Civically
Encouraging Child Authenticity (CECA)
This is a
proposal[i] for the people of
Louisiana (or analogously for people in any state) to set aside up to $1
billion per year, 4% of the budget, to establish civic morality in the state rather than languish under the
opinion-based morality imposed by the federal government. Civic morality is
based on the indisputable facts of reality (TIFR), which may be observed
through physics.[ii]
The motivation for the proposal is civic appreciation
for children and provisions for future children--to be conceived. We think
appreciation of each infant’s personhood is critical to a possible better way
of living.
Herein is a Louisiana legislative
proposal that supports 1) parental planning with benefits unto their children,
grandchildren and beyond (personal posterity) and 2) a civic people’s collaborative
appreciation of every child as a person and civic asset rather than a liability.
Short term, it coaches children to learn
beyond education systems that inculcate—to
take charge of personal comprehension of TIFR. The civic child regards basic learning
as a brief, passing, yet vital, personal opportunity to acquire understanding in order to comprehend
full life unto psychological maturity,
perhaps beginning at age 65 if at all. Long term, the plan reduces the class-division
incorporated in the constitution for the USA and adapted from British,
opinion-based law. Every child is told that being a child in America is a dream
come true, provided she or he masters the bases of understanding during her or
his first two or three decades; however, few are coached unto psychological
success. Consequently, some aware American children dream to escape to Denmark. [iii]
The premise of this theory is that a
civic people (ACP) provides every collaborative child financial incentives to
join the asset class rather than languish in the labor class. In as short as
three decades, the ages-old assets v labor class-division of We the People of
the United States would be significantly lessened. Instead of oppressor and
oppressed within factional societies, there’d be a civic culture with willing members collaborating to raise the
American capital system to new heights. More importantly they would reduce both
the poor-class demographic and the middle class demographic by increasing the
upper class. Dissenters would exist as usual, and criminals would suffer the
rule of law, as now.
This program could improve American capitalism by reducing the size of the poorer population
in two ways. First, rededicating civic resources from adult satisfaction to obligations
to children, who are more vulnerable
than chronologically adult persons. Second, directly informing children that
both 1) ACP appreciate each collaborative person and 2) a child is a person who
may collaborate. In fact, most children innately collaborate and must learn to
dissent by example.
We think acting on this proposal would eliminate once and
for all division of inhabitants into asset
class versus labor class, without
threatening the first principle of property ownership. The proposal fairly
distributes annual gross domestic product (GDP). There is no legislative redistribution
of existing property: a person’s home remains his or her castle and a person’s
savings for retirement remain hers or his. Acquisition of assets comes at
market price from earned income, rather than arbitrary redistribution by
government. However, government becomes attentive to population growth and
personal income to assure that each adult may earn a living plus savings to
invest, and legislation is used to control the distribution of GDP. Perhaps
this becomes a labor department function that parallels the fed’s attention to
inflation and interest rates. As always legislation must be accompanied by cooperation
by the people: adults would need to save and invest at the target rates. Providing
incentives for children to take charge of their own comprehension and
understanding would reduce the number of psychologically immature adults in the
future.
Capital v labor is a competitive condition that was carried
over from English common law and Western socio-economic thought in general. The
capital v labor divide seems unjust and is determined and maintained by
scholarly construct or opinion-based ethics instead of physics-based morality.
“Physics” is energy, mass and space-time from which everything including law emerges,
as explained in Footnote 2. Humankind discovers what has emerged from physics
and learns how to benefit and, through physics, learns TIFR. The interrelated
system of benefits constitutes physics-based morality. According to physics, the
capital v labor divide damages the psychological welfare of every American—the
most elite as well as the poorest.
Psychological well-being is promoted by separating precious religious
values v necessary civic values; social liberty v civic liberty; personal
privacy v civic collaboration; imagination v reality; appetite v fidelity;
appreciation v egocentricity; fear v serenity. “Civic” means connections because persons ineluctably, both directly and
indirectly, share moments and decades in the same space and time rather than
social associations which imply preference,
class or imposition.
What’s new in this proposal is separation of “property” from
“assets” and coaching every citizen to convert labor into assets by saving and
investing a portion of earnings. Just as a person must earn their money to
enjoy liberty, they must collaborate to enjoy civic morality. The goal of this
proposal is real-no-harm (RNH) private liberty with civic morality (PLwCM) and
its corollary, private morality with civic liberty (PMwCL).
Furthermore, new in this proposal is the recognition that
the first step in discovery is imagination,
and any imagined entity that has not been disproved by physics remains a
potentially valid entity. Perhaps new dimensions of perception will empower
future proof. Thus, ideas such as the existence of a god or gods awaits
discovery of evidence leading to proof. However, since there is no proof at
this time, the many god constructs that humankind has developed cannot be used
to deny physics-based morality or morality from TIFR. Therefore, for the first
time in history, ACP actually separates private pursuits from civic provisions
and inform their governments, state and federal, that they are to follow suit.
We want this message disseminated by September 17, 2017, and the reform to
happen gradually—perhaps in three decades or less. Some opinion already conforms
to TIFR. For example, murder and human sacrifice are both illegal. However, the
right to both carry a gun and rebuke police-authority is very much a hot debate
in the USA.
Below, we present details and goals
of CECA then review background leading to the proposal. Make no mistake: this
is not a proposal to impose privacy on anyone, but it is a proposal to collaborate
for civic safety with domestic well-being. Every idea is proposed for collaboration by ACP; that is, the
author does not pretend that these ideas are a final or preferred solution to a
complex, long-standing problem. Collaboration is a voluntary act; we regard this
a proposal for consideration by ACP.
The Louisiana child incentives program
Patterned after
existing Louisiana programs START and TOPS, CECA begins with either 1) parents’
official notice to the state that they intend to conceive a child or 2) school notification
that a child is developing civic morality[iv] and should apply for the
incentives. Either a couple enrolls their intended child or a civic child’s performance
in school prompts the state to notify the child (and parents) on his or her own
merit. With educational-collaboration and achievement by the child, at each
step toward adulthood, an asset set-aside
in the child’s name builds, collectible only upon the child’s emergence as a
collaboratively autonomous, civic person. The evidence is CECA-approved
graduation from four-year college or equivalent accomplishment.
If the parents fail to register their intent to
procreate, after a child’s birth the state informs the parents about the
program and offers parental training. Also, the non-registered parents are encouraged
to independently fund their child’s initial asset, to assure their child’s
equality and dignity with children whose conception had prior registration. The
information focuses on the child and positioning him/her to qualify for the
civic program. Single parents are similarly informed. However, the infant incentive-set-aside
is exclusively for children who are with married parents, providing discouragement
of single parenthood. Yet the child of a single parent may later qualify for
subsequent stages in the program, as discussed below.
