haiku 31 May 2018

Live without remorse 
Laugh with boundless happiness 
Die a thousand ways 

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

on tactics 101

America's presidents seem to enjoy sending troopers into battle – such actions are ways for them to improve their domestic political standing and to show how tough and alert and ready for action they are. It would be of greater benefit to the freedom of the American people and the democracy for which they strive however to elect presidents who had been themselves to war; who had read books recounting the horrors of combat such as the Iliad, Generation Kill, or Winter War; or, at the very least, who grew up playing war-related video and board games. If the U.S. presidents understood the foolishness of starting wars on multiple fronts, they would more likely abstain from starting wars simultaneously in separate foreign nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan; they would be aware that war causes an overall, word-wide reduction in Happiness (a condition that, according to its Constitution, it is the duty of the federal government of America to bring about); and they would understand that when one nation tries to impose its will upon all other nations on Earth that nation will become the target of guerrilla attacks such as those that occurred in the final months of 2001. War is terror, and the sooner the leaders of the American republic accept that, the sooner we will have peace.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

American theocracy - 1

  A dangerous effort is under way in these United States of America – the effort to define the concept of marriage, and its societal and legal ramifications, according to the code of a specific religion. If allowed to progress unopposed, this effort will abolish the concept of the separation of church and state as set forth in the U.S. Constitution. This effort is an assault on the liberty of the American people, and we can ill afford to further bind our nation to the tenets of one religion among the many that here persist. Just as we would not incorporate into our most hallowed documents the parameters of Shari'a law, or the teachings of Lord Krishna, we must not shackle ourselves to the strictures of the Christian religion, even though that religion is practiced by a relatively large portion of the U.S. population.

  For if these efforts were to succeed in binding the concept of marriage to the code of one specific religion, we would be forced to abide by all of Yahweh's clearly-stated mandates, including the one regarding the murder, in front of the father's house, of new wives found deflowered (Deuteronomy 22:20-21 NAB), mandates that would result in the abolition of Justice, the loss of the domestic Tranquility, and the nullification of the Blessings of Liberty – our code of laws would become subject to the whims of a blood-thirsty and destructive god with a long and well-documented history of genocide and mass murder (see the Midianites, and the denizens of Jericho, Sodom, and Gomorrah).

  George Washington and John Adams said, and the contemporary Congress agreed unanimously, “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” (see the Treaty of Tripoli). These were more than idle words spoken in private, more than a backroom speech made to moneyed sycophants: these words were part of an official declaration made to a foreign government in hope of a future free of strife; they were written to placate the heated ire of another people by stating that we as a nation will not, under any circumstance, abandon rationality or assume to pass legislation based on the ethical code put forth by a god that demands loyalty above all, a god that ignores the balance of our needs and our desires, a god that seeks to rid us of the knowledge of a unifying and perpetual energy that lurks among the passions of our lives, a god that demands strict adherence to the myriad rules contained within the Christian bible, but one religious book among many.

  We are not a nation established on the concepts of one particular religion. We are a nation founded to establish Justice and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. We do this by guiding our country, through legislative act, executive lunge, and judicial rule, via rational and lively debate, toward the emancipation of Happiness and Security among the People, not through rule of fear or codex, but through the application of our vast collective potential in service to all peoples of this land, not simply to a diminishing minority of the fabulously rich.

  Fight this impending American theocracy. If your governor prays to Jesus for an end to the woes facing your state, vote him out of office as soon as you can. If your Congresswoman claims to be guided by voices in her head that she thinks are her god, if she boasts of blind fealty to god and husband, write to her and demand she relinquish her post. There is room for faith in the hearts of the American people, but it must remain there and not pollute the halls of government – in those halls is room only for rational and measured debate focused on securing to ourselves and our Posterity the Blessings of Liberty.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on dating & economics

