Voluntary Civic People of Baton Rouge

Saturday, February 16, 2019

The-objective-truth unacknowledged

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

One forum seemed to object to my reference to faith in the-objective-truth. The hyphens are intended to prevent separation of any of the three words, especially the article. Scholars who responded to it erroneously used the phrase “objective truth.” Like so many other modifiers, “objective” is the opinion of the writer and therefore is no better than ultimate, absolute, and “truth” itself, sometime refered to as “the naked truth.”

The edge search engine did not yield results with or without quotation marks. Adding “Phil Beaver” did not help, but adding “a civic people” found two citations with my use of the phrase.

Google Chrome found “The Objective Truth in Philosophy,” by Austin Cline, updated February 7, 2019; https://www.thoughtco.com/objective-truth-250549. But right away, there’s “who believes in objective truth?” The article “the” lost its role.

Adding “Phil Beaver” in Google Chrome, the first eight URLs cite my writing. Using “a civic people” instead gets more of my writing.

Columns

Yourself is a circular truth-standard (Christopher Simon) (https://www.theprogressreview.co/meditations-august-1-2018/)

Proverbs 10:9 typically leaves the reader in mystery---that is with mysterious advice. “He who walks purely walks securely, but he who walks in crooked ways will be found out.” (CJB)

This idea, perhaps 3,000 years old or older, leaves it to the reader to choose his or her standard for purity. If Solomon wrote Proverbs, we’re reading the mystery of a man who was faithful to no woman. In I Kings 11:3, “He had 700 wives, all princesses, and 300 concubines; and his wives turned his heart away.”

In 1941, Albert Einstein suggested that we don’t lie so as to lessen misery and loss, and the standard against which humans judge fidelity is the-objective-truth. The-objective-truth can only be discovered rather than constructed on reason or other human endeavor and is the standard of truth.

The standard on which to discipline “being true to yourself” is the-objective-truth.

Quora

https://www.quora.com/What-is-wrong-with-relationships-in-todays-society?

The newborn human has the challenge of transitioning from total ignorance to informed intentions to live a complete human life. By complete I mean whole and aware. Since the body completes the wisdom parts of the brain before a quarter century has passed, achieving psychological maturity takes a half to three-quarters century. Many people die too young. Humankind, after perhaps 10 trillion person-years, is so uninformed no one knows how to encourage and coach the individual to accelerate the journey to human being.

The human person has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to develop either integrity or infidelity. Most people allow infidelity to become a habit. And there is no standard for fidelity.

Integrity is the practice of discovering the-objective-truth, understanding how to benefit, and behaving accordingly. The-objective-truth is the standard by which the truth is judged. When discovery has not occurred, humankind, in fidelity, admits, “We do not know.” Infidelity to the-objective-truth begs woe.

These concepts have not been discovered or at least promoted, because most individuals are not aware of statutory justice. Most humans want mutual, comprehensive safety and security, which can only come from people who develop integrity.

Cultures develop legal systems that rely on the individual’s reluctance to accept IPEA and develop integrity. Most people want to consign their IPEA to another entity—usually an ideology or a government, neither of which accepts the individual’s IPEA. The ideology or government works for its continuity rather than for the individual’s integrity. The people in charge of the ideology or government feel no obligation to accept a person’s IPEA.

This way of living is not inevitable. There can be an achievable better future in just a few years. The requirements are for most individuals to commit to equity under statutory justice (arguably, Pericles’s idea from 2,500 years ago) and to pursue integrity, in other words fidelity to the-objective-truth. It is not surprising that the very phrase “the-objective-truth” is resisted if not rejected by existing human powers.

In the USA, fellow citizens are free to adopt the civic, civil, and legal agreement to pursue integrity that is offered in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. preamble offers willing citizens individual happiness with civic integrity.

I write to learn and would appreciate comments.

https://www.quora.com/Is-Freemasonry-just-a-harmless-social-networking-society?

If I understand “social networking society” I could not say that Freemasonry is harmless: Indoctrination and tyranny seem possible.

My meagre understanding informs me that there is a political control element wherein the higher a member rises in the organization the more conformity to the rules and individual loyalty he must demonstrate.

