence the individual, he or she is fortunate to discover integrity before the body, mind, and person stop functioning. Most humans live and die never achieving honesty with themselves, let alone integrity. Perhaps achieving the integrity to the extent of the person’s natural abilities is the meaning of human life. I hope so, because that is what I work for, low as I may be. I hold civilization responsible for not encouraging and coaching children to discover and develop integrity.

The Catholic Church and the US failure to separate church from state is at the core of this dilemma. (Consider the Catholic dominance on the Supreme Court.) Catholic spokeswoman Kathryn Jean Lopez, blaming a woman’s responsibility to decide whether or not to remain pregnant, invokes the mysterious Church propaganda with unintended honesty: “As humans, we do things that we are ashamed of. By God's grace, the wisdom of experience and the process of maturity, hopefully we move beyond some of the worst of it.” See https://www.pottsmerc.com/opinion/kathryn-lopez-stop-the-trashing/article_3292756c-c8ec-11e8-bf4c-8f3c73f4762c.html. “God’s grace” is the mystery on which people deny the human condition: each human being has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to either develop integrity or not. IPEA cannot be bargained to the Church.
 
I guess in “ashamed of” Lopez is referring to Dr. Ford’s possible observation that in adolescence she did not listen to her mom and dad’s caution not to climb the stairs to the privacy of the bedroom while drinking beer at a party. I regret the evidences Ford shared in public rather than in private. She seems a victim of the intrigue of the California Democrats and perhaps the rest of the Democrat scoundrels.
 
Lopez invokes Alinsky-Marxist organizational (AMO) collectivism in “Our challenge is the same it has always been, in every movement to eliminate injustice and oppression -- from abolitionism to the civil rights movement to our pro-life movement.” She obfuscates the Catholic Church’s doctrine of discovery and “authorization” of slave-trade to support agricultural colonialism. Who is included in her “our.” I assert it is not We the People of the United States, at least not intentionally.

In England, the church-state partnership is constitutionally required. I suppose that situation developed from Magna Carta, which is a sordid history of competition between the Catholic Church and Protestantism, in particular Canterbury, and partnership with the lords. Elites in America wanted to compete with the “divinity” of the Canterbury-Lords constitutional Parliament, some so fervently that they did not sign the 1787 Constitution. It specified a representative republican federalism with people willing to agree to a civic discipline to manage both their state and the Union. Revolutionary representative republicanism! The 1789-1793 Congress temporally undid the separation from England that the preamble and the articles that follow offered, by hiring Congressional chaplains at the people’s expense (and I refer not to money) and promoting religion rather than civic integrity in the First Amendment. We the People of the United States may establish self-discipline among fellow citizens and restore representative republicanism.

Never has the need for civic integrity rather than religion been more evident, and I doubt there has been a more mindful new Supreme Court justice to influence the reform. Fellow citizens can help by reading the preamble with the idea that was expressed by the Greeks of Athens in competition with Sparta 2400 years ago:  citizens who agree to the law are equal. In the U.S., it’s citizens with the civic discipline that is expressed in the preamble collaborate to discover and effect statutory justice; dissident fellow citizens may observe a better way of living and reform.

Somebody told me the other day that I need a PhD to express ideas like these. Every fellow citizen can read the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and think. The only thing different about Phil Beaver, is that I read, write, speak, and LISTEN.

When there is silence, I realize the other party does not understand “fellow citizen” as I do---has a view of fellow citizen which is pleased with stonewalling as a form of censoring. Political factions have stonewalled the preamble for 230 years and denied equality under beneficial civic discipline rather than under religion for 2400 years.

 

Arrogance (https://www.quora.com/How-is-it-decided-which-rights-can-be-voluntarily-waived)

Humankind pursues statutory justice under agreed-to rule of law. Fellow citizens may collaborate for statutory justice or be dissident to the agreement.

Always, there are dissidents to the agreement. For example, some people think they are such skillful drivers they can decide whether to obey traffic signals and laws or not. In other words, they reason that laws are designed for the average driver, and since they are exceptional drivers, they have the right to set the law aside. When they cause actually real harm, they may find themselves accused of the harm, tried, convicted, and punished.

