Civic integrity at age 16

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 willing citizens of the United States collaborate for civic, civil, and legal self-discipline to provide integrity, justice, goodwill, defense, prosperity, liberty, for ourselves and for the nation’s grandchildren and beyond and by this amendable constitution authorize and limit the U.S.A’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. Equity 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.

Selected theme from this week

A 16-year old gave the world an example of civic, civil, and legal behavior in a situation he may never ponder enough to describe. Under the physical duress of a chronologically senior adult stranger who was beating a drum in his right ear for six minutes, this boy used self-reliance to change his posture from invitation to talk to civic-concern to conviction to calm departure, stonewalling the aggressor. Nicholas Sandmann is a global hero for urgently assessing his options and acting civically, civilly, and legally in a bizarre event.

Sandmann was victimized, in order of importance, by the Catholic Church that persuaded him to be there to help suppress the woman’s responsibility to protect her fertilized ovum---either remain pregnant or not; many U.S. fellow citizens’ 230-years continuous neglect of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution; the U.S. Congress’s First Amendment erroneous protections of religion, speech, and the press rather than promotion of civic integrity; U.S. political regimes’ continuous refusal to separate state from church---an artifact of British colonialism and greed; Native Americans’ failure to separate state from church or civic integrity from other-world beliefs or life from death (I don’t claim to know the solution but would suggest adopting the U.S. preamble); Bible thumpers’ clanging noise that they are their god’s chosen people whereas all other individuals are haters; and a mature activist beating his drum in Sandmann’s ear for six minutes.

On Christianity’s attempt to impose hate, consider especially John’s opinion in John 15:18-24. His claim that I am a hater is rebuked by the-objective-truth, in my opinion. Also, consider Moses’ opinion in Leviticus 19:17-18. Moses’ urge for individual egocentricity is presented for one race only: the Israelites.

However, who among extant individuals is an Israelite? Some members of the Black Hebrew Israelites (perhaps claiming Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) seem to opine that Indigenous Americans are a lost tribe of Gad. Islam seems to avoid the Bible’s “hate” by judging non-believers as infidels. The complete Bible, canonized by the Catholic Church during 325 to 405, or more than 1600 years old, seems to be a guidebook for self-justifying enmity among fellow humans.

Perhaps the psychologically mature Nicholas Sandmann (perhaps three decades hence) will articulate some of the issues I raise above: the Catholic Church politically abusing adolescents; the pregnant woman’s duty to her fetus; the U.S. preamble’s civic, civil, and legal agreement, established on June 21, 1788; the First Congress’s 1791 tyranny against the U.S. preamble in the Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment; U.S. refusal to separate religious mystery from civic integrity; some U.S. inhabitants’ rebuke of the U.S. preamble’s tacit goal of statutory justice or individual happiness with civic integrity; the Catholic-canonized Bible as civic promoter of human conflict, hate, and violence; reprehensible expression using a drum beat in the other party’s ear instead of dialogue.

Sandmann’s individual authenticity under surprising severity facing representative forces enumerated above follows the advice shared by Plato in Agathon’s speech in “Symposium”:  Neither initiate nor tolerate force to or from anyone or their god. Agathon died in 401 B.C., so Sandmann, in self-reliance was following appreciation-advice more than 2,400 years old rather than a confusing hate-collection only 1,600 years old.

In self-reliance, when all the represented gods seem wrong, the human individual acts in civic integrity.

News

Writers for the press could have journaled during the last 230 years the path by We the People of the United States toward civic integrity (https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cnsnewscom-staff/mcconnell-covington-these-kids-met-hatred-people-who-had-no-idea-what)

I don’t agree with Mitch McConnell’s views about the First Amendment: while there is freedom of speech, it should be clear that the speaker may be held responsible for consequences, e.g., yelling fire! In a theater. However, his point about media failure is clear. More importantly, Nicholas Sandmann’s behavior was exemplary.

Journalism schools and mass communications schools should be shamed into extinction. Any journalistic role the First Congress expected of them has long since been abandoned. While the U.S. Constitution limits the power of elected and appointed officials, the First Congress illegally assigned the press freedom without responsibility. Only a disciplined people may correct this tyranny as well as the justice system’s greed over “freedom of speech.”

