No fourth branch; a people must govern

The Advocate’s 2014 Thanksgiving message disappointed me, so I ignored it for  a day, at http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/10833762-123/our-views-grateful-for-our. "Grateful for our problems" was on the opposite page from George F. Will's column, "Thanks, or something." I am most disappointed that The Advocate did not address the abuse of children.

My major concern is the diminishing phrase "political bickering." "Bicker" means to engage in irrational argument. Action, not argument is the problem. Barack Obama is doing everything in his power to disable the United States of America; most of the people don't like it; but Obama is not alone. His party is a modern political villain, and the US Supreme court (SC) is out of control. Especially egregious is SC defense of legislative prayer, which holds that elected officials’ self-righteous, “divine” guidance is more than a phantasm at the expense of a people. See Greece v Galloway (2014). I would also cite US v Windsor, but that is Congress’s fault, due to an unconstitutional basis for DOMA. A child’s civic right to be reared and loved by the man and woman who conceived it is a civic opinion based on physical fact, having nothing to do with religion.

The hometown newspaper was supposed to be the fourth branch of government—the part that assured the people the balanced, the objective truth about what the administration, the legislature, and the court is doing. See http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/boaz/pol326/feb12.htm, for example, for opinion like mine. In governance of by and for a civic people, the newspaper does two things, IMO. First, it does the noble work of discovering the current facts. Second, it keeps track of progress toward the civic morality that is the basis of civil order, or the rule of law, which inexorably evolves toward physics-based ethics. The newspaper’s record of progress maintains a people’s expectations from its republican governance. The purpose of republican governance is classical liberalism: each person’s opportunity to pursue personal liberty with domestic goodwill. However, The Advocate is a force for its subjective, left agenda.

For example, when U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman defended a people’s state constitutional ban against same-sex marriage, based on the equality and dignity of a child to remain with the couple that conceived the child, The Advocate pointed out that Feldman is faithful to his church. I think Feldman’s religious life is private and wonder how The Advocate could know how religiously faithful Feldman is. If anyone should know that a person’s religious faith is nobody’s business, it is the hometown newspaper. But a child’s right to its conceiving couple is the point. Adult contracts that deny the child's right do not conform to civic morality.

And that’s not the worst of it. The Advocate advertises for the LGBT community’s claim to the right to dignity and equality every chance The Advocate gets, whether by editorial or pseudo news about recent LBGT activities. The other night, Obama asked, regarding acceptance of illegal aliens, “Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parent’s arms?” I answer, “Regarding the LGBT community, the nation routinely separates children from parents against the will of a civic people.” Obama and Eric Holder’s backers think nothing of separating a child from its couple for the benefit of a same-sex partnership’s wants.

Obama tacitly opines that a child keeps the equality and dignity of staying with his/her father and mother when by contract he/she is reared by a father and a father or a mother and a mother. The contract-child never witnesses the arduous and noble work of a father and mother cultivating their family in equality and dignity. I wish the best for same-sex families, but I want a civic people to not encourage such neglect of a child’s dignity and equality. Likewise, I wish the best for anyone who opts for a vacation in space but would not encourage them to engage the financial and physical risks.

I am not upset with what is happening, first, because it has been developing for a long time, and regression must bottom before reform can occur. The doublespeak of democracy to supplant republican governance is decades old, perhaps enhanced by FDR’s four freedoms but becoming exponential with the Kinsey reports of 1950 and LBJ’s Great Society in the mid 1960s. Priestly pedophilia and other clerical abuses exacerbated the problem, but religion will persist. In privacy, religion is some people’s way of coping with the unknown objective truth, even as they come to grips with the known objective truth. Some people want religious institutions. However, each person must separate private, religious hopes from cooperative, civic needs, because no two people have the same religion: Every person who has a god has a unique god, whether the person belongs to a religious institution or not.

Secondly, the human quest for personal liberty is as old as humankind. Since the founding of this nation, political philosophers have argued two major approaches: 1) satisfying what the current generation's hopes (governance changes every thirty years or so), versus 2) preserving progress on what past generations learned--tradition or originalism. In the past, government used religious institutions to moderate appetites and preserve doctrine, disguised as first principles. However, the civic power of religion has diminished, collectively, by internal failures in principles; by the diversity that is increasing with global, civic mobility; and by legislative relegation of religion to ceremonial status. (Furthermore, whereas US citizens in 1790 were 99% Protestant, citizens in 2015 are about 49% Protestant. Then, 6% of free adults could vote: now 100% of free adults can vote.) I think to restore and preserve representative republicanism the standard for civic morality in future will be physics-based ethics: For example, an adult understands the consequences of denying children equality and dignity; an adult personally protects children; an adult encourages other people to protect children; and an adult remains open to new opportunities for children.

In 2014, we held a library discussion on Bill of Rights day, Monday, December 15. However, we discontinued that practice for two reasons: 1) the season does not lend itself to a civic celebration and 2) the Bill of Rights was a political product that partially lessened the quality of the draft signed on September 17, 1787. Nevertheless, while the preamble of 1787 remained, the negotiated constitution for the USA was not complete until December 15, 1791, with the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Many people erroneously regard the draft of 1787 as the original constitution; it was a draft, conditionally ratified on June 21, 1788 with a Bill of Rights to be negotiated by the first Congress.

Copyright©2014 by Phillip R. Beaver. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the publication of all or portions of this paper as long as this complete copyright notice is included. Revised 11/25/2015.