Why ratification day matters 5/19/16

Incentives to attend the third annual Ratification Day celebration, Bluebonnet Library, June 21, 6:30 PM and to enter the writing contest. See theadvocate.com/calendar#/details/Third-Annual-Ratification-Day-Celebration/2329003/2016-06-21T18 .

In the big picture, religion, a cultural practice for hope against universal uncertainty, is a private subset of civic morality—the human pursuit of safety and security so that personal pursuits may be possible. The key to safety and security is civic collaboration, which the preamble to the constitution for the USA suggests to each reader. If ratification had not occurred, the preamble might not be such celebrated sentence, neglected as it is.

United States history has been dominated by Christianity. The Doctrine of Discovery, initiated in fifteenth century papal bulls and then copied by at least three Western European kings instituted invasion of native lands and African slave trade to supply colonial labor. Loyal British colonials realized they were being enslaved and in the Declaration of Independence used the tacit war cry, "Nature and . . . Nature's God" will defeat your god. Eleven years later, men tried to create governance by a civic people, as written in the preamble to the constitution for the USA. But the first Congress restored British common law for the new form of government under factional Protestant gods. Slave-states ration was then 8:5 but in 1861 it inverted to 15:19, and some slave states with a ratio of 7:27 claimed "our Bible interpretation will defeat your Bible interpretation," or our Christian god will defeat your Christian god. Now, some portion of black church claims our black god will beat your white god. But the physics of slavery--chains, whips, guns, brutality and burdens--informs humankind that Christianity has not standing in the issue: Christianity is wrong and has been for 2000 years.


Global background respecting opinion versus physics

1.       Earth is 4.6 billion years old.

2.       Slavery was taken for granted 4000 years ago

3.       400 AD. The canonized Bible had both old and new books that take slavery for granted

4.       1455 Pope Nicholas V granted Portugal the right to enslave sub-Saharan Africans.

5.       1493 Pope Alexander VI granted Spain authority in the Americas patterned after Portugal’s authority for African slave trade.

6.       1496 Henry VII commissioned John Cabot under the Catholic doctrine of discovery, starting Protestant competition in the African slave trade. Slaves were delivered to colonies but not to homelands.

 

Inhabitants before the eastern seaboard colonies declared themselves thirteen states.

1.       Spain was colonizing Florida plus from Texas to California

2.       France occupied the Louisiana territory

3.       Holland occupied the New York area

4.       England occupied most of the Eastern seaboard

5.       Scotland occupied East Jersey and Stuart Town, Carolina

6.       Inhabitants included natives, Spanish, French, English, Africans (both slave and free), Scots-Irish & Irish, Germans, Scots, Dutch, Jews, Swedish and a few other nationalities.

7.       About half of non-black or non-native inhabitants had immigrated as indentured slaves.

The First Continental Congress and the second

1.       Called by twelve of thirteen eastern seaboard colonies in order for British colonial subjects to object to acts by the British Parliament.

2.       Instructed states to create state-constitutions. Some stipulated English common law.

3.      Resolved to invite Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Georgia, East Florida, and West Florida, but only invited Quebec. Quebec inhabitants were mostly French Catholic. Perhaps Parliament’s 1774 Quebec Act persuaded them not to join. Georgia joined the second congress.

4.       When homeland British subjects would not grant relief from Parliament’s intolerable acts, and inhabitants had battled the red-coats, the thirteen united-states of America declared independence. A colony versus the world’s strongest empire of the time—overwhelming odds.

a.      The Declaration includes the tacit claim that nature and nature’s god would defeat the king’s Trinity—the traditional war cry, “Our god will defeat your god.” Nature is a progeny of physics.

b.      The Declaration tacitly claims that rule by a person is as good as rule by a king.

                                                               i.      This equality claim was written by slave-owners and other patriots.

 

During the years immediately after the thirteen states won independence

1.      On American request, France had coupled their war against England with the American Revolutionary War, and helped win victory at Yorktown, VA in 1781.