On January 18, 2019, five people called Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI) were, for their “highly confrontational form of street ministry”, in Washington D.C. at the Washington Monument; https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/1/22/18193352/black-hebrew-israelites-covington-catholic-phillips-maga. Native American activist Nathan Phillips was there for the Indigenous Peoples March. Also, 16-year-old Nicholas Sandmann was there for a pro-life March for Life rally.

Nicholas Sandmann, during an experience lasting about ten minutes became one of my all time heroes, because of what he did in circumstances no individual should face and only people with no civic integrity would impose on a 16-year old.

Here’s what happened. Indigenous people were conversing and dancing on the mall not far from the five BHI. The BHI were loudly preaching, quoting the Bible, and disrespecting anyone who approached them to explore mutual interests by judging the other party’s speech. The BHI frequently used profanity. A couple of Native Americans came to the BHI and asked them to tone it down so as not to interfere with the native dance. A BHI person answered that they were not using a loud speaker. The Native Americans left the conversation. A few high school students arrived and were curious about the BHI, but did not come near the heckling the BHI expressed.

Soon, many more students arrived and the few on the mall joined the crowd on the steps to the left, leaving ample passage to the memorial. They conducted a cheer I did not understand but seemingly in response to the BHI heckling. Nathan Phillips, armed with a drum, walked from the right of the BHI, away from the free path to the memorial, approaching the students’ close-packed crowd ahead and to the left. A BHI yelled, “Here comes Gad” as Philips began walking into the students. Most students yielded their personal space to Phillips as he beat the drum and paced forward into the crowd. The BHI yelled, “Better not touch him. Better not touch Gad.” Gad may refer to a lost tribe of Israel.

Phillips stopped in front of Nicholas Sandmann, perhaps merely because Sandmann did not yield his space as the other students had done. Sandmann smiled at Phillips, even though Phillips was holding the drum near Sandmann’s right ear. Sandmann endured the drum for about ten minutes. Eventually Sandmann’s smile yielded to concern. A heated conversation began on Sandmann’s left and a step up. Soon, Sandmann motioned to someone on his left, with that serious look turned back to Phillips, then walked away. Sandmann relied on IPEA and walked away.

It seems that writers for the press are too alien to humankind to assess this fantastic event in the life of a 16-year old U.S. citizen. I do not use ameliorating modifiers like “some writers for the press” because none of them have done a search to analyze all the historical issues Nicholas Sandmann was subjected to and may never articulate without yielding his humility. I’ll address the issues as they occur to me.

Maturity

I understand that the human body does not complete the wisdom parts of its brain until a quarter century has passed. Sandmann’s brain is about 2/3 the path to maturity. All the other players are chronologically mature but psychologically adolescent. It seems none of them accept either IPEA or humility.

The Catholic Church

It’s obvious to many non-believers that the Catholic Church, of some 1900 to 1600 chronological age, has not civically, civilly, and legally matured to the reality that its leaders habitually abuse people. Believers, lacking the personal discipline to manage the Church, continuously beg woe---deny the abuse. I do not envy any pope who does not accept the IPEA and humility to collaborate to discover and apply civic integrity let alone the-objective-truth.

The solution is for believers to separate the issues: live in civic integrity yet hope for favorable afterdeath.  In other words, to admit that Catholicism proposes to comfort the believer’s afterdeath, that vast time when body, mind, and person have stopped functioning. During life, the believer must develop the humility to manage his or her civic, civil, and legal behavior as a citizen of humankind and of his or her country. In other words, the believer may have hope and comfort for a favorable afterdeath, but cannot impose those personal hopes on fellow citizens. Non-believing fellow citizens have always rejected John’s idea that non-believers are haters; see John 15:18-23.

Humans each have in common the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to develop either infidelity or integrity. There’s no mystery in integrity: The individual must be faithful to the-objective-truth. The-objective-truth yields not to reason, mystery, revelation, tradition, or human ignorance. I will not, cannot turn my back on the-objective-truth again.

