whatever-God-is again

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 a civic people of the united states, in order to encourage individual responsibility for integrity, justice, peace, defense, and prosperity so as to secure human liberty for now and for the future, pursue statutory justice in the USA..” I want to collaborate with the other citizens on this paraphrase and theirs yet would preserve the original, 1787, text, unless it is amended by the people.

It seems no one has challenged whether or not the preamble is a legal statement. The fact that it changed this independent country from a confederation of states to 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 phenomenal, mysterious power: whatever-God-is.

Perhaps 10,000 years ago, many civilizations perceived that the sun is a god. Some thought that since the sun could kill humans, god was a carnivore. Therefore, it was reasonable, in times of low meat supply, for priests to be cannibals.

Today, most humans are informed that the sun is a natural nuclear reactor. Yet theists persist to construct mysteries about whatever-God-is. Theists converse with each other about “God” rather than whatever-God-is, and thereby confound each other, never knowing how.

The preamble to the U.S. Constitution does not participate in theism. It’s silence on whatever-God-is is an example of humility fellow citizens may choose to emulate.

When institutional religions choose to collaborate using the U.S. preamble’s proposition and the-objective-truth, every religion may flourish on the hopes and comforts of the belivers.

News

Celebrate: a responsible press educates readers (Richard Campanella) (https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/entertainment_life/article_4c0589d0-6c2f-11e9-8aff-47fc3d06fcdc.html)

I speculated that a Supreme Court Justice retired when he realized that his lordship over human dignity and equality had severely hurt children and children to be born without the woman and man who made his or her conception possible.

I speculate that this article is the beginning of The Advocate facing the fact that they contributed to a U.S. Amendment XIV.1 offense against the people of Louisiana.

The point of the jury trial system is impartial justice. Impartiality is statistically impossible with jury unanimity and selection of jurors by pure democracy. Therefore, in 1880, Louisiana uniquely provided 9:3 majority verdicts in criminal trials.

About 2% of inhabitants suffer violent crime. That means 2% of the population do not subscribe to equity under the U.S. preamble’s proposition, or the consequential statutory laws. Moreover, perhaps 1/3 of inhabitants are aware that the U.S. preamble is a proposition to collaborate for statutory justice. If so, 2/3 of the population do not understand justice enough to serve on a jury.

In other words, perhaps 1/3 of inhabitants tend to be impartial, and the justice system they support must be excellent enough to assure victims of justice despite the 2:3 odds against justice.

This statistical challenge knows no race, gender, or other human distinction beyond the ineluctable choice each human has: develop responsible human liberty or not.

In 1781, France aided the eastern-seaboard British colonies (self-dubbed states) plan and win the battle at Yorktown, to the French, an extension of their second hundred years war against England. On the scene were 30,000 French military, 11,000 continental soldiers, and 9,000 British and mercenary soldiers. Then, Louisiana was a former French colony under Spanish flags.

Louisiana was included in Napoleon’s 1803 brotherly territorial transfer from Spain to France and sale to the U.S., and this, the 18th statehood, was accepted in 1812. The other states happily employed the British tradition of unanimous jury verdicts with a panel of twelve, not noticing that unanimity statistically fails impartiality. When Louisiana legislators considered the U.S. Amendment VI requirement that states provide an impartial jury, they employed French prejudice to provide the brilliant 9:3 jury verdict. In 1967, England followed Louisiana’s example with 10:2 verdicts.

The Advocate touts a Pulitzer Prize for its racially-prejudiced defiance of mathematics and reform from erroneous English tradition. The-objective-truth burdens like a universe of reasonable excuses, and The Advocate may dread the day when excuses run out.

It is not too late for The Advocate to do its part to restore a Louisiana treasure in U.S. jurisprudence: the 9:3 jury-majority verdict in criminal trials, with 11:1 when capital punishment is at stake. As it is, The Advocate has contributed to a U.S. Amendment XIV.1 offense against the people of Louisiana.



Columns

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_249fa48a-71ba-11e9-90d3-c7b10febf038.html

Count among the people who don’t appreciate the U.S. preamble’s proposition the editors for The Advocate. They wrote, “Polls show that most Louisiana voters still support [capital punishment], although significant players, such as Catholic church leaders in Louisiana, have come out against it.”

The U.S. preamble’s proposition is: a civic people of the United States collaborate for five public provisions---Unity, Justice, Tranquility, defense, and Welfare---in order to encourage responsible human liberty to living generations. For my individual collaboration, I interpret the five provisions as integrity, justice, peace, defense, and prosperity.