Thus, they were dissident to the agreement that warrants the right to drive in traffic, and their claim to the right to be dissident was ignored until they caused harm. Then, their imaginary right was denied.

In the U.S., the agreement that makes fellow citizens equal is offered in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Many citizens perceive they have the right to ignore the agreement. In fact, one declining faction falsely labels the preamble a secular sentence. The preamble is neutral to religion, race, gender, and ethnicity.
 
Also, in its “our Posterity” goal it tacitly defines the obligations of families to the parents’ grandchildren (the grandparents-in-law’s greatgrandchildren). The family continuously involves the latest four heritages of genes and memes in an ever expanding web of interconnectedness.

Modern technologists offer adult contracts that deny a newborn the dignity and equality of care within his or her four genealogical lines. The claim to the right to such contracts is an experiment in future statutory justice, depending upon whether or not there is discovery of actually real harm.

I hope my opinions help, write to learn, and hope for comments.

On Elaine O. Coyle Facebook to Keith Breaux

I thought Collins missed, out of personal innocence, a chance to empower the agreement that is offered in the preamble to the US Constitution.

She said that the "founding fathers" who appealed for "a more perfect Union," would not approve. Two points: First, "fathers" is trite since only 1/3 of framers signed the 1787 document, and some dissenters did not like the preamble's agreement offered to fellow citizens. Second, I do not want unity as collaboration cannot succeed when there is a poorly formed consensus; I want civic integrity.

Like peace, or mutual comprehensive safety and security, civic integrity can only come from fellow citizens, and that is the tacit intention of the preamble. It is an agreement to behave with self-discipline and manage local, state, and federal governments accordingly. I think there will always be fellow citizens who are dissident to the agreement, and only the criminals need suffer statutory justice.

(https://www.lawliberty.org/2018/07/27/the-truth-about-happiness/)

Deducing from Wharton, “We are persons in a body politic, not individuals contractually obligated to living under the dictates of an abstract institution.”

Merriam Webster online may lend help with “individual” as “being an individual or existing as an indivisible whole” and “person” as “the personality of a human being.” If so, the writer’s thought might be paraphrased as follows:  Our personality is part of humankind, but our individual is not obligated to any of humankind’s associations.

“. . . f we do not dissuade licentious behavior, then we are advocating slavery of the individual to his or her appetites. One is only free when one acts in accord with reality.”

My facebook page, October 6, 2018

On November 6, Louisianans will have a chance to vote to preserve a world-class Louisiana treasure: the 10:2 criminal jury verdict. That constitutional rule upholds a civic people's impartiality and lessens each indecisiveness, bigotry, and criminal influences on jury members.

If you think statutory integrity prevailed in the case of Justice Kavanaugh, AND that Louisiana ought to join the erroneous 48 states on requiring unanimous juries, I encourage you to consider: 1) unanimous juries was an English empowerment for colonizing their empire and the U.S. broke the power in 1791 in Amendment VI, which requires states to provide IMPARTIAL juries, 2) Louisiana's French colonial background carried no English sympathies, so only Louisiana had the creativity to do so with 9:3 verdicts, 3) both the Louisiana Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Louisiana's 9:3 verdicts, 4) in 1967, England followed Louisiana's lead and instituted 10:2 verdicts to help defeat criminal influence on juries, and 5) unanimous verdicts hurt all citizens and 632% disproportionally hurt black fellow citizens. Google "A Civic People" and click on the first URL to find essays on the topic.

Vote "No" on Amendment 2 on November 6.

If you like this message, share it. Try to make it go viral in the state.

I know of no organized opposition to what I think is a criminal act by the Louisiana Legislature in constructing and passing Act 493. They breached not only US Amendment VI, but Amendment XIV.1 as well.

It's true that Louisiana's leadership came through Jim Crow years, but so did the rest of what is good about We the People of the United States.

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.