I know by experience and observation that we live in a confused and conflicted community: the community of humankind. The chances that a newborn human may develop individual integrity are practically nil. That does not imply that humankind is a nihilistic community. Humankind seems on the march to civic morality.
The individual quest is rewarding to those humans who discover the possibility of developing integrity. Conceiving a worthy journey seems verifiable by many exemplary lives. More importantly, happiness is affirmed by the multitude of people who perceive they are developing integrity and thereby practicing fidelity to the-literal-truth.
Widespread acceptance and use of the civic agreement that is offered in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution might help our grandchildren appreciate their fleeting opportunity to pursue integrity: their lifetime.
Widespread acceptance and use of the civic agreement that is offered in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution might help our grandchildren appreciate their fleeting opportunity to pursue integrity: their lifetime.
A civic agreement that provides privacy yet constrains actual harm
While I have traveled a little, I cannot speak for the world, and therefore confine my civic opinion to We the People of the United States, a voluntary entity.
By “civic” I distinguish fellow citizens plus resident aliens or inhabitants who collaborate for mutual, comprehensive safety and security so that each person may mutually, responsibly pursue individual happiness more than to serve the city, state, nation, or the world. Civic inhabitants collaborate for civil integrity so as to constrain actual harm by dissidents to the agreement that is offered in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Thus, fellow citizens and alien residents divide themselves into two interest groups: civic inhabitants and dissidents. A common source of dissonance is the intent to impose happiness, thereby invading privacy. Appreciating individual happiness offers relief.
If the reader regards this an unfounded hope, I accept that opinion but beg consideration of my construct.
Diversity from the beginning
Before We the People of the United States ratified the U.S. Constitution, forming the Union of nine states on June 21, 1788, the world consisted of: the thirteen free and independent states on the N. American Atlantic seaboard, North America’s French territories or Spanish territories, and all other nations and peoples. The Union of nine states had grown to 14 when the 1790 census[i] recorded the following:
· 627,100 Free White males of 16 years and upward
· 1,027,700 Free White males under 16 years (1,654,800 total males)
· 1,536,500 Free White females
· 36,100 All other free persons (1% of the total, 1.1% of free people)
· 341,700 Slaves
· 3,569,100 TOTAL 1790 CENSUS
The unreported indigenous population might have been 600,000.[ii] Others on this continent, such as Spanish and French colonists, were perhaps 3 to 5 million people.[iii] Maybe there were 10 million people on the land that is now the contiguous US.
Among the people of the 1790 census, about 5% of free white males above 16 could vote; perhaps 31,400 men or 0.31% of inhabitants. All but 1% of free whites were factional American Protestants. Today, non-felon citizens of adult age may register to vote, and only 14% are traditional American Protestants.
Pew Research projections for 2050 predict “white” ethnic groups will fall to 47%.[iv] Pew expects Christians to decline to 66.4% while the unaffiliated climbs to 25.6%.[v] The 8% balance has about six components at 0.5% to 2.1% each. But ethnic and religious demographics pale before the will to adopt a civic agreement to collaborate for statutory justice.
Equity under an agreement that is civic, civil, and legal: the preamble
The agreement that is offered in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution is for individuals, and each newborn may either adopt the agreement, be a lone dissident, or associate with a special interest group such as the ones mentioned above: “free white”, slave, indigenous person, or other. The modern explosion of special interest groups does not lessen the civic right to develop integrity. The possibility for responsibility, equity, and discipline under the preamble may have occurred to a few but is not promoted. What happened to the preamble’s agreement?
Since 1790, the individual’s opportunity to join We the People of the United Sates has expanded to fifty states and six territories. Many inhabitants take the purpose and goals of the preamble for granted, but many citizens don’t have a clue about responsible equity under the preamble’s agreement. A significant cause of this neglect is the fact that the First Congress politically denigrated the preamble by labeling it “secular” (perhaps meaning “areligious”), whereas the agreement is neutral to religion, race, gender, and ethnicity.
Race still attracts oppressive, erroneous attention. In 1852, Frederick Douglass railed against America Christianity, honored the preamble, and rejected the popular view of citizenship, introducing himself as “fellow citizen.”[vi] The Dred Scott rebuke of Douglass’s view followed in 1856. The Civil War established, by military power, the popular correction in 1865.