That does not imply that an adult human cannot be spiritual. However, individual spirituality is not a civic, civil, or legal matter. It is a private pursuit by adults whose bodies have completed construction of the brain and who have considered enough experiences and observations to position their person to exercise IPEA in humility. No one collaborates with fellow citizens for judgement of motivations, inspirations, and gods. Fellow citizens collaborate for mutual, comprehensive safety and security (Security). Neither governments nor gods nor individuals justly restrict freedom-from oppression so that the individual has the liberty-to pursue civic integrity.

Yet a criminal’s IPEA is not lessened by his or her belief that crime pays. But his or her fellow citizens hope the civic, civil and legal way of living inspires the criminal to reform before constraint is demanded by the rule of law.

About 2,400 years ago, Pericles tacitly suggested (did not articulate) that humans may establish equity under statutory justice. Equity implies receiving just compensation for service to fellow citizens or Security (enough pay to live on and accumulate wealth for retirement in the earned lifestyle). Statutory justice implies deliberate discovery and elimination of injustice until the written law and its enforcement approach perfection.

The Catholic Church has never considered statutory justice, but it is now being confronted in revolutionary ways. The pope does not have to admit that he is a fellow human being. However, U.S. Catholic Bishops are fellow citizens in the dichotomy of individuals who are either willing to trust-in and commit to the preamble to the U.S. Constitution (the U.S. preamble) or aliens to the agreement. Likewise, believers (as well as non-believers) who do not discipline themselves according to the U.S. preamble’s civic, civil, and legal agreement are aliens to the agreement.

Addressing their January 18, 2019 march, the Catholic Church pretends that human life begins at conception. However, the viable ovum does not figuratively share that view. Human life is so precious that the viable ovum hopes for fertilization by an authentic man: one who would only impregnate a reliable women with whom he is already in lifetime monogamy. Authentic parents lead heir family to provide a possible better future for their grandchildren and beyond. For example, they would not lead their family to fund daily satisfactions on debts to be paid by their descendants.

Physics assigned to the woman the responsibility to decide whether to remain pregnant or not. By not appreciating the woman’s responsibility in assuring an achievable better future for the children she gestates and delivers, the Church alienates itself from humankind.

By organizing high-schools to demonstrate against the woman’s duty to decide whether to remain pregnant or not, the Church abuses the students who are persuaded to participate. Nicholas Sandmann suffered Church abuse that he may never articulate. But happily he did not subjugate his IPEA and humility.

Judiciary treatment of speech

The U.S. preamble, which the articles and subordinate laws serve, tacitly claims the pursuit of civic integrity and statutory justice. It says nothing about freedoms of religion, of speech or of the press. The First Congress imposed those tyrannies in 1791’s Bill of Rights. Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist 84 argues against an American mimic of the English bill of rights, saying that in the preamble the people do not relinquish human rights so as to not limit them. But the First Congress substituted “God bless America” for “God save the queen,” pretending divinity on par with parliament.

The foreign entity that most supports the consequences of the 1215 English Magna Carta, a church-state partnership that extracted power from the monarchy, is the American Bar Association. The lawyers and judges have used the First Amendment to bring the U.S. to ruin. The takings accelerated after 1968, when Saul Alinsky’s Marxist organizations (AMO) began to proliferate. Every notion of victimization was used to excuse psychological and physical violence. Victim rights supplanted responsibility for justice.

We the People of the United States may revise the First Amendment to protect the individual’s opportunity develop civic integrity and collaborate to discover statutory justice.

The Catholic Church’s Holy Bible, with Old Testament canonized by 325 and New Testament by 405, may be used to show that different ethnic groups are God’s chosen people. In the Old Testament represents a squabble over which ethnic group is God’s chosen people. The New Testament claims that only people chosen by God to believe Jesus is God are not haters of God. It’s no wonder that non-believers have trouble with these claims as civic integrity.

It hurts no one for a group to claim in the privacy of their hearts, closets and churches that they are God’s chosen people as long as the group agrees to equity under collaboration for statutory justice. But there can be no equity when the judiciary upholds the American tradition, at first factional-Protestantism and now Judeo-Catholicism, as civic morality in order to mimic England’s constitutional church-state partnership. The court uses the police and the military to maintain legal order with non-believers granted the opportunity to object however they wish and suffer the consequences of passions carry the situation too far.