The following is a list of qualifications
concerns we have that have not been discussed with ACP—in other words, it’s a
draft list that has no input beyond the author’s work:
Only applications by parents meeting the following criteria will
be reviewed:
- Must be United States citizens
- Must have been residents of Louisiana for the last five years.
- Marriage license is at least three years old and there have been no overt marital disputes
- The intended child is expected no sooner than eleven months
- The couple is financially stable at their earning level with present margin and possible future to parent a child
- The couple must have graduated from high school and submit the final transcript
- The couple must have completed approved
- human-reproduction education and marriage education
- exclusive intimacy strengthens fidelity to physics, self, spouse, and others
- monogamy for life assures parents support both children and grandchildren as well as children’s children and grandchildren (posterity)
- Comprehension of basic dualisms: intentions vs accomplishment; hate vs love, jealousy vs serenity, gullibility vs confidence; pleasure vs pain; fear vs appreciation.
- parenting education
- Family finances
- Building assets by saving and investing: converting labor into assets
- training on the importance of gender role-models[v]
- No felony convictions in the last five years and good witness on current behavior
- Must submit one character-reference letter
- Must pass a drug test at the time of application.
At the child’s age six
months, parents visit a representative of Louisiana—an advisor from family
services. The advisor reviews the purposes of the program, at first with the parents
but after the child reaches first grade, primarily with the child:
·
Appreciate the child’s
personhood: appreciation by his or her family, city, state and country
·
Inform and encourage the
child to acquire a mature education for successively
·
Growing comprehension
·
Acquiring personal
autonomy
·
Embracing collaborative
autonomy
·
Choosing an authentic path
toward personal discovery leading perhaps to
·
Psychological maturity during
a full lifetime
·
Psychological liberty
from both external constraints and personal contradictions
·
Serving humankind in a
capacity that empowers PLwCM
·
Hand the registered infant
a certificate of record that $5,370 has been placed in a Vanguard
stock-index set-aside in the child’s name, collectable no sooner than age 30.5
only by the collaborative, autonomous adult that emerged from the civic child.
The following points are
covered even for unregistered infants, reported to CECP by hospitals:
·
Capital is a means of
supplementing wages to build financial strength; the suggestion is to live on
at most 85% of income and invest the balance throughout life, accumulating
wealth according to increasing accomplishments.
·
Additional set-asides occur
on application-approval by the state when the child satisfactorily finishes
pre-school and successively advances beyond.
·
For the unregistered
infant, the parents are shown how to dedicate $5,370 to their child, perhaps
with payments over time, patterned after START, a Louisiana program.
·
The agent for the state
coaches the parents 1) to trust their child’s nobility to understand and behave
responsibly and 2) to remind the child of her or his personhood and the
opportunity to enter CECP. The parents receive a coaching brochure.
The infant incentive,
$5,370, may grow; assuming 4% interest,[vi] $17,400 results when the person
reaches 30-1/2 years old. Awareness of this asset advantage encourages
parents to qualify their children, because that is the only way the child gets
the infant incentive to become $17,400. Parents who did not register their infant can create the $5,370
infant account independently. This feature of the program encourages family
planning and discourages yet would not prevent single parenthood.
Unregistered
infants may later join the incentive program on personal, civic merit as
determined by the state, beginning upon completion of preschool. The preschool
merit is justified on little more than attending the preschool according to the
child’s natural abilities, so most children who respond (with their parents) to
the state notice receive a certificate for the preschool set-aside, $6,440. The
message is that the state appreciates him or her as a person. Impact at age 30.5 and college graduate or equivalent
could be $16,500, as tabulated below. Likewise he or she is coached to appreciate his or her own person and therefore take
charge of comprehension, hopefully for a lifetime of learning. Borrowing
thoughts from James Kirylo[vii], just as an infant must
crawl and then walk on his or her own, the transition from child to adult must
be a personal accomplishment. The first two decades is that critical time when
everyone should encourage the child “to
regard learning as a brief yet personally vital opportunity to acquire
understanding” and keep that motivation vital throughout the schooling decades.
Quoting Austin Guidry, 2016 LSU student in chemical engineering, “Every adult
should do all they can do to help each child.” The overall three-decade
transition from infant to civic young adult we dub the Overstreet transition.[viii]
The student’s transition to psychological
adult
There
is a similar review of performance and standards at each stage of the student’s
development. It is possible for a person to alienate from the program. At each
step, there is additional coaching. For example, while average wages are taxed
at over 30%, long-term, capital gains are taxed at 15%; therefore, it is
better, in personal need, to temporarily work for more wages—work more hours--rather
than spend savings: preserving assets is the key to future financial independence.
To assure private liberty each person must both earn his or her living expenses
and collaborate on civic morality—be of ACP; otherwise, someone may both
provide for them and rule them.[ix] Also, a person’s body
builds its brain slowly, and the parts needed for wisdom are not complete until
age twenty-five (male) or twenty-three (female), so retention of personal
autonomy should be a prime personal commitment during the decade of high risk-tendencies
starting age fifteen.[x] At each incentive
presentation, the state representative confirms with the student that she or he
understands that 1) capitalism produces gains in the set-aside (and reviews the
status of any prior set-asides) and 2) a potential stake in American capitalism
represents Louisiana’s appreciation for her or him as a participant in civic
morality. The asset set-aside is increased at key accomplishments as follows:
·
$6,440 upon completion
of preschool; becomes $16,500 at age 30-1/2 and 4% compounded
·
$7,730 upon above
average completion of sixth grade; becomes $15,660
·
$9,280 upon further above
average completion of twelfth grade and acceptance into trade school or college;
becomes $14,860
·
$11,140 upon even higher
completion of 4-year college before age 22; or $5,570 before age 26; becomes
either $15,250 or $6,520.
The maximum set-aside of
$40,000 would grow at 4% net returns to a stake of $80,000 at age 30.5 and on
to $415,000 at age 72-1/2. If the student joined the program on merit at age
six, the stake at age 30.5 is $62,600, which could grow to $325,000 at age 70/1/2;
if joining at age twelve, the maximum stake at age 30.5 is $42,000, and that
amount could grow to $218,000 at age 70-1/2.
Contingencies
If the family moved to another state, the student-incentive
would continue on state-equivalent qualifications bases. Only the emerged,
qualified adult could collect the funds or roll them over into another
investment, such as Roth IRA, at age 30-1/2. If the awardee chose to leave
America any time before age 70-1/2, he or she could pay the tax and withdraw
the funds. If the awardee defaulted before age 30-1/2 (death, criminal
conviction, drop out of school, or such), the set-aside would revert to the
state.
Publicity
Following
The Taylor Foundation’s example, the educational non-profit ACP (see below) would
promote CECA to encourage parents to involve every child and to encourage every
child to take charge of her/his personal authenticity and civic morality.