  The intricate dance within a romantic relationship can be compared to the efforts of economists struggling to contain erratic market fluctuations. In either situation, the party that responds to the sweeping changes taking place in his counterpart will find himself on the losing side, forever racing to keep up, forever implementing new methods to bring to heel the unfathomable maelstrom he thinks he has the capacity to control. Whether this unfathomable maelstrom be the mind of a woman or the global crude-oil market, the economist, an outside observer inherently blind to the vast and incalculable influences that shape the mood of his counterpart, will enact measures he hopes will soothe the fury of that which he holds dear, often sacrificing long-term stability for the brief elation of short-term gain.
  I have learned one thing about relationships, one truth I have had to relearn time and again: the less you try to control your counterpart, the better off you both will be. When done with patient persistence, attempts to fathom your lover and to steer him in a direction you think best can indeed effect change; the nature of this change, however, will likely range from intensive introspection, over increased volatility, culminating in full-blown systemic meltdown. It is impossible to predict accurately how your counterpart will react to the pressures you have applied – any action will have an appropriate and equal reaction, but its full scope will forever remain known only to the reactive party.
  Imagine for a moment your closest friend, the innumerable events and countless little decisions that helped to mold him into the person you (think you) know today, the environmental and gentic forces that influence continuously the shaping of his being. Now imagine hundreds, thousands, millions of individuals of similar complexity who by going about their daily rounds become what we call markets, with every act shifting the fortunes of various businesses, with each transaction affecting the cycles of supply and demand, their every decision impacting and being impacted upon by unique and innumerable forces. It is all but impossible to know the mind of your closest friend – how could anyone claim to know the minds of thousands of strangers in thousands of different locations across the globe?
  Controlling your lover is a Sisyphean struggle full of complications that subside one day only to reappear the next, a cruel practice that will gut your lover's soul, leaving behind a mindless and docile golem content to do your bidding, within her no room for independent thought, no capacity for abiding Happiness, the dark promise of future abuse her only constant. The controlling lover exhibits deep insecurity and persistent self-loathing every time he endeavors to bend another to his will; the controlling economist exhibits appalling arrogance and damnable small-mindedness every time she endeavors to shape the course of markets influenced by forces far beyond her ability to reckon.
  Just as in dating, attempts to control the market are bound to cause unforeseen complications, new trials that slither forth from the stumps of those just severed, new issues that reduce the economist to the point of mindless docility, her energies sapped by the despair that comes with the realization that, as a single piece of an enormous, shifting puzzle, her actions are unlikely to have the desired affect. In a romantic relationship, the supposedly dominant party can achieve an approximation of control, whereas in the economic arena, a market will defy all attempts at subjugation, the sheer number of influencing factors contributing to its enduring volatility.
  Every economic theory, be it that of John Keynes or Adam Smith, Milton Friedman or Joan Robinson, has proven incapable of condensing the markets into manageable and predictable entities – invariably, each falls short of stabilizing that which cannot be stabilized, causing long term damage greater than the short term benefits with which it is credited. In the romantic as well as in the economic relationship, the method that promises the greatest liberty to the individual is that which disposes of all restrictions on thought and deed, the one that allows for the unfettered fluctuation of markets, the one preferred by humanity since we stood upright and learned to use our thumbs: anarcho-capitalism.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

counterweight Constitution

  Citizens of America: the Constitution of these States is a covenant we all share equally. Simply by being citizens of this land, we give our tacit consent to the opening declaration of this covenant, wherein it is declared that we are one People, a People with the common goal of making for ourselves a more perfect government. Among the established parameters of this goal are Union, Justice, Domestic Tranquility, Common Defense, general Welfare, and Blessings of Liberty, goals that must, by any reckoning, be the counterweight against which all legislation and other national decisions are measured.

  The XIV Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the People life, liberty, and property until they shall be taken from them under due process of law. Blanket prohibitions that restrict individuals in their liberty, foremost among them laws that prohibit the People from possessing and consuming Mood Altering Substances, restrict the individual in her liberty by prohibiting her from utilizing methods by which to pursue her Happiness; they violate her right to dispose of her ultimate property, her body, as she as a consenting and capable adult should decides is in her best interest. Therefore, the Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional, as it infringes upon the individual's constitutional rights to her liberty and to her body even when she has in no way indicated a desire or willingness to do harm to the property of bodies of other people. It is already permitted for the People to dispose of their property in most any other way, by tattoo or surgery or haircut, by consuming of certain Mood Altering Substances (MAS) such as coffee and sugar and alcohol and tobacco, by entertaining in the mind any number of opinions on religion or morality or social equality, all activities or states of mind that are universally recognized as components of liberty. It would be unthinkable for the government of the United States to pass laws specifying by which methods the People would be able to wash or mend property such as socks; it is just as unthinkable that our government specifies the methods by which we affect our only true property, our bodies, by its enforcement of blanket prohibitions on the consumption of specific MAS other than those socially-accepted ones listed above.