However, by experience, I think the man who maintains individual authenticity is enriched by association with Freemasons. In other words, the man who uses the good in the doctrine and declines the bad can better himself, primarily through self-discipline.

I have this impression from my father, Fred Taylor Beaver, Jr., who was a 32^nd degree Mason and also the best Sunday school teacher I ever had (Southern Baptist). I never heard a racist word from Dad, yet he was equitably suspicious of wayward people whether white or black. Dad had a GED but was widely read. He was a master machinist and union member. He walked picket lines when there was violence. Yet if he disagreed with the union’s cause, he quit his job and moved his family of four to another state rather than be a scab.

Yet, he was conflicted. For example, he painted in big blue letters, in our basement, “God is the boss in this house.” I think he sought relief from the constant bickering by his mom. She had been widowed when Dad was twelve. Grandad, they say, was an excellent husband and craftsman; except he had no life insurance when he was diagnosed with cancer and died. He left Grandmother with three children. She became a seamstress in a sweat shop. As the oldest child, Dad took responsibility for Grandmother. She constantly assumed lordship of Mom’s home. Dad refused to take sides. I never heard him appeal to either woman to compromise. Dad seems a hero in that he sought higher power in a dilemma he perceived he could not solve. Grandmother’s death did not resolve bitter consequences.

If Freemasonry attempts to control its members, which I think it does, Dad may have been an instance when a man preferred his individual power, individual energy, and individual authority (IPEA) to develop civic integrity rather than attempt to consign human authenticity, knowing his status was so low he could never perfect his person.

Freemasonry, like most human associations, may be harmless if the individual member does not take it too seriously. Recall, I have never attempted to be a Mason, so am only a witness to an experience.

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.

Saturday, February 9, 2019

Democrat solidarity begs woe for all

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.

Selected theme from this week

If people like me had not voted for Trump/Pence twice, the world would never have known how evil the Democrats are. Clinton would have maintained the evil without the desperation that ensued on her well earned defeat. Walter Williams and Byron York write about it in civil words, but hide the evil's seriousness. We the People of the United States can achieve a better future.

Columns

Adolescent thinking by chronological adults (Walter Williams) (http://stocktalkjournal.com/walter-williams-is-reality-optional/)

U.S. fellow citizens would not consider an American’s demand to be called king.

“It’s no different from a person born with XY chromosomes declaring that he is a woman. The XY sex determination system is the sex determination system found in humans and most other mammals. Females typically have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX) and are called the homogametic sex. Males typically have two different kinds of sex chromosomes (XY) and are called the heterogametic sex.”

Democrats won’t face facts (Byron York) (http://stocktalkjournal.com/walter-williams-is-reality-optional/)

For instance “The San Diego Sector in California is a case study in the effectiveness of a border barrier. In 1986, before the construction of a barrier, there were more than 628,000 apprehensions, while untold numbers of others successfully made it across the border illegally. In 2017, after the construction of extensive barriers, there were 26,086 apprehensions, according to the Border Patrol.”

Quora

https://www.quora.com/With-social-justice-the-top-one-percent-pay-for-most-things-in-society-or-so-it-seems-What-obligation-does-the-lower-half-have-to-work-hard-and-better-themselves-and-their-situation?

Is this a rhetorical question? Perhaps you assert that 99% of society is enjoying the life they have, good or bad, at the expense of the 1%. Further, the 1% plus the rest of the upper half are exempt from social justice, leaving it to the lower half to develop upward mobility. Does that accurately represent your idea?

I think “social justice” is a scholarly phrase that is used, normally intentionally, to preserve classism. In other words, it comes-from or is nourished-by the propriety of the 1%. By propriety I mean that if you want to know why it’s that way, you have to understand the system.

The most egregious intention is to preserve ignorance among the lower class. At the top of the tier of preferences, a 1% education is reserved for the offspring of the 1%. I could not have articulated that when a wealthy classmate was headed for military school and on to Yale. I have no idea what he would call statutory justice, but it cannot come from law schools.