With 64,000 births per year in Louisiana and a speculated
50% enrollment, the first year set-asides for infants might amount to $170
million. There’d be administration costs. Before those infants emerged as over
30 adults, the Louisiana community should be more inviting to children and
children to be born and thus to adult inhabitants. Federal and state welfare costs
should be lessened by the program, because most emerging adults would have more
control of their finances and by then should appreciate their own person as
much as the state does. In other words, most young adults would be self-reliant.
The
program appreciates children as independent persons, and assuming 24,000
qualifying students at each level, additional set-asides each year might be, in
millions of dollars: 155, 185, 223, and 267, respectively, or $1 billion total
including the infant incentives. With demonstrated success, expansion of
personal American capitalism as we imagine, the incentives could increase.
Potentials for increase come from both remedial-welfare cost-savings and
increases in Louisiana productivity and well-being. Again, not fostering a poor
class by appreciating and encouraging children unto personal authenticity would
probably increase GDP.
Existing Louisiana
programs to assist students: START and TOPS
Louisiana has two existing programs to help families in
the essential duty and privilege of educating children: 1) the tax-free saving
program with limited matching funds, called Student Tuition Assistance and
Revenue Trust (START)[xi], and 2) the Taylor Opportunity
Plan for Students (TOPS)[xii]. These two programs
would continue in parallel and without competing with CECA for Louisiana
support.[xiii]
The Advocate recently reviewed[xiv] reports on START by John
Kennedy, Louisiana Treadurer. Only $10 is required to open an account; a
depositor (parent, grandparent, or family friend) can exempt from Louisiana tax
up to $2,400/yr or $4,800 if filling jointly; the 529 earnings are tax-free.
There are 52,000 depositors with almost $600 million in assets. Students can
spend the proceeds on tuition, fees, computers, and other legitimate college,
community college, technical college, or business certification expenses.
Parental contributions to CECA could be similarly tax exempt.
My State Senator, Dan Claitor suggested that I study the
above two programs before trying to design CECA. I appreciate his help and hope
to resume our discussion once 2016 legislative sessions are over. I’m in a
similar status with Representative Franklin Foil and his assistant Samantha
Bopp as well as State Treasurer John Kennedy, to whom I have written earlier
versions of this description. In addition, I hope recipients of other versions,
Amanda
Brunson, Anna Fogle, Barbara
Freiberg, Belinda Davis, Bethany Sclafani, Bobby Stanley, Clyde Johnson, Claire Killen, Daniel Liebeskind, Elliot Temple, Gwen Hamilton, James Caillier, James Kirylo, Jay
Vicknair, Jean Armstrong, Jim Randels, Jonah Mumphrey, Kathy Edmonston, Loren Scott, Mary Reeves, Mary Stein, Noel Hammatt,
Pearson Cross, Raymond Jetson, Regina
Barrow,
Shawn Fleming, Stacey Kidder,
Ann Burruss and J. T. McQuitty will collaborate for a better plan. I also look forward to
contributions by my sister, Dona Bean, in my home state, Tennessee and Stephen
Lee in Rhode Island. Finally, I hope readers on the blog will collaborate,
using the comment block at the end of the post.
Background
This proposal emerged from ongoing work to
establish A Civic People of the United States (ACP).[xv] It is a Louisiana
education incorporation that is positioned for 501(c)3 or 501(c)3s application
but does not yet have the organization to justify the application. About
forty-two people have contributed to the work and are acknowledged on our PowerPoint
documents for presentations. Dennis Eilers and Hugh Finklea are
co-incorporators; Holly Beaver, Austin Guidry, Mona Sevilla, Dona Bean, Cynthia
Beaver and Diana Dorroh and my family complete a continual advisory committee.
East Baton Rouge Parish Library personnel have generously supported the effort,
and records are on file, attention Mary Stein. Everyone who has listened to
this idea has contributed somehow, sometimes with adversarial collaboration,
collaboration meaning iteratively speaking to express then listening to
understand and create together a possible new future rather than “working
together to achieve a goal.”
In our work to establish A Civic People of the United
States, we summarize with the statement:
Each inhabitant is well served to both
collaborate to establish ACP and to appreciate RNH private liberty. RNH
private liberty entails domestic goodwill and responsibility. The call to
action is: The inhabitants of the United States can talk to each
other. The overall goal is safety and security, in the broadest
sense—life, liberty and assets--in each decade of each person’s life. Personal
well-being includes satisfaction with personal motivation, personal inspiration,
and RNH private practices. Most of all, it means precious, private life is
private and need not be imposed on other people. Note: that is my opinion, and
it has not been affirmed by ACP.
It seems evident, for example by the nation’s large debt,
that American persons should appreciate and pay more attention to their
children, grandchildren, and beyond, or personal posterity, known civically as “posterity.”
We think civic America impersonally generalizes “posterity” and thereby some
adults overlook their personal posterity—their children and grandchildren. For
example, the 4 million newborns each year face national debt of $4.6 million
each, and that debt is being increased by the projected consumption by the
newborns from last year as well as extant adults! Of course newborns may never
see the debt, but what will happen? Will adults just keep
spending? Will America collapse under its own appetites?
Economic viability is
a first principle of TIFR. How does the physics of expanding debt work? Who is
expanding the debt? We think the American traditions of cultivating British
common law—Blackstone—and governance under the king’s trinity, adapted to
“freedom of religion” is originally responsible for the expanding debt at the
expense of the poor and middle classes. We cannot solve formidable national
opposition to PLwCM, but we can take charge and collaborate in the Great State
of Louisiana to stop misery and loss generated by We the People of the United
States.
We propose incentives for Louisiana parental planning with
benefits to the children who in three decades emerge as collaboratively autonomous
adults. We think at least 65% of inhabitants would like parental planning, but
that children should not solely suffer defaulting parents—the 35%. If parents
do not register their intent to procreate, children who demonstrate civic
morality may join the program on their own merit. Thereby, during childhood and
adolescence, children know they are persons and potential owners in American
capitalism if they apply themselves to achieve personal autonomy and
collaborative autonomy—civic authenticity. The child applies to the state and a
representative tells the child he or she is a person. If something happens to
tear the child’s world apart—a divorce or worse—he or she has the knowledge
that ACP “has their back,” provided they persevere to acquire understanding for
their own sake,[xvi]
no matter how early in life some traumatic challenge may come their way. ACP
encourages children to emerge as adults with potential to psychologically mature over the course of their long lives—perhaps
eighty-five years: The rate of early death would be lessened in Louisiana.
Religious morality
I
don’t have experience with other religions, but it seems Christianity has long
taught that one of the higher meanings of human life is parenting and family fidelity.
Marriage has noble images, but the details, such as fidelity, are obfuscated
to some churches. Fidelity to spouse involves no sexual intimacy with other
human beings, for life. However, the human continues, like other animals, readily
empathetic toward other humans in general and familiar humans in particular.