Black Hebrew Israelites

In a U.S. culture of Security, it matters not if a group boasts that members are God’s chosen people, as long as they trust-in and commit-to the agreement that is offered in the U.S. preamble. In that achievable culture, a group of Catholic students would not object to the BHI’s claims, street preaching, or profanity. However, with separation of church and state, the courts would allow the police to arrest BHI members whose speech became inciting.

It seems the BHI believes the land of Israel as theirs. Some claims are so empty people ought to know better, but the last thing a culture of Security needs is belief police.

Indigenous People

The Catholic Church is implicated in the indigenous people’s belief that this is their land. The complaint begins with the 15^th century papal bulls that authorized the taking of land and people for God. Thus, Phillips would like to use the incident to gain an audience with the pope perhaps in order to express a long-known arrogance by the Church. Maybe extract an apology since the pope does not control U.S. property.

Everyone in the U.S. is free to trust-in and commit-to the civic, civil, and legal agreement that is offered in the U.S. preamble. Residents and fellow citizens who reject the agreement have two options: 1) convince We the People of the United States that an injustice demands reform, or 2) conduct a revolutionary war to overthrow We the People of the United States.

Again, with separation of church and state, the court could authorize the police to arrest an adult who walks in to a crowd of adolescents and beats a drum in the ear of one person for ten minutes.

Columns

Cute writing about serious matters (Ross Douthat, NYT) (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/opinion/covington-catholic-march-for-life.html)

Journalism and mass communications schools should be shamed into extinction. Writers for the media don’t reference known history so as to write anything of value.

On January 18, 2019, five people reported to be Black Hebrew Israelites were in Washington D.C. at the Lincoln Memorial for their reasons. Native American activist Nathan Phillips was there for the Indigenous Peoples March. And 16-year-old Nicholas Sandmann was there to catch a bus after a pro-life March for Life rally.

No writer for the media has credited the boy for neither initiating nor tolerating force in a transaction caused by a chronologically adult man beating a drum in the boy's right ear for six minutes.

Quora

https://www.quora.com/Why-has-profanity-become-much-more-common-and-will-it-eventually-not-be-considered-offensive-any-more-in-society?

Profanity is ignorance, and the speaker does not recognize pity when it is offered. Every profane utterance lessens the speaker’s integrity. In the end, there’s no humanity in the person. Early death is invited.

I think profanation has occurred because of single-parenthood.

The human body takes a quarter century to complete the wisdom-building parts of the brain. Giving five or more years, a person ought not procreate before age thirty or more.

These days, many people are grandparents by age 30.

On the other hand, I question your phrase “in society.” What society? Profanity is offensive to me, especially if I am so careless as to utter it. I do not think humans appreciate profanity. Profane people seem something less than human.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-universal-truth-of-life-that-you-learnt-till-now

My first thought is that every human has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority to choose either infidelity or integrity in each transaction or connection and thereby develops the limit and meaning of his or her life.
 

I can’t think of anything else.

https://www.quora.com/Wont-feelings-saved-by-PC-culture-not-have-been-worth-the-exchange-for-a-free-and-open-society-in-which-the-worst-of-societys-ideas-are-cleansed-by-light-rather-than-forced-into-the-shadows-and-having-many-more?

I think you assert that we live in the best of known worlds because of the Internet and our ability to work and acquire an understanding of important events. If so, I agree.

I offer for example my assessment that Nicholas Sandmann is a global hero because at age 16 he behaved a human should. He neither initiated nor tolerated harm to the person who physically attacked him for ten minutes with drum beats in his right ear. But no writer for the media imagined the feeling of the 10-minute drum beat!

With a few hours work, I was able to discover the maize of civic and ethnic issues that arrived a few inches from Sandmann’s face but which Sandmann did not suspect. How could Sandmann hear and know the BHI harassment toward Phillips “Here comes Gad?” See at https://www.facebook.com/phil.beaver.52. And please comment. I’m not saying I’m right, just that I have a well-grounded opinion: Sandmann is an all time hero!

https://www.quora.com/Does-modern-politics-implement-any-form-of-the-philosophies-from-Aristotle-Plato-and-Socrates?