  Laws banning the possession and consumption of specific MAS do not insure the Domestic Tranquility requirement set forth in our Constitution, as they do not outlaw the use of alcohol, a substance that in its use is responsible for countless acts of insurrection and aggression, a substance that in its use degrades the general Welfare by enraging its user and reducing his ability to make reasonable judgments, a substance that in its use violates the individual's liberty by often ensnaring her in its addiction and all but forcing her to feed the sickness she has unwittingly brought into her life. Overuse of substances, addictions to substances, especially substances such as tobacco that in its use degrades the general Welfare by ruining the health of the People and leading to their premature demise, addictions are conditions that must be addressed with a logical and compassionate eye, so that the individual can regain the capacity to use those MAS that he decides he needs to facilitate or enhance his pursuit of Happiness instead of being relegated to a prison cell and treated as a criminal for his inability to control his appetites.

  Punishments for consumption of illicit MAS cannot be applied to great swaths of the population for infractions that in no way cause direct and measurable offense to the life, liberty, or property of any other person. Just as a lengthy process is required to deprive a person of Life and to condemn her to death, the removal of liberty can be meted out only on an individual basis by an august panel that shall decide that the person in question should no longer deserve specific and enumerated liberties (the penalty for the continued execution of these liberties being tailored so as to maintain the parameters of the Constitution), thus ensuring that her constitutional right to freedom of action and thought is not taken from her without profound and rational deliberation.

  A person is not sentenced to death for anything less than infringing upon or extinguishing the Life of another person. Therefore, a person cannot have his Liberty revoked unless he has infringed demonstrably upon the right of other people to their Lives, Liberty, or Property, or if he has clearly violated the parameters of the constitution. The incarceration of non-violent drug offenders whose sole purported violation was to consume or possess MAS degrades the general Welfare and the Domestic Tranquility by removing those individuals from their long-established familial and community ties, by restricting them in their ability to work and to be productive, by holding them in close proximity to violent and dangerous criminals.

  A woman seeking to abort an unwanted fetus has the constitutional right to do so. Under the XIV Amendment, she has the right to decide for herself what to do with her body, her only true property, so she may pierce or tattoo it as she sees fit, cut its hair in whatever fashion she desires, eat and let it become fat or exercise and keep it in shape, have her stomach stapled and her organs and cancerous tumors removed, and abort any fetus growing within her female parts. Furthermore, as the Blessings of Liberty have been bestowed upon her, she may decide for herself how best to lead her life; she is allowed to do anything to herself so long as she is not infringing upon the constitutional rights of any other persons (a fetus is a part of a woman's body until it is born, at which point it becomes a baby, or a tiny little person with constitutional rights).

  The requirements of a more perfect Union and the provision for the general Welfare are not being met under our current system of top-few capitalism, under which a minority of the People is compensated in the form of great wealth for the labors of the majority of the People. Allowing the wealthiest few Americans to amass such great wealth gives them the power of the purse strings, which breeds corruption and makes these few rich folks so essential to the reelection of political figures that they become the masters of said political figures, dictating, formulating, and influencing legislation to their own benefit at the expense of the vast majority of the population. To provide for our future Prosperity and to redirect the wealth of this nation toward realizing the Welfare of the People generally, it behooves us to alter the fabric of our corporatized and corrupted society, and to seek new methods by which to assure that all Americans might benefit equally of the bounty inherent to this land that is daily brought forth by the People of this nation.