Psychological empathy is exacerbated by physical attraction and driven by the
chemistry of sex. A spouse who nourishes an extramarital attraction is
susceptible to hormonal and psychological influences-- passion. It takes
awareness of biology and fidelity to self to fulfill the
important intentions of marriage. But it also requires fidelity to physics, spouse, children, grandchildren, and beyond. In
other words, to remain faithful, a person must understand appreciative bonding. In these respects, civic morality has failed to improve woefully inadequate religious doctrine. ACP has not stepped
in to teach what religion will not teach: both sex for procreation and forming
beneficial intimate relationships—appreciative bonding. Denial that sex drives
are a major feature of both human existence and fulfillment of life is central
to age-old civic dysfunction and personal failure to form better human
relationships.
The failure is partially due to the
nature of religion, which would construct hope and comfort against whatever
concerns a person may have, whether by understanding or by mystery. What a
person hopes for from personal gods is left to the gods to fulfill. An example
is concern about the afterdeath—that vast time after the body, mind, and person
stop functioning.[xvii]
The precious promise of Christian
morality is comforting eternal life, which seems a harmless hope. Christianity
looks to Jesus for salvation of the soul and Christian doctrine inculcates
spiritual morality to fulfill the afterlife. But the subject for ACP is each person’s
safety and security during life,
which requires civic morality—beyond
the particulars of dogma for salvation from death.
However, religion falsely claims to generate
all morality. ACP recognize that only
persons can deliver civic morality. In his first inaugural address, Abraham
Lincoln, with the Confederate States of America already seceded, said, “Why
should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?
Is there any better or equal hope in the world?” I think therein Lincoln was
separating civic morality from Christian morality, which in 1861 was embarking
on war against itself within one body politick. That is, white, Southern
Christian church waged war with white, Northern Christian church over more
erroneous Bible beliefs.[xviii]
We think ACP can fulfill Lincoln’s
vision and do not want to delay the reforms: Christians among other factional
groups may comprehend that PLwCM is achievable if 65% of the people collaborate
to establish a civic culture.
The Christian notion that intimacy
is exclusively for procreation seems gravely erroneous. Intimacy is also for
human bonding—appreciative bonding, which should precede both making love and
procreation. We prefer the term “making love” rather than “having sex,” and
making love can be practiced with procreation prevention, even with no
intercourse. Appreciative bonding should be mature when procreation is
intended, in my opinion. A typical couple who have not psychologically bonded
are not prepared to extend their intimacy to progeny. And with bodies that
complete construction of the brain at age twenty-five, procreation probably
should not happen before age thirty or so.
Often, misery springs from “love”
and being “in love,” concepts generally regarded as unassailable. We contend
that psychological appreciation is
critical to human relationships and appreciation should take its place in the
determination of whom to love. If a person does not appreciate a person, there
is no civic excuse for attempting to either make love or have sex; sex for
sport is a private matter until harm becomes public. Couples who have
appreciative bonding have sex when there are no internal or external
constraints on their love. These ideas are not meant for imposition on other
people. However, heretofore, civics has left it to religion to convey these
critical issues to children, adolescents, and chronological adults, and leaving
it to religion amounts to abdication of civic responsibility: Extant
civics repairs broken lives when it could be promoting integrity for a lifetime.
What’s needed is candid, appreciative talk among ACP. ACP soothe
emotionalism with civic personal appreciation.
In
today’s society, a way of living that
is chosen by many persons promotes the notion that satisfying appetites is the
rewarding type of life. I even witnessed a woman tacitly stating that relieving
men’s sexual appetites is a civic
responsibility. Proponents for “safe” promiscuity claim monogamy represses
desire and natural satisfactions during life, and they have a point, but does
appetite-gratification entail civic well-being? No. The claims of mutually
permissive expectations include: sex partners may know and exchange
satisfactions in promiscuity; fidelity and jealousy are manageable attitudes; passions
may focus on short term objectives, like “needing someone to love me”;
appetites are to be nourished; humans are smart enough to be promiscuous
without harm. There may come a time when these concepts are in evidence by a
humankind—perhaps at a higher civic morality than today’s performance--but it
is not currently indicated. Today, there seems to be a high level of misery and
loss. Children learn from a conflicted world, and many children suffer abuse
then grow up to innovate suffering.
The consequences of sexually
promiscuous attitudes are not pretty, and I do not need to enumerate them. But
regardless of how personal harm happened, ACP deliver the remedial action when human
passion exceeds self-control, whether the problem is disease, neglect,
abuse, rape, or murder. For example, as soon as the abuse of a child is
evident, the State of Louisiana takes charge of the child and may prosecute the
parent. As an alternative to helping abused children, ACP has responsibility to discourage harmful
behavior through persuasion, incentives, and other influences. ACP prevents abuse rather than reacts to
abuse.
We
the People of the United States has stood indolent while the sex revolution,
started with the 1949 Kinsey reports has led to over 30% of Americans involved
in sex abuse either as victim or perpetrator or both. Civic morality should focus more
on preventing pain and misery and abuse and thereby lessen the need for
remediation. I’m being repetitious on opposing abuse. That is the
originating motivation for this proposal: ACP will do what it can to lessen
child abuse and adult abuse. Additionally, focus on posterity and safety has
led to a more inspiring legislative proposal—to lessen class distinctions in
the USA by providing incentives for parents and children to collaborate for the
child’s potential ownership in American
capitalism when the child emerges a young, civic adult.
This
section is labeled “religious morality” and ends on sexual abuse, which may
seem disconnected. However, precious religion would offer people comfort in the
face of unknowns, and religious practices tend to inculcate dependency on
higher powers. But control of sexual behavior is a personal skill which can
become a civic issue if the person does not learn self-control. ACP recognizes
the power of sex and takes charge of sex education, leaving religious education
to the church.
Existing class problems
Below, we list a combination of
economic and class problems and proposals for reform. In this discussion
“civic” refers to necessary human
connections because persons occupy the same land during the same years
rather than “social” human contacts persons prefer or are classed by. Beyond
learning from past civic mistakes, civic morality according to “traditional”
opinion has no value for 2016 civic morality. For examples, Marxism and
liberation theology are of no interest, except to expose errors of the past.
Some Bible interpretations support slavery. The 2016 goal is to save full civic
lives, minimize misery and maximize PLwCM—increase personal safety and security,
leaving the afterdeath, that vast time after body, mind and person have stopped
functioning to TIFR.
First, federal welfare programs that redistribute taxes to poor
and middle-class adults adversely affect Louisiana civic collaboration, keeping
inhabitants in the bottom of fifty-state rankings in many categories. It is a self-promoting
federal problem imposed on Louisiana inhabitants; the federal government cares
not about Louisiana human costs, often early death. With this state program,
PECA, federal welfare programs would continue, but PECA would deliberately
lessen or eliminate future Louisiana applications through higher earned incomes
relatively soon, perhaps within three decades. In other words, this program lessens
federal welfare in Louisiana by lifting
earned income and saving Louisiana people from the federal government! (I’m
reminded of Jeremiah Wright’s non-religious essence, look not to government,[xix]
but prefer borrowing Abraham Lincoln’s words quoted above to suggest: willing
persons cultivate ACP.)