I am not Dr. Phil Beaver, dean of political philosophy nor do I have propriety among Greek historians. However, when I want to trace down an idea, my search often stops with my paraphrase of a Greek idea. I think the consequences are fantastic! In fact, I think they potentially ruin the propriety pride professors parlay.

I think the fantastic discussions that the framers conducted in creating the 1787 U.S. Constitution were expressed in one sentence: the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, hereafter, the U.S. preamble. It tacitly proposes the opportunity for the willing individual to develop individual happiness with civic integrity. The quest for this way of living was initiated by the Greeks, suppressed by British colonialism, and, so far, neglected by U.S. fellow citizens.

For what it may be worth, here are my interpretations of some of the literature.

1.    Plato informs us that Socrates died to defend the rule of law even when the jury is unjust. See “The Apology” and its two companions.

2.    Plato informs us in “Symposium” that Agathon thought the greatest power neither initiates to nor tolerates from any person or god a harmful connection. Also, appreciation seems greater than love.

3.    Pericles informed us that individuals may enjoy equity under statutory justice, which is written justice. In other words, humankind may develop written law and its enforcement unto perfection.

4.    Aristotle informed us that a citizen collaborates for civic, civil, and legal integrity from childhood awareness until senility lessens cognition.

The preamble to the U.S. Constitution tacitly expresses the above four principles and proposes that families discipline to develop an achievable better future for the parent’s willing grandchildren and beyond (posterity).

The First Congress delayed implementation of the preamble’s agreement by re-establishing colonial-American Blackstone common law but with American-factional-Protestantism to traditionally partner with Congress, mimicking Canterbury’s constitutional partnership with Parliament. The American partnership has since developed unto Judeo-Catholic dominance of the U.S. government. The consequence is the chaos Congress now enacts.

If enough fellow citizens (perhaps 2/3) develop trust-in and commitment to the U.S. preamble’s civic, civil, and legal agreement, they may discipline the U.S. to develop civic integrity. Principles advanced from Greek political philosophy will have put Christianity in its rightful place: in the hearts, closets, and churches that are maintained in privacy by adult believers only.

Law professors

https://www.lawliberty.org/2019/01/29/the-politics-of-language-and-expanding-accusations-of-racism

Racism is a global power struggle, and rather than “America’s original sin,” it is America’s unique opportunity.

The opportunity was created when the committee of forms appraised the constitutional convention and wrote the preamble to the U.S. Constitution (the U.S. preamble).

It is a fantastic sentence in that it is an oppression-free civic, civil, and legal agreement that creates the fellow citizens’ dichotomy of willing individuals and dissidents. Also, it offers a clean break from colonial British common law and church-state partnership.

States excepting Rhode Island assigned 70 delegates, but only 55 attended and only 39 signed the U.S. preamble and its supporting articles, the 1787 U.S. Constitution. Thus 66% of the representatives of the 1774 Confederation of States created the possibility for a Union of states under the U.S. preamble. That’s 2/3, and the other 1/3 were opposed, some because of the U.S. preamble. Some preferred the confederation rather than a union.

The 39 of 70 for 12 of 13 states is 51.4%, not too different from Hillary Clinton’s 51.1% popular vote victory versus Donald Trump in 2016. Thus, the U.S. has never had unity, yet it has the opportunity to develop civic integrity.

The Greeks informed humankind that citizens can develop equity under statutory justice, a worthy if unattainable goal. The development evolves toward statutory law and its enforcement. Citizens who agree to equity under law authorize the use of force to constrain fellow citizens who think crime and other dissidence pays.

In the U.S., the civic, civil, and legal agreement for equity under statutory law is the U.S. preamble. The agreement is available to fellow citizens regardless of race or gender. A better future is coming, because most fellow citizens want mutual, comprehensive safety and security so that they can responsibly pursue individual happiness rather than a way of living someone else limited.