James Meredith recently said, “I was born in the United States of America and therefore I was a full citizen. I may have recognized somebody with the capacity to force me not to enjoy some of my rights, but never would I give up any.” [vii] Meredith asserts that he may have to tolerate force, but he cannot be coerced. I like it. The citizen who considers the preamble yet does not recognize personal opportunity to join We the People of the United States is unfortunate yet not alone; I do not know Meredith’s view on the preamble. Does he agree with Douglass? I have written to inquire.
James Meredith recently said, “I was born in the United States of America and therefore I was a full citizen. I may have recognized somebody with the capacity to force me not to enjoy some of my rights, but never would I give up any.” [vii] Meredith asserts that he may have to tolerate force, but he cannot be coerced. I like it. The citizen who considers the preamble yet does not recognize personal opportunity to join We the People of the United States is unfortunate yet not alone; I do not know Meredith’s view on the preamble. Does he agree with Douglass? I have written to inquire.
Humankind seems informed that willing people are equal under the rule of law.[viii] That is, an individual may agree to responsibility under the law. In other words, the law identifies dissidents. Thucydides described a civic culture:
Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others . . . but is an example to them. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition. While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.
Civic citizens choose to observe both civil law and unwritten civic “sentiment.” Some citizens are dissident or ignorant, just as some people are uninformed about human economic viability (a human must work for the lifestyle he or she needs and wants) and reasoning as simple as using traffic signals for self-benefit. Laws are necessary because anyone may gain advantage by deceit---not collaborating to discover justice and not observing the discoveries; in other words, not developing integrity. The opportunity to develop integrity is a civic right.
The creators of the 1787 U.S. Constitution consulted Greek political theory, and the signers proposed a unique opportunity for civic discipline. In the Union that was established on June 21, 1788, few fellow citizens adopted the discipline stated in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Inhabitants are free to consider the civic agreement and behave or not. If not, they may be subjugating themselves to the statutory laws the civic agreement discovers and establishes. This arrangement, a tacit offer of individual happiness with civic integrity (an offer which may be freely pursued or not), is unique in the world and the reason many people are attracted to inhabit the United States. But some people come to practice deceit. Some pretend to not even know of the preamble, and some are not pretending.
Unfortunately, so far, We the People of the United States, a voluntary faction of citizens, has not accepted the preamble’s powers, both civic and legal. Both powers have been obfuscated by political factions that existed among the leaders in the thirteen free and independent states. The states are enumerated in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
The preamble’s power repressed
Having been English colonies, leaders in the free and independent states were most familiar with English common law: Blackstone and the constitutional church-state-partnership in Parliament. That is, in England, the constitution requires a church-state-partnership. The Congress that started-up of the U.S. was like a teenaged couple who become parents and know no better than to do what mom and dad did; only later does the couple realize that four mom-and-dad-in-laws have factional parenting philosophies. The parents may never know how to establish good parenthood for their children and grandchildren.
The 1789-1793 Congress substantially re-established doing as England did. That included enacting congressional “divinity” on par with Parliament’s “holiness” by hiring factional Protestant ministers to serve Congress at the expense of the people. By expense, I mean the loss of civic discipline more than the loss of security. However, English-traditional church-state-partnership, although unconstitutional, is made official in the U.S. by the court. See Greece v Galloway (2014).
Maintaining, by deceit, obsolete English tradition is only one of the motives that create political factions in the U.S., and persuading people to use the preamble to collaborate for civic integrity is not an easy undertaking. It is a collaboration for the self-discipline to establish civic integrity by which a civic people may hold local, state, and federal governments accountable.
Impact on immigration
Many citizens lamely site “we, the people” and disregard the civic agreement offered by the preamble. Thereby, there is no agreement by which citizens are equal and responsible. The visible possibility in current writing is the overthrow of the preamble itself. By neglecting since 1788 the discipline the preamble calls for, only old people like me care enough to study and comprehend its promises. I am on the back end of forty-years’ study and only unusual circumstance alerted me to articulate that the signers’ intentions to cleanly separate from English tradition was undone by the first Congress. Modern factions that seem urgent to subscribers make the preamble’s agreement uninteresting except as a curiosity. The phrase "we the people" makes the proposition contentious. Parents who are concerned about themselves and their children don’t realize that “posterity” refers to their grandchildren and beyond; they help the U.S. increase the national debt treating “our grandchildren” as unconnected carriers of the debt.