Ultimate justice can come only through collaboration by willing people. In the U.S. the agreement by fellow citizens to collaborate for statutory justice is offered in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, and perhaps nowhere else. The U.S. preamble is repressed not only by the political regimes but by fellow citizens for reasons they may or may not understand. The first problem is self-discipline, which is necessary by both the 1% and the 99%.

The preamble proposes individual self-discipline to collaborate for civic integrity. Fellow citizens have the freedom-to reject the agreement and the liberty-to pursue the human rights they perceive. Unfortunately, some individuals envision living someone else’s lifestyle without contributing to economic viability. Some sincerely think crime pays, the 1%-ers may perceive more pay from crime than the bottom half does.

There are three educational aspects to phenomenon of economic viability. First, the individual must earn the income needed for the lifestyle he or she wants. Second, for survival, the gross national product may be distributed according to the contributions humankind needs; entertainment is a low-priority need. Third, to collectively develop and maintain statutory justice, the individual must collaborate under a civic, civil, and legal agreement during his or her cognizant lifetime.

Classism seems a global problem derived from the fact that economic viability is not obvious to the newborn infant, powerful as the human infant may be. Unlike a fold, which struggles to stand upon delivery and becomes a suckling three hours later, the human infant is totally dependent for survival. However, after a quarter century the human’s body has completed construction of the wisdom parts of the brain. By then, he or she needed the basic education on which to choose to pursue a lifetime developing either infidelity or integrity. Initial experiences with integrity may nourish fidelity to the-objective-truth.

Only the most aware humans choose to develop integrity, and individuals who develop fidelity may discover the-objective-truth during old age. Few humans achieve an approach to perfect fidelity. Even Albert Einstein’s perfection was lessened by his will to speak to the audience in terms he thought they could understand. For example, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” may exist because Einstein was “dumbing down” his actual opinion. Perhaps he thought: evidentiary study without motivation is lame and obligation without evidence is stupid” or a better avoidance of mystery.

Without essential education, the human individual usually suffers the constraints of survival---the need for the food he are she will accept motivates subsistence on menial work or welfare---always thanking a bureaucrat and never gaining the economic power to acquire the education he or she should have been offered from infancy through the first quarter century. The primary obligation of education systems is to encourage and coach the child that he or she has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (IPEA) to develop either infidelity or integrity. In 2019, the information needed to make that choice is freely available on the Internet, so relief from Great Britain’s traditions may be accelerated.

Great Britain honed classism using perhaps the world’s leading Chapter XI Machiavellian system. The commoner is thrilled by “God save the queen” and takes for granted the Canterbury-Lords-partnership that began constitutional development in 1215 with the signing of Magna Carta. The priests and lords set themselves above both the king and the people. The framers of the 1787 U.S. Constitution seemed to recognize the Chapter XI tyranny, and their debates inspired the committee of forms to write the world’s greatest political sentence: the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. preamble offers willing citizens the opportunity to pursue civic integrity, which may lead to the development of statutory justice. By statutory justice I mean written law that is based on the-objective-truth rather than dominant opinion, such as Chapter XI theism. Alas, “God save the queen” morphed to “God bless America.”

So far, the U.S. preamble enjoyed a nine-month window of potential influence: between the legal establishment of the U.S. on June 21, 1788 and beginning operations with eleven states on March 4, 1789. The First Congress ignored if not repressed the preamble and negotiated the re-establishment of colonial British influence through Blackstone common law and factional-American Protestantism to claim “traditional” congressional divinity on par with the constitutional parliament divinity. God would grant American power over Great Britain much as France had helped the Continental Army defeat England at 1781 Yorktown, VA. This fallacy was repeated when the South’s god would grant 7 states victory over the 27-state North’s god, both divinities being God.

Today, the American Judeo-Christian scholars and politicians harken to the likes of Francis Bacon (d. 1626), Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679), and John Locke (d. 1704), average reference date 1670, so as to further aid obfuscation of the U.S. preamble’s power. They ignore political progress offered by political geniuses like Albert Einstein (d. 1955). Einstein suggested that both technology and integrity derive from physics and its progeny---math, chemistry, biology, psychology and fiction---the objects of study rather than the study process.