In 52 words, the U.S. preamble solves the problem of tyranny over the minds of humans, such as tyranny from religion, church, spiritualism and other businesses that strive to inculcate the grace of fear in order to pick the people’s pockets. The U.S. preamble proposes mutual, comprehensive safety and security so that individual fellow citizens---human beings---may choose to responsibly develop the happiness they prefer rather than cooperate-with, subjugate-to, or promote fears someone else constructed.

One of The Advocate’s roles is to educate the public. Fat chance for the public under The Advocate’s business plan.

Here we go again: public policy is determined by public opinion which is controlled by a liberal press (The Advocate editors) (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_5878db2c-6cf7-11e9-92e5-a35fc6ba9613.html)

Citizens could sense the disgusting legislative camaraderie when my district Senator Dan Claitor exposed early-career petit-jury tricks to support the unconstitutional move toward unanimous juries in Louisiana.

The unanimous-jury legislative charade was initiated by the Louisiana State Bar Association, so the lawyers in the Legislature were on board to defy their commitments to uphold both the Louisiana Constitution and the U.S. Constitution. The people’s vote for an unconstitutional change seemed good to them---perhaps there'd be more judge and lawyer work and the voters caused it.

However, U.S. Amendment XIV.1 stipulates that a state cannot create injustice when justice has been established. Can the state lead the people in injustice? I don’t think so. Louisiana’s 1880 criminal verdicts at 9:3 jury majority provides the impartiality U.S. Amendment VI requires of states.

Also, unanimity was an erroneous British idea, and in 1967, England initiated 10:2 criminal jury verdicts to lessen organized crime’s influence.

Louisiana’s breach of the rule of law is an illustration of the fallacy of modern journalism schools teaching that public policy is determined by public opinion and public opinion is controlled by the press. Also, it illustrates the fallacy of church-state legislative partnership, whether it be Claitor’s God or whatever-God-is. Just humans provide justice.

I hope to see my neighbor and state senator exit without a second woeful act of legislative camaraderie. I encourage him to reform to appreciation of fellow-citizenship under the U.S. preamble’s proposition: Union, Justice, Tranquility, defense, and Welfare in order to encourage responsible human liberty. The requirement therein is for the Catholic Church and all others to conform to the rule of law, however they must deal with their doctrine.

Senator Claitor, please vote against your bill.

Quora

https://www.quora.com/Have-we-forgotten-We-The-People-When-that-brown-stuff-starts-hittin-the-fan-shouldnt-we-be-One-Nation-Under-God-with-Liberty-and-Justice-for-all?

It would be so easy to pass up this question as too colonial-English-influenced to make it worthy. However, the pledge of allegiance has been imposed by Congress since 1942 with the imposition of whatever-God-is in 1954. It is past time for fellow citizens to consider the U.S. preamble’s proposition.

I am a student of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and more importantly the U.S. preamble’s proposition. It offers citizens an opportunity to commit-to and trust-in human equity under a statutory agreement. It is a civic, civil, and legal proposition for equity under statutory law.

Anyone who attempts to impose the mystery of whatever-God-is on a fellow citizen is breaching the U.S. preamble’s proposition. My interpretation of the proposition is: civic citizens collaborate for integrity, justice, peace, defense, and prosperity so as to encourage responsible human liberty to living generations.

I write “human” because only the human species has the awareness and grammar by which to develop responsible liberty or fidelity to the-objective-truth. The-objective-truth can only be discovered, so anyone who submits his life to a human construct has arbitrarily enslaved himself or herself. The U.S. preamble offers responsible relief from arbitrary impositions. In other words, it offers mutual, comprehensive safety and security.

I doubt a human who has chosen fidelity to the-objective-truth can turn his or her back on whatever-God-is. However, that is a common practice and the cause of human loss and misery.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-really-common-even-though-people-don-t-think-it-is

Commonly, people live a complete life without accepting her or his HIPEA.

Other species are free to surprise humans with unusual goodness but the occasional bad, like an elephant in a garden or village rampage, must be anticipated. Only the human can develop fidelity.

Only the human has the individual power, energy, and authority (HIPEA) to develop his or her preference for either infidelity or integrity to the-objective-truth. Actual reality is unfolding so fast that neither humankind nor an individual can expect perfection, so continuously developing integrity must suffice.

Integrity is not taught by any culture I know of. Integrity is the practice of discovering whether a personal concern is imagined or actually real; learning how to benefit from the discovery; living accordingly; and affirming exemplary behavior if asked in public. The practitioner admits to self that HIPEA cannot be consigned to another entity.

In integrity, only ineluctable evidence is regarded as the-objective-truth with caution in appreciation to future discovery. But false imagination is never pursued. When the evidence indicates but does not prove the personal concern was imagination, HIPEA requires the admission, “I doubt what I imagined but don’t know the-objective-truth.”

https://www.quora.com/How-is-a-public-different-from-a-culture-or-subculture

Humankind is the people living in the world. When you venture into your locale, you face the public, consisting of individual groups roughly distinguished as civic citizens, dissident fellow citizens, and aliens, both legal and illegal.
 