Immigrants do not want to assume America’s existing debt, crime, and welfare-state. Some imagine achieving citizenship and then conducting a civil war for relief.[ix] They have a practical point, and fellow citizens need to respond. But the answer is in finding an agreement by which inhabitants may integrate as human beings: everyone is an equal citizen if he or she adopts the U.S. Preamble's proposition. A suitable interpretation to support each person's responsibl human liberty exists in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.
I erroneously thought conservatives practice the preamble.[x] I feel Reihan Salam expresses how far from conservatism my regard for the preamble seems.[xi] As an “established American,” I am alarmed by illegal immigration and philanthropic support for it. Appeal for attention to the preamble is neither “authoritarian impulse,” nor alt-right, nor white.
Reared Southern Baptist who fell in love with a Louisiana French Catholic woman, I experienced a half-century effort to reach mutual understanding and unconditional appreciation. It takes a lifetime to understand two cultures. I do not need Salam and his Abrahamicly-diverse friends (a cloistered group indeed) to attempt to impose their “rising diversity” conflicts on my serenity. It matters not to me if Salam would regard my appeal for attention to the preamble’s civic agreement to “be crushed rather than accommodated.” But I suggest Salam may be more creative by caring about the grandchildren of immigrants rather than their children when he suggests civil war may be in our future.
Of course, rather than his trumped-up “implicit social contract” he could promote the preamble as an agreement on which to collaborate for civic integrity more than social integration. And “social capital” is ruinous when the individual is not acting for his or her benefit rather than to promote an identity group other than We the People of the United States: the people who communicate, collaborate, and connect using the preamble.
A “new populist revolt”? Against what? The preamble’s agreement? Equality under the preamble? In addition to merit, immigration ought to be based on the applicant’s commitment to the preamble to benefit his or her grandchildren and beyond (posterity). America is a representative republic with no future for social democracy. Diversity is just another repressive religion.
Reared Southern Baptist who fell in love with a Louisiana French Catholic woman, I experienced a half-century effort to reach mutual understanding and unconditional appreciation. It takes a lifetime to understand two cultures. I do not need Salam and his Abrahamicly-diverse friends (a cloistered group indeed) to attempt to impose their “rising diversity” conflicts on my serenity. It matters not to me if Salam would regard my appeal for attention to the preamble’s civic agreement to “be crushed rather than accommodated.” But I suggest Salam may be more creative by caring about the grandchildren of immigrants rather than their children when he suggests civil war may be in our future.
Of course, rather than his trumped-up “implicit social contract” he could promote the preamble as an agreement on which to collaborate for civic integrity more than social integration. And “social capital” is ruinous when the individual is not acting for his or her benefit rather than to promote an identity group other than We the People of the United States: the people who communicate, collaborate, and connect using the preamble.
A “new populist revolt”? Against what? The preamble’s agreement? Equality under the preamble? In addition to merit, immigration ought to be based on the applicant’s commitment to the preamble to benefit his or her grandchildren and beyond (posterity). America is a representative republic with no future for social democracy. Diversity is just another repressive religion.
Equality under the agreement
Everyone in America has equity when he or she trusts-in and commits-to the civic and civil agreement that is stated in the preamble. It is the world’s greatest civic sentence. Salam does not seem aware of it. The preamble tacitly offers an American dream: individual happiness with civic integrity.
Copyright©2018 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. Updated 11/22/2019.
[i] Online at https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1793/dec/number-of-persons.html.
[ii] Online at https://nativestudy.wordpress.com/.
[iii] Online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Spain#The_population_of_New_Spain_in_1810.
[iv] Online at http://www.pewhispanic.org/2008/02/11/us-population-projections-2005-2050/.
[v] Online at http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/.
[vi] Online at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/IN/RBSCP/Frederick_Douglass/ATTACHMENTS/Douglass_Fifth_of_July_Speech.pdf: “Mr. President, Friends, and Fellow Citizens . . . “
[viii] Online at http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/education/thucydides.html.
[ix] Marisa Abrajano and Zoltan I. Hajnal, White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics, 2015.
[x] My ideas don’t seem to fit in a conservative forum online at https://www.lawliberty.org/search_gcse/?q=phil%20beaver.
[xi] Reihan Salam, “A Way Out of the Immigration Crisis,” The Wall Street Journal, September 22-23, 2018, Page C1.
No comments:
Post a Comment
I want your opinion and intend to respond.