Einstein’s illustration of the principle that integrity derives from physics is in “The Laws of Science and the Laws of Ethics” (https://samharris.org/my-friend-einstein/, Out of My Later Years, 1950). Fellow citizens do not lie to each other so that “Human life shall be preserved” and “Pain and sorrow shall be lessened as much as possible.”

He finishes with “Truth is what stands the test of experience.” Einstein’s “truth” seems to define the-objective-truth, which can only be discovered and confirmed by experience. Experience informs humankind that Chapter XI Machiavellianism is ruinous. For example observe what has happened to the USA under the tradition that began as factional-American Protestantism and gravitated to Judeo-Christianity. Since 1968, African-American Christianity formed, and Beta Israel may trace back to the tribe of Dan; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Israel#Tribe_of_Dan. Non-Christian fellow citizens suffer much over freedom of religion, practically freedom of theism, dominantly freedom of Christianity.

Social justice is merely another religion that would impose Chapter XI Machiavellianism. The social idea is for the 50% to overthrow the economic advantage of the 1% who earn enough to live high on the hog and pay for both the lower half and the 49% remainder. But if the 99% merely push the 1% out, who will manage economic viability? The individual may decide to collaborate for civic integrity in order to secure the opportunity to responsibly pursue individual happiness rather than the dictates of a person or society.

Economic viability with civic integrity can be provided by a civic people, not by either a government or a god. U.S. fellow citizens may contemplate the U.S. preamble and either adopt it or provide a better agreement on which to collaborate for equity under statutory justice. The U.S. preamble is an agreement to trust-in and commit-to fidelity to the-objective-truth rather than conflict for dominant opinion. It is a commitment to ultimate justice or economic viability rather than social justice or chaos.

When I decided to respond to your question, I had no idea my post would become so long. I hope you were patient to read it. Moreover, I hope it kindled your interest in individual happiness with civic integrity rather than the life-outcome someone else or some society would impose on the person. If so, read and collaborate at promotethepreamble.blogspot.com.

https://www.quora.com/Is-American-Exceptionalism-a-constructive-or-destructive-force-in-American-political-and-social-life?

As practiced, American exceptionalism has been ruinous, bringing the people to the chaos of perhaps 50% wanting a social democracy instead of a representative republic. The nation is either at an abyss from which it will ascend to equity under a disciplined people or descend into socialism. False exceptionalism derived from pride in freedom of theism in rebellion against the colonial British imposition of Canterbury.

Declines are observable in Venezuela, a majority Roman Catholic people or Honduras, a majority Roman Catholic people or Guatemala with Roman Catholic principle religion and almost as much Protestantism.

There’s hope for America, where Roman Catholic influence is only 23% among the people despite the Supreme Court’s 5 to 6 Catholics and 3 Jews. Also, a growing 25% are non-theists.

America’s achievable reform is offered in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. It enjoyed a short viability from June 21, 1788 until March 4, 1789 when the First Congress was seated representing eleven states. Like adolescent parents who know no better than to squabble over the competitive child-rearing lore of four grandparents, congress began the re-establishment of colonial British Blackstone with factional-Protestant-church partnering with Congress to give them a tradition of “divinity” on par with the constitutional Canterbury-Parliament partnership.

Greece v Galloway (2014) further codified this tradition that is devoid of civic integrity. The U.S. preamble has been suppressed for 229 years. Reform is possible, and we are working on it. See promotethepreamble.blogspot.com.

America is indeed exceptional in that its agreement for equity under statutory justice is offered in the U.S. preamble in freedom-from oppression. Fellow citizens live in the dichotomy self-discipline vs arrogance. When a super-majority, perhaps 2/3 take the liberty-to commit-to and trust-in the U.S. preamble, the nation may become great. Also, the 1/3 dissidents may perceive an achievable better future and therefore reform.

If you want to aid an achievable, better future, take interest in our work and collaborate to make it happen in time to relieve the current grandchildren and beyond of a growing $22 trillion in debt. Social democracy is a path to chaos.