Once 2/3 of U.S. citizens trust-in and commit to the civic, civil, and legal agreement that is offered in the U.S. preamble, the rest of the world will look to the U.S. to solve the race problem.

https://www.lawliberty.org/2019/01/29/congress-constitution-shutdown

Weiner cared not about civic integrity when he wrote “. . . in a standoff with the president on an issue of authority, the Congress, and thus the Constitution, won.” The Constitution, the president, and the Congress serve We the People of the United States---not the majority or American traditions, but the living fellow citizens who collaborate for freedom-from oppression under the U.S. preamble.

I don’t think Madison liked the U.S. preamble, and in this post, Weiner seems to feel beyond fellow citizens who trust-in and commit-to the agreement that is offered fellow citizens in the preamble.

Together, Congress and administrative regimes hold hostage We the People of the United States as defined in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution (the U.S. preamble), for example, denying them a wall on the southern border for at least three decades.

“Constitutionalists” are substantially at fault for the British colonial bemusement that keeps the people in social conflict rather than in civic collaboration; maintains the church-state partnership rather than separates church from state.

American political regimes perpetuate “God bless America” mimicking “God save the queen” because Chapter XI Machiavellianism works, despite Niccolo’s 1513 irony.

However, freedom of theism is currently in conflict with collaboration to discover the-objective-truth, a tacit purpose and goal of the U.S. preamble’s civic, civil, and legal agreement. Those who would assert the weakness of the U.S. preamble may consider the fact that on June 21, 1788, the 1774 Confederation of States legally ended, and the people in nine states established the rule of federal law. The other four states could remain free and independent, as ratified in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, or join the Union. Two did in time for operations to begin on March 4, 1789.

Weiner sadly overlooks that the Pelosi social democracy hurt some 0.8 million wage earners, which affects perhaps four times as many support employees and another two times as families, or over 6 million Americans.

James Madison, in Federalist 10, warned of a coalition of minorities that form a majority and undo the representative rule of law. The framer who recognized a problem but did not resolve it is no friend of the rule of law. Worse, in Memorial & Remonstrance, his group said that a citizen must first be considered a subject of the writers’ god: “the Governour of the Universe.” There’s no place for theism, an adult private pursuit, in collaboration for civic integrity. In my eighth decade, I cannot be persuaded to evaluate anyone’s god: I can only respond to collaboration for mutual, comprehensive safety and security (in this case, build the wall).

Constitutionalists honestly try to preserve tradition, but honesty is insufficient. We the People of the United States need the civic integrity to pursue statutory justice. Pelosi and other tyrants may reform by considering themselves first fellow citizens and therefore collaborate for statutory justice.

To RO: I agree. What’s needed is self-discipline.

However, “self-rule” is a colonial British idea (http://cdaworldhistory.wikidot.com/self-rule-for-british-colonies). America, after 230 years neglecting the U.S. preamble, desperately needs revolutionary, psychological reform from British influence. Foremost in importance is amendment of the First Amendment so as to protect the pursuit of civic integrity rather than to support theism or any other religious belief or mystery.

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln saw the civic, civil, and legal power of the U.S. preamble. However, 2019 fellow citizens might be closer to the establishment of civic integrity if Lincoln had said at Gettysburg, “. . . and that [discipline] of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Even more importantly, fellow citizens must have a standard by which discipline is discovered. Physics and its progeny like biology, psychology, math, and fiction that imagines discovery of the unknown yet does not pretend that imagination is evidence sets the standard. Through physics and its progeny humankind discovers the-objective-truth by which “truth” and all its modifications are judged.

Rudyard Kipling wrote a short story which seems a metaphor for Albert Einstein’s 1941 suggestion that civic people do not lie so as to lessen misery and loss. In “The Man Who Would Be King,” the village men elect the king as their god. The village women oppose the consequences and cut the king to expose his blood.

These ideas: at least 2/3 of fellow citizens trusting-in and committing-to the U.S. preamble to order civic, civil, and legal concerns; collaboration to discover the-objective-truth and how to benefit from the discovery; collaboration to pursue statutory justice, impossible as its achievement may be; reform from American traditions founded on British political philosophy; and separation of church from state should . . . would empower a civic culture that develops individual happiness with civic integrity.

Writers in this forum are the candidates who can make an achievable better future happen fastest.

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.