  Great bodies of men and women have joined the U. S. armed forces to provide for the Common Defense, and vast stockpiles of personal weapons and other mechanical contrivances stand at the ready to assist them in this task. To provide for the Common Defense, however, we must keep these forces at home, on true American soil, so that, if needed, they can defend the American People from threats here at home; we cannot continue to launch wars of aggression, as we did in Iraq in 2003, to protect or to promote the business interests of a tiny fraction of the population that has a corporate or otherwise monetary interest in the oil fields located in that Middle Eastern nation. There is a role for American armed forces to play beyond our shores (humanitarian aide, protecting innocents, punishing those who seek to destroy us), but it cannot ever again be a war of aggression against another sovereign nation. Many good Americans have died, and much of our nation's wealth has been wasted by intervening in conflicts not our own, in nations not our own, against people who just want to see us leave. Let the chips fall where they may, unless they are huge chip-shaped bombs raining down onto our cities.

  Until it comes to pass that all political and government efforts are focused solely on meeting the requirements set forth in the Constitution, and until such time as the rights enumerated in the Constitution are granted to all People fully and without prejudice, the fundamental American documents are protecting only those people who are rich in monetary wealth and political connections; they have ceased to be documents that serve for the elevation of the People generally, and have been high-jacked by an oligarchy that has lost sight of the deep and enduring essence of the American Dream, i.e. Safety, Happiness, and the Blessings of Liberty.

p.s. This is a general appeal to all police officers in America: If you have ever even attempted to trick or browbeat someone into forfeiting their Constitutional rights, or if you operate in a fashion that in any way even attempts to sidestep said rights, and if you have ever sworn an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States of America, take a good look in the mirror, and consider that you very well may have violated your oath. If so, relinquish your post immediately, and pursue a different career.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on gods we praise

  Sarah Palin recently made reference to the Statue of Liberty (see here). By doing so, Ms. Palin has given her tacit support to the notion of goddess Liberty, a deity from times of old whom the American people have adopted as our own. Fair and gracious Liberty is not the only deity whom we praise, however – the goddess of Justice, or Iusticia, graces our city seals (see the seal of the borough of Hanover, PA), and we etch her likeness into the stonework of our highest halls of justice (see here). Every time you wear running shoes with a certain swoosh on them, you are praising the Greek goddess of victory, Nike. Our connection to ancient gods runs so deep in this country that even our Declaration of Independence makes the right to Happiness unalienable, a right as often as not personified by goddess Felicitas (or Tyche), the goddess of joy and good fortune.

  To utter the name of a god is to give that god power in our minds and in our lives, such as in Jewish rituals, and in Muslim rituals. For example, every time we say the word Wednesday, we pay homage to the god (Wotan, deity of wisdom and poetry) for whom the day was named; on Thursday and Saturday we pay homage to Thor and Saturn (the gods of fertility and of the harvest respectively), deities hailing from separate realms and distant times, gods who still inspire us today.

  It is good to have as many gods as you can have on your side, so while you may go to a place of worship and pray to one god, remember that throughout your day you are also sending up praises to the other gods who shelter you under their wings (though you might not realize that you are praising them with your shoes or words, or even that they are sheltering you). Similar to the concept of polyamory (the capacity to be in love with multiple people), the capacity to love and worship many different gods is called polytheism. For an example of polytheism, see the practices of Roman Catholics, who pray to one god when traveling (Christopherus), to a different god when competing athletically (Sebastian), and to a third deity (Gabriel) when working in the postal trades.

  There is no limit to the number of gods you can have working for you, or looking out for you, just as there is no limit to the amount of goodness and virtuous action you can perform during your life. Maximize your coverage by increasing your spectrum of gods – you are sure to like the results.

