Patriotism – Page 3 – Philosophy, Law and Politics

Should Income Parallel Success, Private and Government?

The current salary of a Federal appellate judge sitting within one of the U.S. judicial circuits is $220,600 per year. http://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-compensation. This includes the current annual salary of sitting Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the D.C. Circuit. If Judge Kavanaugh is promoted to the U.S. Supreme Court, he would be an Associate Justice and would earn $255,300 sitting under Chief Justice John Roberts. The Chief Justice earns $267,000. http://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-compensation. Do their salaries adequately compensate them for the value of their labor and contribution to America and to Americans? How do we justly and fairly value their contribution?

Antifederalist No. 1 said of the proposed U.S. Constitution, in its “General Introduction: A Dangerous Plan of Benefit Only to the “Aristocratick Combination:”

“I am pleased to see a spirit of inquiry … upon the subject of the NEW PLAN …. If it is suitable to the GENIUS and HABITS of the citizens of these states, it will bear the strictest scrutiny. The PEOPLE are the grand inquest who have a RIGHT to judge of its merits. The hideous daemon of Aristocracy has hitherto had so much influence as to bar the channels of investigation, preclude the people from inquiry …. At length the luminary of intelligence begins to beam its efflugent rays upon this important production….”

In our modern words, We as the People of America govern our country having, liberated our American Colony from the British Empire, and having established a republican form of government. The Founding and Governing Fathers and Mothers, then deemed and still deem, their beloved People and Publick, the “tyrannous majority.” For, though we are all worthy of the essential human nature of mankind, we are not all worthy of ascending unto those among us who “represent the masses” comprising our American Republic. The Founding and current Governing Persons of America are of the privately governing intelligentsia of America, our “natural aristocracy,” not solely to be derived from the governing “Aristocratick Combination” and “daemon of Aristocracy” of Anti-Federalist parlance. Before the American Declaration of Independence, Englishman William Blackstone said, similarly of the English aristocracy, governing “peers of the realm are by birth hereditary counsellors.” (William Blackstone. Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book the First: Of the Rights of Persons. Ch. 5, l. 6.)(1765). How do we reform an economic structure in which value and income are determined and derived, not by merit and contribution to the administration and governance of society and our community, but by Roman game like, enzombieing, entertainment, tendered to a nonparticipatory public that is uninformed and is not capable of self-governance?

A philosophical appeal in English Statesman and Philosopher Edmund Burke‘s “Letter from The New to The Old Whigs” in, 1791, suggests that:

“A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state, or separable from it. It is an essential integrant part of any large body rightly constituted. It is formed out of a class of legitimate presumptions, which, taken as generalities, must be admitted for actual truths. To be bred in a place of estimation; to see nothing low and sordid from one’s infancy; to be taught to respect one’s self; to be habituated to the censorial inspection of the public eye; to look early to public opinion; to stand upon such elevated ground as to be enabled to take a large view of the widespread and infinitely diversified combinations of men and affairs in a large society; to have leisure to read, to reflect, to converse; to be enabled to draw and court the attention of the wise and learned, wherever they are to be found; to be habituated in armies to command and to obey; to be taught to despise danger in the pursuit of honour and duty; to be formed to the greatest degree of vigilance, foresight, and circumspection, in a state of things in which no fault is committed with impunity and the slightest mistakes draw on the most ruinous consequences; to be led to a guarded and regulated conduct, from a sense that you are considered as an instructor of your fellow-citizens in their highest concerns, and that you act as a reconciler between God and man; to be employed as an administrator of law and justice, and to be thereby amongst the first benefactors to mankind; to be a professor of high science, or of liberal and ingenious art; to be amongst rich traders, who from their success are presumed to have sharp and vigorous understandings, and to possess the virtues of diligence, order, constancy, and regularity, and to have cultivated an habitual regard to communative justice: these are the circumstances of men that form what I should call a natural aristocracy, without which there is no nation.”

American democracy guarantees: (1) liberty to act without encroachment; (2) freedoms of belief and expression; (3) a right to property; and (4) representative participation. In drawing the line between the rights of personal and real property rights to enforce and those rights of personal and real property to not enforce, how should we draw the law attributing ownership? Do our governing authorities possess a metaphysical, in-kind contribution of productive labor, not yet acknowledged and compensated? How do we attribute the right of ownership and upon what criteria do we base value?