Second, American capitalism, perhaps among the world’s best
economic systems, needs “tweaking” so as to involve the poor not merely as consumers but as owners,
not necessarily of property but of assets. Today, the elite and the affluent
are both aware that fortunes are made by investing
in and owning the world’s largest financial market—American capitalism. The
elite, intentionally or not, take for granted their long-practiced advantage
against the poor, who are kept ignorant of assets and dependent upon labor.
Federalist 10 could convince some readers that favoring the elite is James
Madison’s intention. Elite children receive elite educations and their family-financial
assets build during the process. Some elites hypocritically say elite children
come up “by the grace of their gods,” and the poor can “pull themselves up by
their bootstraps.” Some poor and middle class people succeed despite these
political and religious propaganda, but more fail even though they contribute
to the nation’s consumerism, and some simply die young. The consequence is that
“the American dream” is a nightmare for many inhabitants.
If you don’t inherit assets, you have to save and invest
earnings to build assets. Otherwise, your life-style is limited to what you earn,
and leaving something to personal posterity—helping your children to a better
life--is not likely. I like the advice to live on 85% of net income for life,
using the 15% to build assets. But that possibility for many Americans does not
exist. Below is data on income[xx],
thresholds[xxi],
taxes[xxii],
and money available to spend for various income levels of Americans:
Top
% income
|
Income $
|
Tax
Rate %
|
Tax $
|
Spend $
|
Ratio
|
Spend/
Median Tax
|
1
.0
|
368238
|
20.9
|
76962
|
291276
|
12
|
67
|
0.5
|
558726
|
16.8
|
93866
|
464860
|
19
|
107
|
0.1
|
1695136
|
10.3
|
174599
|
1520537
|
62
|
350
|
0.01
|
9141190
|
5
|
457060
|
8684131
|
353
|
1999
|
Median
|
28964
|
15
|
4345
|
24619
|
1
|
6
|
GDP/person
|
56600
|
25
|
14150
|
42450
|
1.7
|
10
|
The
last row, $56,600 income, approximates the cost of living, and the average
taxpayer has enough to live on, but 50% of inhabitants have only half the
required income (median). The last two columns are ratios. First, there’s spending
divided by the median taxpayer’s spending. People with average income may spend
1.7 times more than people with median income, and the top 1% may spend 12
times as much. The last column has the ratio of what may be spent to tax paid
by the median taxpayer. That ratio is 10 for the average taxpayer and 67 for
the top 1%! The income imbalance is shocking! Unbelievable! And it obtains by
the grace of a god: What god?
If a person with income at the cost of living saves 15%,
year, that’s $6,370, leaving them only $36,080 to spend toward the cost of
living, $56,600! If the median earner saves 15% or $3,690, they are left with a
further impoverishing $20,920 to spend. The top 1% save $43,690 and spend
$247,590 as their 85%. The poor have no hope for saving and investing, and
therefore their children tend to be kept in the poor class. ACP can change this
American travesty, without raising
the question of wealth disparity, which is much worse. Many studies write about
the wealth gap, perhaps to obfuscate the income disparity.
How
this travesty developed
Long-standing Edmund-Burkean (British, d. 1797) tradition
overlooks the advantages of including the poor in ownership of capital, whether
land or stocks or an enterprise. Adam Smith (d. 1790) also overlooked the
advantage of including the poor as persons who are appreciated in civic
morality; Smith claimed a person needed “propriety” to enter the discussion.
James Madison advocated protecting the elite from the masses in Federalist 10
(1787), expressing the attitude that only the elite know how to distribute capital.
The elite were theistic, land-owning, educated, British colonial men. America
has needed to recover from British common law under Protestant theism ever since.
In this proposal, the elite benefit from collaborating with productive masses
rather than continuing to repress the
masses; the elite now take enough of GDP to carry welfare persons who receive
tax redistribution. With the masses instead participating as asset owners, the
entire economy increases to a new high. CECA is designed to preserve property
ownership yet share the gross domestic product on a more per capita basis. The
above table indicates the problem but not the cause, which seems to be our opinion-based system of governance. If
you want to understand me on this point about opinion, read any 2014 Supreme
Court decision.[xxiii]
Justices
argue opinion about prior opinion, then take a vote and the majority opinion
prevails. With a committee of nine, mobocracy is guaranteed on every
decision, including whether to accept a case or not. When past American cases
don’t provide them reference, they often site Blackstone, an eighteenth century
statement of British common law, complete with Protestant theism. We need better than opinion-based ethics and
its progeny, religion. ACP proposes physics-based ethics to determine TIFR
based civic morality, a first principle of which is economic viability for
every civic person.
The poor, with typical human gullibility,[xxiv]
often perceive that increasing their wages is the way to the American dream. In
today’s market, often the poor forego essential education-the basics-- to
enter the high-risk sports or entertainment worlds, again with the gullibility
that they will be among the few who succeed. The risk-reward relationships in
those fields are like the lottery: There needs to be economic reform. The local
school system just lowered the grade requirement for extra-curricular
activities from 2.0 to 1.5, literally to
“save lives,” some administrators claim at the behest of well-meaning
coaches. Meanwhile, some high schools in the USA are eliminating the violent
sports--to save lives. The chances of
reaching the top in sports are slim. Many top athletes never recognize capitalism’s
power to build security or beyond through financial wealth.
People with inherited wealth think that’s the way it ought to be: only the elite people own American
capitalism; again, they have that advantage by the grace of their god. ACP has
the responsibility to reform that age-old myth, as well as
“you will always have the poor,” perhaps the objective truth for a few, but too
often used as an excuse for elite-protective legislation imposed on the many.
Beyond any argument the elite might express to justify
keeping poor children from ownership in American capitalism—from partnership in
the world’s largest economic market as both consumer and owner—reform of GDP
distribution is a key to American civic morality and American financial
security. Every inhabitant has less psychological well-being because of the
labor v assets unfairness in the USA. The physics of this injustice is much
like the physics of slavery—chains, whips, guns, brutality and abuse to salves
with burdens to slave-masters.
Third, while we set lofty public-education goals like 90%
high-school graduation by 2020, some children do not want to learn and their
parents don’t care. A nation needs and wants civic children but does not protect
candidates against unaware, neglectful, abusive, and murderous parents,
care-takers, and a conflicted world. The damage by harmful parents happens too
early in the child’s life for the child to ever recover the opportunity he or
she had as a newborn. Would that we had a magic wand--to return to a state of
nature--that child who has not overcome this conflicted country: but physics—energy,
mass and space-time--marches on without mercy. ACP should apologize to children
in the cycle of poverty: the poor beget the poor and We the People of the
United States don’t care! By tradition, We the People of the United States wait
for their personal god or their government to stop the abuse of their
posterity. ACP should feel
remorse for not correcting this long-standing offense against children! ACP
should provide CECA but also consider procreation
licensing to defend children from being born to psychological children and child
abusers living in adult bodies. And this has nothing to do with skin color
rather has to do with abuse of people and physics: Physics returns multiple woe
for woe: that’s why we observe America exponentially declining.