no se permite vagabundos

  It is a good thing that Jack Kerouac lived when he did, for if he were alive today, he would likely be in jail for vagrancy. It was a subtle and unique culture that was lost when the day of the tramp and of the wanderer came to a close, when we Americans came to see those people who are perpetually on the move as threatening and dangerous, when we passed laws that made their existence all but untenable, and stamped out forever their culture, their language, and their way of life.
  We are lucky that Kerouac wrote his book On The Road when he did, in the heyday of the tramp, in that glorious period when hitch-hiking was not illegal, when strangers and transients were not viewed universally as outcasts, when it was still possible for the auto-less to make his way across our fine continent on conveyances other than corporate run bus, train, or airlines. For if he were to have attempted to live that life in our current era, he would likely be spat upon in the street and avoided like the plague by callous and uncaring people on their way to shell out five dollars for a medium coffee.
  The tramp lifestyle had its inconveniences and perils (dogs, weather, floods, robbers), but it was also in a way a deeply American condition, the tip of the spear of restlessness, the true embodiment of the notion that we can start a new life on the other side of this ridge, on the far bank of that river, on the shores of some distant ocean. The tramp had to rely on his wits; he had to trust in the chalkings of his fellow vagrants to alert him to a hostile town, or to one with generous inhabitants, or to one where a bit of labor was available for the eager but wanderlustig.
  It is unlikely that we will ever have another author like Keroak, another person able to simply perambulate across the land (like Herodotus and Pliny before him), absorbing and retelling the stories of those whom he meets, a person not necessarily pursuing a goal but one who has made the Way his Goal. We have adopted the notion in this country that raw ambition and unbridled egocentricity are virtuous states of being, when, in my opinion, they are the beginning of folly, cul-de-sacs that nearly always end in the mid-life-crisis, after which the individual will lay down her lust for money to pursue that which she knew intrinsically would make her Happy, thus rediscovering for herself the deep and abiding meaning of the Declaration of Independence.
  We are not a nation of clones, nor are we a nation founded on the notion of rigid conformity - we are a nation of Many who share a common binding purpose, to make of ourselves One, to pursue Happiness according to the myriad ways that each of Us must decide for ourselves. I fear, however, that we have over-legislated, that we have made so many things illegal in an effort to protect ourselves from potential yet only vaguely defined harm that we are now truly afraid of the transformative and perpetual process of upheaval, that we have made it all but impossible to wander the land in search of an undefined yet tremendously important goal, a goal found neither in the cubicles of the corporation nor in the folds of our wallets, a goal that eschews materialism for internal or spiritual tranquility.
  I fear also that there is no going back, that the child-like wonder and inherent purity exhibited by the characters in On The Road has been forever lost in the white noise of the television, in the vociferocity of the religious extremist, in the blind hatred that hides in an Us versus Them mentality. Woe be unto us, for we have strayed from the Path and become: calcified in our ways; blinded to the subtle wisdom of the vagabond; convinced that turban-wearing boogeymen are lurking in the shadows; and intolerant of anything we do not understand.
  Stand up. Speak out. Spread freedom.

"Fear is the mind-killer." Frank Herbert, Dune

JPR

declaration of corporate supremacy

When in the course of pursuing profits it becomes necessary to remind the People for whom it is they toil, and to formulate the rules by which they shall lead their lives, we, the assembled capitalists and corporations headquartered in these United States (but not necessarily operating here), only occasionally and perfunctorily respectful to the Opinions of Mankind, declare that the economic wellbeing of our executive boards and voting members by far outweighs the Right of the People to Safety and Happiness. The original Declaration of Independence, that document upon which the United States was founded, those words that might have given mankind the right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, is, and has for some time now been, a dead and forgotten document, its declaration of unalienable rights null and void, its formulation of the core principle of the role of government - to bring about the Safety and the Happiness of the People - ground to dust under the jack-boot of our Capitalistic Greed.