2.      At Versailles, the King of England negotiated a treaty with France and then another one granting the thirteen states independence, barely recognizing the Continental Congress.

3.       The independent states did not get along and had no global recognition. They decided to strengthen the Articles of Confederation.

a.       After a failed attempt, twelve states sent representatives to Philadelphia in spring, 1787.

4.       The Virginia delegates, with James Madison as keeper, arrived with a plan to form a nation, rather than strengthen the Articles of Confederation. The consequence was:

a.       The preamble, a civic agreement for willing inhabitants to collaborate for safety and security in the broadest interpretation

b.      Dual federalism with people in their states creating a Union of states with limited powers and a balanced, tripartite central government.

c.       A mixed, representative-republican form of government with some officials elected and others either nominated by the elected representatives or remaining on good performance.

d.      No acknowledgement of personal gods, potentially ending the politician-priest partnership so familiar to European nations (Chapter XI Machiavellianism—The Prince, 1513)

e.      Ending the slave trade twenty years after ratification but accepting slavery in slave states.

                                                               i.      The ratio was 8 slave states to 5 non-slave states, so compromise was essential.

f.        Provisions for amending the constitution

g.       Mimicking the Articles of Confederation, ratification by nine of the states would constitute establishment of a nation, the USA.

5.       The required nine states had ratified by June 21, 1788

a.       Some states held the proviso that the constitution be amended to include a Bill of Rights.

b.      Ironically, Virginia was not among the nine, but ratified a month later.

c.       The nation would begin operation with eleven states having ratified.

 

The first congress

1.       Re-established the Machiavellian politician-priest partnership with factional-Protestant legislative prayer, May, 1789

2.       Negotiated the intended Bill of Rights and ratified it on December 15, 1791, including “freedom of religion.” By then there were 14 states and ratification required 10 states.

3.       Fourteen state population demographic in 1790, thousands:

a.       England                 2310

b.      Africa                      760

c.       Scot-Irish               300

d.      Germany                270

e.      Scotland                 150

f.        Holland                  100

g.       France                     15

h.      Jew                            2

i.         Sweden                    2

4.       Inhabitants in the rest of what would become the USA, in thousands included natives (100), Spanish (100) and French (80). Mexicans considered themselves in Mexico.

5.       The 1789 judicial system resumed cultivating Blackstone with its Protestantism in the USA.

 

The civil war

1.       Churches in the south opined that “Scripture” or the Christian god, authorized slavery but churches in the north thought the physics--chains, whips, guns, brutality and burden--informed against. Many in the north stopped cooperating with the constitutional provision that runaway slaves would be returned to the owner.

2.       The Dred Scott “decision” opined that blacks had no standing before the court.

3.      Without a constitutional proviso to defend blacks, political-party leader Abraham Lincoln revised the founding of the USA to 1776, trumping the constitution with the Declaration of Independence! As noted above, the nation was not formed by the act of independence from England. The negotiated USA was not established until 1791.

4.      Regardless, by 1861 the slave-states ratio had inverted to 15:19, and the ratio for the Confederate States of America (CSA) to the Union was 7:27—overwhelming odds.

5.       Undaunted, the CSA started war with the Union, perhaps on the religion, “Our god will beat your god,” perhaps recalling “Our god beat England’s god.” Thus, the war was substantially a matter of Bible interpretation respecting slavery—Bible interpretation vs physics.

6.       On Jan 1, 1863, President Lincoln, permanently emancipated slaves in the CSA.

a.       The Union recruited nearly 200,000 black soldiers.

b.      Total serving the Union was 2.2 million

c.       Total serving the CSA was 1 million.

d.      Thus, southern black soldiers in the Union army helped win the Civil War.

 

The civil rights acts

1.       White repression of blacks continued for 100 years, during which

a.       A racial form of Christianity emerged: black church, with the spirit “we shall overcome”

b.      Black dignity was established and maintained by civic song like the Black American National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

c.       Organized in black church, the blacks created “non-violent” obstructions in civic life to attract attention to institutional racism.

d.      The consequences were civil rights acts of 1964 against racism and 1965 for voting

                                                               i.      Nevertheless there were race riots in each of the eleven years from 1963 through 1973.