Civic citizens collaborate during their lives for statutory justice under an agreement such as the U.S. preamble’s proposition. Within the civic citizens there are diverse cultures distinguished by the standards by which they collaborate: a religious doctrine, a political creed, or discovery of ineluctable evidence, which I call the-objective-truth. These subcultures observe the law, because they have a common culture: mutual, comprehensive safety and security so that the individual may develop responsible human liberty according to his or her preferences rather than under the dictates of someone else.

U.S. citizens live under an achievable better future. Fellow citizens may accelerate establishment of collaboration under the U.S. preamble’s proposition: mutually provide Union, Justice, Tranquility, defense, and Welfare in order to promote responsible human liberty.

https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Why-does-society-have-so-many-expectations-from-individuals

Humankind seems to be on an ineluctable journey toward a proposition for human equity under statutory justice in conformity with the-objective-truth, which can be discovered but not constructed.

The human being is the only living species with the awareness and grammar by which to develop responsible liberty. Much as the individual must earn his or her food preferences rather than thank someone else for the food the other party offers, the individual must tend to his or her responsible liberty.

BTW: I earned this opinion by perhaps four decades’ contemplation of 1) what it means to be a human being and 2) what it means to be a civic citizen according to the proposition stated in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution (the U.S. preamble). It is, in effect, a proposition for individual self-discipline in order to encourage responsible human liberty.

Most world cultures inculcate the idea that an individual must look to higher power for comprehensive safety and security---whatever-government-is or whatever-God-is---and therefore do not develop self-discipline. Those ideas may be true and useful for the ages and for humankind.

However, the human life is too short, and a more effective thought is this: every human individual has the power, the energy, and the authority (HIPEA) with which to develop either infidelity to the-objective-truth or integrity.

In integrity, when an individual does not perceive the-objective-truth he or she: does the work to understand whether or not his or her concern is a imagined---like a mirage; if not, does the work to understand how to benefit from the discovery; accepts that conforming behavior sufficiently informs the public unless there are civic, civil, or legal questions; remains open to new discovery. If there is no discovery, either positive or negative, he or she admits to self, “I could not resolve that concern: I do not know the-objective-truth about that concern. Yet he or she has earned an opinion, admitting it could be wrong.

Unfortunately, too many people fruitlessly look to whatever-government-is or whatever-God-is to fulfill individual self-discipline. Some even subjugate themselves to thanking bureaucrats for food he or she would not choose. We work to change this long-standing trend by promoting the U.S. preamble’s proposition for responsible human liberty and collaborating to discover the-objective-truth.

Law professors

https://www.lawliberty.org/2019/03/01/the-relevance-of-the-preamble-to-constitutional-interpretation/ 

Standing Fast, perhaps you don’t realize your post is civically, civilly, and legally dismissive.

And your last paragraph cites, “Church teaching and the British Enlightenment thinkers . . . The Founders . . . John Adams . . .” Those human beings are all dead and cannot negotiate theism let alone Christianity into the U.S. preamble’s proposition.

The U.S. preamble, with what we know in 2019, proposes that citizens collaborate for five public provisions---integrity, justice, peace, defense, and prosperity---so as to encourage liberty to this and to subsequent generations. Liberty is a human characteristic which the individual may either accept or reject but cannot consign.

I do not wish to debate the Bible, but feel compelled to respond to “Nowhere in the New Testament is there an endorsement for any kind of abuse of other people.” As we are learning from altar boys, abuse is in the opinion of the abused, even though the abuser may have acted in moderation. I want to address a public abuse.

I think Christian apologists abuse the public by obfuscating John the Apostle’s hate in John 15:18-23. (Google “hate in the New Testament” to see if anyone lists John 15:18-23).



I quote: “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father as well.”

I earned the opinion that whatever-God-is would not accuse non-believers of hate. It’s John and people who subscribe to John’s hate who claim non-believers hate. Long ago, I chose to appreciate rather than hate. I neither initiate nor tolerate hate. My intolerance is written and spoken and never acts with coercion or force. For example, you may continue to support John 15:18-23, even though I expressed the opinion that it is an abuse of humankind.

For all I know, when my body, mind, and person stop functioning, I will face judgement by Jesus. I doubt it, but am prepared for it. I do not want another person to practice my preparation: let each person decide for themselves. The message in that last phrase comes not from me but from the collaborators who created the U.S. preamble’s proposition. They intended a psychological break from colonial-English traditions.