The Pope, during his September 2015 visit railed about
environmental issues but did not recant his encouragement for couples to
procreate. But Bill Nye, talking about what individuals can do about global
warming includes, “.
. . educating more women and girls. Because that is the surest route to
controllably, manageably reducing the human population.”[xxv] If we modify Nye’s
statement to include men, it is a much softer approach than my blunt
“procreation licensing,” yet procreation licensing might facilitate his
suggestion.
The loudest political noise in this country is that skin
color matters, half a century after the USA declared skin color does not matter,
and I naively (it seems now, but I’m still anticipating) celebrated the key
events: the 1964 and 1965 civil rights acts on non-discrimination and voting
rights. I did not notice it in 1963, but MLK asserted focus on his four children to emphasize reform
for blacks. (More egregiously respecting my civic morality then, I did not take
to heart the “check cashing” part of his speech.) Today, only 20% of poor
children under 18 are black.[xxvi]
That’s
right: 80% of America’s poor children are non-black. “Black church,”
perhaps 6.5% of Americans,[xxvii]
continues in MLK’s egocentric, “victimized” psychology. In fact, some of black
church extols black liberation theology (James Cone, 1969, 2009), when some
elite black theologians have their way. In Cone’s theology, the Christian god
is black, and a white person can save his/her soul[xxviii]
only by helping black Americans gain supremacy! Perhaps we see black liberation
theology in action in New Orleans with the drive to remove Civil War memorials.
New Orleans monument-moving proponents take a narrow view of history: There’s
nobody urging to tear down St. Louis Cathedral and the Cabildo for seventeen
centuries of offenses by the Catholic Church—including the fifteenth-century
Doctrine of Discovery and granting monopolies on African slave trade. No one
complains about a Bible canonized by the Catholic Church that contains both old
and new books that justify slavery. There’s no one marching to honor the
African gods that motivated the African slave trade. I doubt that American
blacks who are Catholic are sympathetic to black liberation theology. Few inhabitants
will even discuss black liberation theology.
Skin colors of gods may be an interesting debate, but
arbitrary fractionation of Christianity is a cultural aside—a private art form.
And salvation by Jesus is a personal pursuit for the afterdeath, not a civic
pursuit for check cashing or other non-civic favoritism. That’s the issue that
brought me the label “heretic” in Southern Baptist Sunday school: I said my
church should treat all neighbors the same, and the teacher adamantly disagreed
with me. Now, he’s in the church, and I’m happily out yet seeking to
collaborate with him. Recalling Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, only
ACP can negotiate civic morality. America needs an over-arching culture of ACP
that influences We the People of the United States to collaborate for civic
morality. With an over-arching culture of civic morality, cultural factions
such as black liberation theology can flourish in private as long as they do
not enact civic harm. The idea that
some Americans are African-Americans is OK as a factional culture, but
African-Americans can join the over-arching civic culture. ACP collaborates so that
skin-color does not matter and the totality We the People of the United States
can be approached asymptotically.
Beyond real-no-harm social cultures, ACP has the duty to try
to involve every child-inhabitant in American capitalism. When injustice is
discovered, ACP collaborates for reform. However, some persons will not
collaborate for PLwCM. Some people can’t overcome their desire for alienation
so as to compete for domination. People must be free to alienate, as long as
they don’t perpetrate harm. However, people who alienate should know they are
of We the People of the United States but not of ACP of the United States, a
voluntary, over-arching culture guided by TIFR, discoverable through physics.
Fourth, ACP treating children as persons would empower children to
comprehend—more convincingly than either private or public exhortations, admonishments,
punishments and hypocrisy motivate them. We propose setting aside funds for collaborative
children to work for a potential stake in American capitalism. Take some of the
taxes now redistributed to adults---both through welfare and through tax
deductions, factional favoritism, and support for adult entertainment--- to set-aside
for each child the funds to become available to her or him as an emerging adult
who collaborates for civic morality. The grantor, the state of Louisiana, would
inform the child that he or she is being appreciated as vital to this country by the set-aside of a small fraction of its
GDP to be awarded upon the child’s success. The child must qualify for the
succession of set-asides by performing well in acquiring and understanding basic education through four years college or an
equivalent choice made by him or her, such as a two-year trade school with two
years apprenticeship. Failure to achieve the goal forfeits the award: thus, it
is not a give-away,[xxix]
but that recognition of personhood would sustain the person through many trials
and tribulations.[xxx]
This paragraph is repetitious, in summary.
Fifth, the sexual revolution since the 1950s Kinsey Reports enhanced
a trend with 30% of inhabitants involved in child abuse either as victim or
perpetrator.[xxxi]
It is common for parents, clergy and other child-care officials to perpetrate
sexual abuse. People write about this problem all the time, yet We the People
of the United States maintain the
treadmill of abuse. Concern for neglected, abused, and murdered children has motivated this
work. ACP intends, as much as possible, to let people live as they wish
but considers it a civic duty to
protect children from the potential for abuse more than help them after
abuse occurs. Safety with well-being is the overall goal. As always,
education is the key, but understanding is difficult for a child to acquire
when civic evidence is that the USA does not care, and some religious
institutions, for example, Christianity, try to prevent the required education.
In fact the USA could care less about the old saw “teach a person to fish . .
.”[xxxii]
Democracy for remedial well-fare allotments and favor drives the debt the USA
is building on personal posterity. More importantly, the elite people compete
for favor in the debt increase in order to increase their shares of national
assets, in effect, so that they can carry the poor class and, lately, as well, the
middle class. The elite could care less about the national debt, as evidenced by the
national debt!
Sixth, not only are children the most vulnerable inhabitants, most young adults have the least financial strength during
the decades of highest need: the family and estate-building years. This program
potentially endows each person with a stake in American capitalism after three
decades’ preparation for adulthood. The stake could be $80,000. The benefits
double to $160,000 for married couples or partners. Young couples who have
fractional ownership in American capitalism will be better able to contribute
to their posterity, even if they also have college debts. With practice and
development, this program could lead to termination of the Social Security
System! There may be benefits we have not imagined.
These six points are not Phil Beaver’s lonely
imagination. They are substantially supported by writers like Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist, 2010, for
example, page 211, “The more independent and well-off we all become, the more
population will stabilize well within the resources of the planet.” Ridley did
not address our concern about child abuse, but Marci Hamilton does (see above).
Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American
Dream in Crisis, 2015, a book with many data charts--evidence, seems to
imply that damaged children get damaged before they ever attend school, so
school can only try to restore the child after the damage is done. The book was
recommended by Fevzi Sarac. Nothing I’ve seen brings home the disparity of
class distinction more than Richard Wilkinson’s TED talk “How economic
inequality harms societies.”[xxxiii] Perhaps tongue in
check, Wilkinson says, “The American dream is to move to Denmark,” with many
supporting data charts.
The evidence is so strong, my heart wants revolutionary change, but the rational
mind seeks gradual reform of a 400
year-old, foreign-originated, injustice: economic classism based on property,
imposed on North America by England. Turning that harm to a benefit would be
one of the most celebrated accomplishments in human history, and would position
the USA to help the world to a better future. Reform over the next three
decades seems a reasonable goal; ACP seems feasible; and focus on infants and
children to be conceived seems right. As always, the chief beneficiaries—poor children—would
be 80% non-black, but black children would be included in the benefits, as
always, since 1776. But I see no reason to focus on skin color.
Summary
The universal challenge of nourishing children from total
dependence upon the couple that conceive the child plus civic support unto the
child’s personal autonomy then collaborative autonomy and preparedness for an
adult journey to psychological maturity has long been the noblest human work.[xxxiv] Socialist countries
often disparage American capitalism as not in the interest of the individual
but rather in the interest of greed; however, “socialist capitalism” does not
seem attractive at all, so I wonder about the nuances of “greed.” The American
elite defend their legal favor based on Edmund Burke’s ideas about property.
Burke overlooked a country’s productivity
as the property of the inhabitants, and Burke’s fallacy must be reformed. (With
Burke’s values, perhaps a person should not go to war if in fact he or she has
no stake in the nation’s assets—no personal assets to defend and only the
fruits of daily labor to live for. Perhaps the poor should not go to war only
for the elite.) Ownership in America’s GDP should be fairly distributed. One
may argue that an inhabitant must go
to war because his or her country owns him or her by virtue of birth or
naturalization, but there is neither personal liberty nor civic well-being in
such enslavement, especially when many wars are unjust in themselves. I am
reminded of the kind-hearted side of Jeremiah Wright—what it means to him to
lose a loved one.
The
constitution for the USA maintains a privileged class, and it was designed that
way according to Federalist 10. We see the consequence in Baton Rouge, with
BRAF personnel making relatively high salaries from strategic involvement in
Baton Rouge capital improvements made on the backs of the consumer class, a
redistribution of civic endeavors that goes un-noticed by the poor and
middle-class people who support the improvements with personal labor and
consumerism but not asset ownership. Property ownership and influencing public
plans to utilize that property seems the basis of BRAF’s accumulated wealth and
high personal incomes. It’s true that some people do not have good savings
practices, but as I showed above, most have not the means to save and invest.
Also, the importance of converting labor into assets has never been a major teaching
point in this country. Saving, yes, but converting labor into assets, no. Through
advertising, the poor are encouraged to be consumers but are not encouraged to
become asset owners. It seems BRAF and many other so-called non-profits know and
are complicit in immoral-civic American-capitalism.
Young
couples, often saddled with college debt, find themselves at age 30 ill
equipped for the challenging task of forming a family and building financial
security. Their civic children are essential to maintaining the people. Family
contributions to capitalism as major consumers is well appreciated. However, heretofore,
most child-person’s civic candidacy for ownership in the capital market has
been overlooked--perhaps repressed.
Looking
at it on an assets basis, the current national wealth is 118 trillion dollars
or $370,000 per inhabitant. CECA proposes that ACP provide incentive, up to $40,000
set asides during the first two decades of a civic child’s noble, personal work
to prepare for collaborative adulthood. That’s only 10.8 % of average national wealth
per capita. It takes $8 million dollars unhidden wealth (excluding Panama banks
or such offshore hiding) to be in the top 1% of inhabitants, and that’s 22
times the average wealth or 200 times the wealth-cost of CECA. The elites of
America should be ready to reform American capitalism, if not for fairness, to
assure future financial viability of the USA, for their own psychological well-being
and that of their personal posterity—their children, grandchildren and beyond.
Elitists
might admit that security for their posterity—their children’s and
grandchildren’s safety with well-being--is greatly dependent upon the rest of
the inhabitants. Elites have enjoyed the benefits without sharing the economic
engine beyond the consumer side. Capitalists, often born of capitalist
families, perhaps hypocritically preach a false American ideal. Quoting Arthur
Brooks, formerly professional French horn player, “Happiness comes from faith, family, community and work.”[xxxv]
That statement seems like propaganda to me: Capitalists impose that image on
laborers. However, it is clear that personal liberty comes from assets, which
work for owners 24-7-365. To the elite, “work”
translates to a professional position and management of assets and personal
interests. Many elites never worked and never will work. Capitalists are not
limited to what their person can accomplish in one day, as is the laborer.
Capitalists’ assets are at work while the capitalist sleeps. In the course of
one life, it seems impossible, without asset ownership or extreme luck, such as
making it in professional sports or entertainment or winning the lottery, to
move from poverty or other form of repression--from being labor-dependent to
part owner in American capitalism. The status of part-owner in American
capitalism should be promoted for every collaborative citizen. People who
assert that it is available to all do not advertise the importance of
converting labor into assets and the
opportunity to save, as noted above, and could care less that for some
persons, saving money is impractical—competes with starvation. The evidence
that the elite could care less is in the fact that this disparity exists after
227 years of American political regimes.
The capitalists, intentionally or not, have widened the
income gap so that they can essentially “carry” a poor class: “you will always
have the poor with you.” It is true there will always be some persons who
cannot immediately achieve personal autonomy; ACP must help them. Also, there
will always be people who do not want domestic goodwill—want alienation: They
must be constrained. However, most children born in America become consumers in
the world’s largest capital market, and that market will be even stronger when
most people are also asset owners. American capitalism can move to a higher
level with CECA. There is potential to lessen federal largesse, for example, by
reducing remedial welfare departments and expanding to cover the social
security taxation, which is misused by the federal government.
Our generation can take action now to reduce one of the
major, original dividers in American civic morality: capital class versus
middle class and labor class. We can, as a civic duty, provide incentives for
every intended child, performing child and collaborative student through
set-asides for future ownership in American capitalism. We can achieve the combination
PLwCM. Many other demands on Louisiana revenues pale before this perhaps $1
billion/year, only 4% of the current budget, to benefit the most vulnerable 25%
of inhabitants.
Copyright©2016 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 7/12/16
[i]
The title of this proposal should change with collaboration. For example,
“authenticity” is a recent change from “autonomy.” We have a few pages of ideas
for titles for review.
[ii] “Physics” as reported by
Merriam-Webster online means “a science that deals with matter and energy and
the way they act on each other in heat, light, electricity, and sound.” The study of physics has resulted in the
development of laws of physics that are regarded as indisputable as they apply
to all of the existing known physical data.