We hold these Lies to be enforceable through police action: that a small percentage of Americans should by rights reap the profits generated by the labor of all who work in this country; that we have the right to speculate with and to risk the invested monies of those Americans stupid enough to have entrusted us with their savings, and, when our speculations fail and millions of Americans lose their hard-won gains, to be safe and secure in our gated communities, our ill-begotten money protected by the federal government, our risky businesses kept from failing by the taxes paid by the very people whom we had hoodwinked originally; that we shall profit from the sale of drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, that are legally available to the People, drugs that kill them by the hundreds of thousands and maim them by the millions, while supporting the persecution and the imprisonment of the People in for-profit penitentiaries owned and run by us, for the crime of consuming drugs not to our liking, such as marijuana, drugs that have no discernible negative affect on their health or on their Happiness; that the US government should wage un-winnable wars against faceless foes (see the "war on terror") so that we may continue to manufacture, develop, and sell arms and weaponry, wars that might be won only if every person on Earth were placed in concentration camps and forcibly lobotomized; that we have the Right, through unscrupulous and down-right false advertising, to convince the People that unbridled consumption and unchecked personal debt are the bedrock of the American Dream, that Happiness does not grow from within, that it is not a fragile state of mind that blossoms from patience and self-understanding, but that it is something we cram into our wallets and pocket-books, that we spend in our shopping plazas, that we waste on useless items that supposedly make life easier but that are little more than clutter; that it was our patriotic duty to abandon the American manufacturing sector for foreign shores, sacrificing the jobs of millions of our countrymen to boost our profit-margins, allowing children across the Pacific Rim to work as slave-laborers in free-economic zones so that unemployed Americans could buy cheap goods that break soon after use; that we have the Right, regardless of the complaints of tree-hugging hippies, to rape and destroy the land for short-term gain, to saturate the lands with chemicals to make plants grow instead of learning from the soil, to poison the streams with mine-tailings, to clear-cut the once-great forests for export, and to pump the animals we slaughter for food full of steroids and antibiotics instead of providing them with clean and open places in which to live out their short and pathetic lives; that we have willingly and to vast personal profit rejuvenated the methods of the ancient Romans for controlling the lower classes by providing them with bread (fast food) and circuses (television), methods that poison the body and the mind but that keep the rabble blessedly quiet and contented throughout their pitiful and mostly worthless lives; that we will run our corporate societies, not as democracies, but as quasi-totalitarian states, while convincing our workers that, through hard and dedicated labor, they might reach the highest rungs of our bogus organizations, while, in reality, they will, after infighting, backstabbing, and reckless self-promotion, find themselves flung out into the cold, the pathways to our fleeting and hollow ranks closed to all but a most rapacious and lustful few.

  At no point in the long yet subtle Process of making a mockery of this once great Nation did we pause to consider that our hoarding of the nation's wealth would violate the Constitutional directive of promoting the general Welfare, although we will, by funneling the collective wealth of all Americans into the pockets of our cronies and fellow oligarchs, secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and to our Posterity, not to all Americans equally, but to those who have, as we have, dutifully sacrificed their sacred Honor on the altar of Capitalisic Greed, who have shat, as we have shat, upon the once-grand notion of Liberty and Justice for All. We have stopped our ears to the Voice of Justice, preferring rather the Shreik of Lies, preferring rather to profit from spying on the People (through the sale and maintenance of the materials necessary to the surveilance society), under the falsely-titled and unpatiotic Patiot Act, rejoicing in the violation of the flimsy protections once, but no longer, afforded the People by the Constitution.

  All this we pledge, and more, for: we have the means to lobby the Legislature for our own gain; we have the money with which to live comfortably for ten lifetimes while millions of American children go to bed hungry each night; we have convinced the People that consumption is preferrable to ingenuity, that watching TV is preferrable to creative expression and the telling of stories, that there is a universal formula for Happiness, a formula that starts with a dollar sign. We, therefore, the capitalists and corporations headquartered in these United States, Assembled, appealing to none but our majority share-holders, by our own authority and the might of our wrongly appropriated wealth, brazenly Publish and Declare, that this Country belongs to Us now, that the dream of a more perfect Union has no place in the world of top-few-capitalism, that ninety-nine percent of all Americans shall toil ceaselessly to make us, those of the remaining One Percent, rich beyond reckoning, that governemnt is not instituted to secure the Rights of the People, and that they have neither the Right to alter nor to abolish their governemnt, even though it long ago abandoned them to satisfy the needs of the most monied few, as it is too late, and they waited too long to act.

  So suck it, you hard-working American fools, suck it good and hard.