Under the U.S. preamble’s proposition, every religion that encourages responsible human liberty flourishes, including your Christianity. Doctrine that encourages hate may be accepted as erroneous.

Standing Fast, perhaps we can reach a path to collaboration from your statement, “Having said this, I do not deny, nor desire to, that many crimes have been committed in the name of God and Jesus Christ. These I know are contrary to the Judeo-Christian moral and legal code."

The "Judeo-Christian" moral code has been developing for over 4,000 years and is currently in a state of chaos, with anti-Semitism live and well in the west’s Judeo-Christian politics.

Both in 1787 and in 2019, We the People of the United States are offered a proposition that is silent on both spiritual and religious debates. Every U.S. citizen has the prerogative to either adopt the proposition or oppose it. The individual who would impose a religion on We the People of the United States is in opposition to the agreement for human justice under the U.S. preamble’s proposition.

The proposition is a consequence of the 4 months debates behind closed doors in Philadelphia by representatives from 12 of 13 free and independent states on the globe and on this continent. They had won a war of political independence from England and were then negotiating to establish psychological independence from their origins as English colonies.

Perhaps you confuse the 1776 committee of five who drafted the Declaration of Independence. John Adams did not contribute to the U.S. preamble’s proposition. The U.S. preamble’s authors included Alexander Hamilton, William Johnson, Rufus King, James Madison, and Gouverneur Morris. They wrote the world’s perhaps greatest political sentence of 52 words in only four days. See http://www.shestokas.com/constitution-and-its-people/we-the-people-gouverneur-morris-the-us-constitutions-preamble/.

What is obvious in 2019 is this: the human individual does not have the lifetime within which to benefit from resolution of Judeo-Christianity’s internal conflicts much less its conflicts with whatever-God-is. The U.S. preamble’s words attest to the acceptance of responsible liberty in civic, civil, and legal self-discipline within a human lifetime. The authors challenged fellow citizens to collaborate to provide Unity, Justice, Tranquility, defense, and welfare so that living and future generations may either accept human liberty or pursue another happiness they perceive within statutory law. How to accommodate the U.S. preamble's proposition among fellow citizens is up to the individual. Dissidents to the proposition are secure as long as they do not break statutory law.

What John Locke, John Adams, or John the Apostle thought about civic, civil, and legal morality have only incidental bearing on the 52-word U.S. preamble’s proposition.

I spend time and thought to offer collaboration with you but not the references you cite.

To John Schmeeckle: I appreciate your assessment of my viewpoint. I recall someone in the past asserted that my view is libertarian. I reacted by introducing myself to Jeremy Bentham (d. 1832) already having met John Stuart Mill (d. 1873).

Today, I consulted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_Kingdom#Liberal_thinkers and recall reading some part of records from perhaps 10 of 24 thinkers listed.

The Phillip Beaver I see in the mirror seems influenced more by American or in-America writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Kahlil Gibran, Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, James Baldwin, John Rawls, Leonard Levy, H.L. Mencken, Robert Nozick, Pauline Maier, Albert Einstein, and their biographers. Plato, Euripides, and Chekhov influence me. Byron York seems reliable. This is not to mention the many books on physics and its progeny and studies thereof such as chemical engineering as well as a mountain of religious apology such as Josh McDowell’s “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” (perhaps 1st edition). But that is only a sampling that does include, as I said perhaps 8 from the referenced list.

My view of Phillip Beaver is that he thinks he can learn more by focusing on documents than by reading what scholars write or say about the documents. That is “learn more” but not without the scholarship. The amount of time I spend toward understanding the U.S. preamble is staggering for one life. Sometimes I read an entire book to make certain I am not repeating someone else’s ideas. For example, Sam Harris’s “The Moral Landscape” (2010) or Michael Polyani’s “Personal Knowledge” (1958).

The U.S. preamble’s proposition is expressed in 52 words. I think the message to the reader is: a civic people collaborate for integrity, justice, peace, defense, and prosperity in order to approve and encourage responsible human liberty. Every human being, particularly every U.S. citizen may read the 52 words, do the work to form an individual interpretation, and either act on his or her personal opinion or not.

As far as I can tell, 800 years of English scholarship delivers unlimited confusion about the meanings of “freedom” and “liberty.” However, the 52-word U.S. preamble expresses the human opportunity to collaborate for freedom-from constructed oppression in order to approve-of and encourage existing human liberty-to responsibly pursue individual happiness with civic integrity rather than attempt to conform to someone’s idea of virtue.

I doubt I express English liberalism from any era. I am certain I want fellow citizens—We the People of the United States who accept responsible liberty—to reform from 231 years’ colonial-English classicism to human equity under the U.S. preamble’s proposition: a worthy march toward statutory justice.

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.