Added to #acivicpeople

https://www.quora.com/Which-part-of-society-is-still-the-most-primal?

Primal is the fear that motives crime by government officials, especially in the USA.

The Greeks suggested 2,400 years ago the possibility of developing human equity under statutory justice. By “statutory justice” I mean perfection in a culture of fellow citizens living in a dichotomy with the choice of either crime or collaboration for justice. In such a culture, the mutual, comprehensive safety and security enjoyed by the willing would encourage the criminals to reform.

In the U.S., the agreement which offers this culture is the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. preamble was created for signature on September 17, 1787, and apparently expressed the profound debates the framers had conducted.

Only 2/3 of framers signed the document, and some of the 1/3 framers who did not sign opposed the preamble. Some wanted to establish their God, a factional-Protestant American-God. Some wanted to preserve the confederation of states rather than initiate the individual self-discipline that commitment-to and trust-in the agreement requires.

The fears and desperation to compete keeps most fellow citizens from seriously considering the self-discipline the U.S. preamble calls for. However, elected and appointed officials consider themselves about fellow citizens and do all they can to hide the civic, civil, and legal powers of the U.S. preamble. There may be a better commitment to statutory justice; if so, I want to read it.

Posted on twitter and created #acivicpeople

https://www.quora.com/Should-our-personal-freedoms-be-restricted-for-the-wider-benefit-of-society?

Absolutely not. However, education systems may reform so as to promote integrity and self-discipline rather than sacrifice.

Traditional scholarly articles debate 17^th century liberalism, citing thinkers like Francis Bacon (d. 1626), Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679), and John Locke (d. 1704), average 1670. The scholar attempts to sell his or her biases grounded in 350 year old assumptions. A key assumption is that virtuous individuals sacrifice for the greater good.

Scholars in general or so steeped in the 2019 debates about 1670 political science that they overlook revolutionary political thought. For example, Albert Einstein, in 1941 (78 years ago), delivered the speech, “Science and Religion,” which I quote:

[A] religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance and loftiness of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation. They exist with the same necessity and matter-of-factness as he himself. In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of [un-selfish] values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect. If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts.

No political science article I have read quotes Einstein to evaluate the religious fervor of Locke and other thinkers. I encourage readers to study Einstein as a political philosopher.

“For the benefit of society,” is a scholarly phrase intended to establish and maintain a class culture. By that I mean a mimic of constitutional Great Britain, with a king, an archbishop, lords, etc., and commoners. The idea is that commoners sacrifice a human lifestyle so that the Canterbury-Parliament partnership can live high on the hog.

In civic integrity, willing fellow citizens may earn a human lifestyle and save money so as to continue the lifestyle into retirement. It is up to him or her to choose an adult career that fellow citizens appreciate enough to fund the individual’s chosen lifestyle. I chose chemical engineering based on aptitude tests and relative income. Now, I discover I want to be a writer, but could never have qualified without those 35 years’ service to fellow citizens and fellowman.

In his talk “The Laws of Science and the Laws of Ethics” (https://samharris.org/my-friend-einstein/, Out of My Later Years, 1950) Einstein’s only example that physics and integrity come from the same source is that fellow citizens do not lie to each other so that “Human life shall be preserved” and “Pain and sorrow shall be lessened as much as possible.” He finishes with “Truth is what stands the test of experience.”

Unsatisfied with “truth” I write “the-objective-truth,” which can only be discovered. Many scholars have the hubris to evaluate the-objective-truth. For example, Richard M. Reinsch, II, in “Understanding Liberalism” or “Liberalism, Properly Understood,” National Affairs, No. 38, Winter 2019, evaluates “truth” several ways: historically verifiable truths, grounded truth, the architectonic truth (ordered truth?), held truth, and the deepest kind of truth. The-objective-truth asserts non-flexibility. I don’t know if Einstein would agree that I have developed but hope so.

Every human being has the authentic opportunity to develop either infidelity or integrity. If the later, he or she may manage external and internal constraints so as to pursue individual happiness with civic integrity instead of the limitations someone else would persuade him or her to accept.

Saturday, February 2, 2019

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.

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.