                                                             ii.      Riots resumed continually starting in 1977.

e.      Moreover, Lyndon Johnson led creation of the Great Society to combat poverty and racial injustice

2.       In 1996, Congress, on the basis of Judeo-Christian tradition, enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Blackstone’s theism met its Waterloo: religion cannot be the basis of US law.

a.       In 2013, US v Windsor struck down DOMA

b.      Congress could have revised to physics-based morality instead of religious opinion as a basis for DOMA, but so far has not done so.

c.       But Chapter XI Machiavellianism, the politician-priest partnership, was upheld in Greece v Galloway, in 2014.

 

Black church and Congressional Black Congress

1.      In January 1969 a "Democratic Select Committee" formed. They became the Congressional Black Caucus in February 1971. It’s stated aim is to favor blacks.

2.       In 1969 James H. Cone published Black Theology and Black Power. I paraphrase his message as this: white Christianity has wickedly turned its back on blacks, and Christianity must reform to identify with the victims of civilization.

3.       In 2003, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. sets himself apart in liberation theology by declaring profane opposition to America.

a.       His thesis seem that blacks must discount both white Christianity and white government.

b.       Whites can redeem their souls by helping black Americans reign supreme.

4.       In 2008, Barack Obama withdraws from the profanity but not the message.

a.       In the Chapter XI Machiavellian tradition, he labels slavery “America’s original sin.”


A Civic People of the United States (CPUS)

1.       CPUS advocates civic use of the preamble to the constitution for the United State rather than vain reference to it, regardless of its civil standing. In other words, citizens can establish civic morality among themselves, regardless of Chapter XI Machiavellian governance.

2.       CPUS uses, as much as it is discovered, physics-based morality instead of opinion-based law to settle a civic people’s public issues. Thereby, CPUS establishes a physics-based system.

3.       Physics is energy, mass and space-time from which everything on Earth emerges.

a.       An example of physics’ utility: While Bible interpretation can justify slavery, the physics—chains, whips, guns, brutality, and burden—condemns slavery.

b.      Physics does not negate the god hypothesis, but does negate god theory that promotes harm.

c.     Three-thousand years of classical-liberal writing considers opinion-based law versus physics-based morality. Unfortunately it focuses on science, a study, rather than physics, the object of the study. Opinion is presented as religion—the word of a god, promoting Chapter XI Machiavellianism.

4.       Physics emerged 13.8 billion years ago (emerged from what, we don’t know) and life on Earth, or physics’ progeny—biology--emerged 3.8 billion years ago.

a.       Mitochondrial DNA informed humankind 3 decades ago that everyone alive is a descendant from one woman who lived perhaps 5% to 7 % back on the timeline of homo species.

b.      Y-chromosomal data suggest her father came from a male lineage 7% to 11% back, as much as 300,000 years ago.

c.       Everyone alive today is physically kin yet psychologically or culturally different.

                                                               i.   Opinion about two-thousand year-old Christianity is not even important in the perhaps ten thousand of year--old practice of slavery. Physics is the decider.

  ji Yet Christianity provides the psychological strength for some believers to neither impose nor brook real-harm-behavior. In civic morality, it matters not if the personal god has skin color to match the believer.

iii. The perhaps 60-year debate about Christian liberation theology is not significant.

iv. Civic kin folks do not create reason to fight: they make up.

5.       Recognizing the physics, human beings can collaborate for an overarching civic culture of private liberty with civic morality (PLwCM).

a.       A civic people, using the preamble, can coordinate public issues to keep private issues private. Thanks to our ancestors, our generation has the privilege of establishing CPUS.

b.      The constitution for the USA can be deliberately amended to reform from opinion-based law to physics-based ethics, and it will not take many years to get the job done, because the document is not too far off.

c.   Thanks to ratification day 1788, we can have PLwCM.

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 May 19, 2016