Monetary creation, if to forever remain democratic in our society, requires an assurance of justice and fairness, guaranteed to the youngest of age within the smallest of political subdivisions. Justice and fairness are required within the smallest of political subdivisions in the United States of America to the largest. Within the U. S. of A., the sitting U.S. Supreme Court sits within America, as a political subdivision. America, itself, is within the various international entities to which the U.S.A. belongs. And, America’s own international political subdivision boundary exists coextensively with the sovereign political boundary of the United States itself. The financial compensation paid in America to our governing authorities, our natural aristocracy, should permit any American to ascend to the utmost respected stratum of a career in American government regardless of socio-economic stratum of origin. Such should be a coextensive definition of human rights under governing international law.

In creating and administering the three branches of our representative democracy in America, how do we determine the value of guaranteeing democracy itself, the value of the attorney work product of governing officials and of attorneys and judges? Their work tasks are deemed entrusted to them by the people and deemed to be of inestimable value, for their tasks guarantee to every citizen freedom, liberty and justice.

Yet, how do we compensate governing judges and officials so that those who write, administer and interpret our laws may be those for whom doing so is within the “American dream,” regardless of socio-economic stratum of origin? All in government are held in proper honor and esteem for the values they hold dear and that they guarantee? Is a mere civil servant, governor, assemblyman, state judge, and the work they produce for the community less important than that of the president, senator, congressman, federal judge or agency secretary? How do we imbue citizens with patriotism and love of county when the salaries of their governing members are exceeded by those of professional sports team players, though the players express thoughts and values publicly protected by these governmental actors every day? How will the next Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court “make ends meet?”

Lori Gayle Nuckolls, Esq.

Law Is Our Only Legally Required Social Didactic

Do we only garner community support and respect when we firmly plant our feet in the soil, or, in our concrete of modern times, and discuss our world from top to bottom. Those concerns of science are most significant and are necessary to our daily, quotidian existence. They are on top and are accorded a greater priority than those related to aesthetics and art. We respect our civilized lives, culture and government, as our governments have arisen from more, primitive versions of written governing documents: federal, state and local. We defend the rights and privileges our democratic republic grants and pledges to ensure to citizens and, in some cases, residents not yet citizens.

Every citizen, and those not yet citizens, in America, possess details that give rise to abstractions as attributes of personhood. Our American soil and modern concrete imparts into our indicia of personhood, and synergizes within our American populace and guests, a refinement of our civilization.

Americans will refine society until achieving natural extinction of our planet. America’s continuing writing of its history, and the contributions of its history makers, will share within the pages. In learning how to make and share history, we must explain the puzzles as we solve them. We mature within the course of both our history and our future, and the varied social institutions. More importantly, we must explain our popular lawmaking, both within the formal, authorized bodies of government, as well as lawmaking through the informal popular influence of citizens and residents.

Each law in America is an historical fact, from our legislatures as statute, and as common law and law at equity from state and federal judiciaries. (See, Maine, Henry Sumner. Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas, Chap. IX.) As the history and nation grows and refines, commerce advances, and our world increasingly becomes more complex as do the contracts governing transactions. Legislatures enact and reform statutes. Governmental agencies study and regulate specialized subject maters. Our courts define words, review state action and rule upon issues of law and fact.

The communities we live in grow to more and more contain aesthetics, literary attributes, sciences, and technologies. Our laws increase to permit our use, and our continued revision of our laws permit their continued use. Most of our new laws arise from contracts between two or more parties. Contracts impart principles of fair and honest dealing, which Judges — elected and appointed — review and interpret, with justice and fairness to the parties, the legal community and society. The contracts increase in complexity and sophistication.

Generationally, each of us, as did our predecessors and as will our future descendants, gleans a sense of self. This sense of individual, personal morality exists distinct from our popular majority’s collective value system we voluntarily self-impose. (See, Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chap. I.) All the laws of the community, as well as the values embodied within us, create a sacredness we and government respect. (See, Maine, Henry Sumner. Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas, Chap. IX.)

In the words of my father, Charles Butler Nuckolls, Jr., a retired history teacher: “patriotism is a love of country not for what it is, but for what it is able to become.” Our personal and collective morality, and the laws arising from them, are to be revised and remedied if we are to be properly accorded respect thereunder.

Lori Gayle Nuckolls, Esq.