Therefore, we use “physics” to mean the object of study with or without
the consequence of study: Physics is energy, mass and space-time, from which
everything on earth emerges. Humankind does not know the origin of physics. Perhaps before
energy, mass and space-time there was only potential energy. However, Albert
Einstein’s general theory of relativity became a law in 2016, with the
detection of gravitational waves. See www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160211 .
We know from radiation measurements that physics began 13.8 billion years ago.
Therefore, we may say with relative confidence that E equals m times C
squared is a confirmation of our definition of physics, the
object of fallible scientific study. It follows that through physics, the bedrock of
reality rather than human scientific study, humankind gradually discovers and understands the
indisputable facts of reality (TIFR). Ultimately, TIFR become the laws
of reality.
[iii]
Richard Wilkinson, “How income inequality harms societies,” TED Talk, July
2011, online at www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson?language=en
.
[iv]
Civic morality refers to personal recognition that people are connected by
living on the same land and each person must collaborate for safety with
well-being so that each person may have the personal liberty to pursue
differing personal interests such as religious moralities, fine arts, sports,
travel, and other precious, private practices.
[v]
This provision is critical for all parents, including same-sex parents. Perhaps
gay partners can encourage a daughter to emerge the psychologically mature
woman she would be. In other words, perhaps gender is not a matter of civic
influence. Along with child-bearing bodies, females have innate, caring
characteristics men cannot foster. Nothing in my past influenced my personhood
as strongly as deciding to be heterosexually monogamous for life, and to this
day I would not change the woman my wife is. I am grateful for my decision but
could not have predicted its importance, yet acted on it. Based on my
understanding of physics, gender role-modelling is critical to a civic people.
I am ready to collaborate on the issue. In other words, I know I do not know
the truth about this issue as well as other issues.
[vi] A
recent report shows Vanguard funds earning 5.6% over the last 10 years.
[vii]
See online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Kirylo
.
[viii]
H. A. Overstreet. The Mature Mind.
1949.
[ix]
The phenomenon of helplessness persists from infancy until old age. It may be
observed as people age and lose control of their daily care. Loss of
psychological liberty often becomes terminal, no matter how wealthy the person
may be. For example, the person who has retreated to books for companionship is
demoralized when that liberty is consumed by inability to access books.
[x]
David Dobbs, “Teenage Brains,” National
Geographic, October 2011, online at ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/teenage-brains/dobbs-text
.
[xiii]
This morning, April 25, 2016, with TOPS being thoroughly reviewed by the
Louisiana legislature, it occurred to me that TOPS could actually incorporate
CECA, and I wrote to James Caillier to make that suggestion. Also see theadvocate.com/news/opinion/15557283-148/our-views-tops-bills-are-on-the-move-good-and-bad .
[xiv]
START, online at theadvocate.com/news/opinion/14228786-123/our-views-tax-breaks-long-term-savings-fund-from-new-governor-on-college-tuitions-clearly-valuable-f
.
[xv]
See essays online at promotethepreamble.blogsot.com, especially under the tab
“Discussion.”
[xvi]
Perhaps I am motivated by my own past. I was a lower middle-class Knoxville, TN
boy somehow inspired to attend college. I earned a position in the
engineering-scholarship program and worked in another city for three months
then returned to school and my parents’ home for three months, taking five
years to graduate with honors. One night, my parents were fighting with unusual
intensity and I thought perhaps I should go intervene. Despite the disturbance,
I could not decide, despite all I had witnessed, who was in the right: Mom or
Dad. Then I thought about the final exam I was preparing for. I thought my
future was my relief from the misery of home, so I sat back down and focused on
the study-review for the test. I never stopped trying to help my parents get
along or stopped loving them, but I decided my future would not involve the
misery they shared—basically never deciding to psychologically collaborate. I
imagine a civic people who encourage personal autonomy and early understanding
for most children, adolescents, young adults and beyond, and in the long run, a
lessening of misery and loss at the adult level.
[xvii]
The neologism “afterdeath” is used intentionally to assert that “afterlife”
seems speculative: in the afterdeath there may be nothing. Furthermore, if some
religious moralities are true afterlife is only a subset of afterdeath. Thus,
some say in the afterdeath there is everlasting life somewhere else; others say
there is reincarnation on earth.
[xviii]
South Carolina Declaration of Secession, online at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
[xix]
Jeremiah Wright. Online at www.blackpast.org/2008-rev-jeremiah-wright-confusing-god-and-government
.
[xx]
Median income and other data, 2015, online at www.usdebtclock.org/ .
[xxi] Threshold 2010 incomes, online
at www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/10/forget-the-top-1-look-at-the-top-0-1/ .
[xxiii]
For example, Greece v Galloway, wherein it is opinioned that “legislative
prayer” is for legislators and thus none of the people’s business. See online
at www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/12-696
.
[xxiv]
Gullibility is perhaps the greatest human error, yet it is not listed among the
seven deadly errors. The reason gullibility is not listed is obvious to someone
who is climbing out of the well of religious indoctrination, and the reason is
well known in papal circles. A person’s first shield against gullibility is
humility.
[xxv] Lynn Elber, “’Science Guy' Bill Nye gets heated up over climate change,” Associated Press, November 11, 2015, online at bigstory.ap.org/article/ca4994d6d6064999b07a2b55eb2def97/science-guy-bill-nye-gets-heated-over-climate-change .
[xxvi]
The 2013 list by ethnicity and millions of children, online at http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_1100.html
.
[xxvii]
“Historically black Protestant,” online, www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/
.
[xxviii]
I use the word “soul” without objection but not to encourage belief in a
person’s capability to affect their afterdeath, that vast time after their body,
mind, and person has ceased to function.
[xxix]
Resistance against “give-aways” because they encourage indolence was emphasized
to me by a thoughtful nurse during my hospitalization in late 2015.
[xxx]
For example, in William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning,” 10-year old Colonel Sartoris
Snopes reports his dad’s intent to burn another barn then leaves his family
after a country-store judge shows the boy the meaning of justice. The boy had
learned authenticity. A civic people can influence such learning without the
misery, but we have to escape mentalities like President Obama’s second
inaugural phrase “schools and colleges to train our workers.” Our schools and
colleges need to support children and young adults on their personal paths to
collaborative, lasting adulthood.
[xxxi]
Marci A. Hamilton, Justice
Denied, 2008.
[xxxii]
Feed somebody and you have provided a meal; teach them to fish and you have fed
him or her for life.
[xxxiv]
This challenge becomes more formidable with the advent of technological
procreation, surrogacy motherhood, and other innovations that subjugate the
single-cell conceived from a couple.
[xxxv]
William McGurn, “Playing the Music of Capitalism,” Wall Street Journal, July
10, 2015, online at wsj.com/articles/playing-the-music-of-capitalism-1436568716 .
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