Laurel of Godlike American Achievement

  The founders of America were influenced primarily by two religions: Christianity and Hellenistic polytheism (they pored over texts written alike by ancient Christians and ancient Greeks, as argued here).
  Christianity, however, does not tend to celebrate achievements made by non-Christians, rather hoisting high the deeds of individuals who have sacrificed solely for their cause.
  In the ancient Greek world, individuals who in battle displayed the guile, the strategic mind, the cunning of goddess Athena were said to be the embodiment of that god, to be filled with her spirit. I hereby propose the creation of a national body that will determine, via a thorough vetting process, those Americans who in our times are most filled with the spirit of the gods who influenced the founding of this nation.
  Great generals will receive the Laurel of the Owl and Shield for displaying the heroic endeavor and battle strategy attributed to goddess Athena.
  Great poets and authors will receive the Laurel of the Arrow and Lyre for displaying the poetry and truthfulness attributed to god Apollo.
  Great diplomats and merchants will receive the Laurel of the Winged Boot for displaying the diplomacy and cunning wiles attributed to god Hermes.
  Great disruptors of society and graffiti artists will receive the Laurel of Helm and Spear for displaying the civil disorder and manly courage attributed to god Ares.
  Many other gods exist in the Olympian pantheon, and many more Laurels will be issued.
  The concept of the Laurel of Godlike American Achievement will celebrate people from all castes, all groups, all races, and all religions. It will whip the masses into a great churning froth of Happiness by giving them something to which to aspire, such as knowledge of the woodland arts (Artemis), metalworking and sculpture (Hephaestus), and the celebration of eternal youth (Dionysus), aspirations other than those based purely on the accumulation of capital.
  Your suggestions are welcome. Your readership is appreciated. Your hope springs eternal.

Ultima Ratio Regum,
Juliet Papa Romeo

on Safety and Happiness

  The Declaration of Independence, to use business parlance, is the mission statement to the Constitution's business plan. Without the Declaration, the Constitution is a merely an outline for civil government. With the Declaration, the Constitution is a malleable, living document whose purpose is to make real the few driving ideas behind the Declaration: that all persons are equal, that together they share the inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and that their government exists solely to bring about their Safety and their Happiness.
  We hear in our legislative bodies and in the press of great battles being waged along moral and idealistic lines, yet seldom do we hear this fundamental question: Will this piece of legislation bring about the Safety and/or the Happiness of the greatest possible majority of the population? Instead, we are told: that the rich will suddenly turn into magnanimous fountains of job-creation if their taxes are lowered further; that the elderly will somehow thrive when forced to purchase their own health-care plans in exceedingly complex markets; that our statue to the goddess of Liberty, she who stands proudly in New York Harbor, is a liar, her flame now extinguished, the promise of our land's vast potential reserved solely for the growing masses of native poor who already huddle here.
  We have lost sight of the essence of the American Dream, the idea that each person who here dwells may determine the parameters of his or her Happiness, and that as long as those parameters do not constrict or endanger the parameters set by other people, he or she has the inalienable Right to Pursue that Happiness. Without Safety, however, the parameters of Happiness are largely symbolic, and no attempt to Pursue Happiness can be successful. For this reason, our founding fathers distilled the myriad purposes of government into just two fundamental reasons for government: to effect, i.e. to create, to bring about, to make, the American people Safe and Happy.
  Does our current government expend every conceivable effort to make us Safe and Happy? I must applaud the extraordinary efforts of Director Mueller and the reformation of the FBI under his watch. Aside from my personal experience with the wild-eyed agents who targeted me in their desperate search for a scape-goat (see here), I believe the FBI is performing admirably in its efforts to fulfill the first promise of the Declaration - to keep the American people Safe. Furthermore, our police and fire departments (with some exceptions, of course) are also performing their efforts in this regard in admirable fashion.
  While the fulfillment of the promise of Safety is widely pursued and well-funded, the fulfillment of the promise of Happiness has been at best neglected, at worst countermanded. We have allowed an economic system (capitalism) to spread in this country, a system that rewards a few for the labor of all, a system that affords a few the capacity to Pursue their Happiness with wild abandon while denying the vast majority of the population the capacity to do the same, a system that reduces every year thousands of hard-working Americans to wage-slaves living one personal disaster away from abject poverty. Rather than allowing each American to consume whichever substances she deems most likely to affect positively her state of mind, her Happiness, we have: outlawed all but the most deadly, and mundane (alcohol and tobacco): routinely incarcerated individuals found to possess any substance other than these mundane and deadly few; funneled vast sums of money into the hands of pharmaceutical corporations that engineer and distribute street drugs under different names; deemed it wise to feed our children synthetic cocaine and synthetic amphetamines to help them succeed in school.
  Our government's efforts to live up the Declaration's promise of Safety are commendable, but without equally expansive efforts to bring about the Happiness of all Americans equally, the Safety efforts are for naught. In order for the American citizen to start down the Path to Happiness, three key requirements must be met: food, clothing, and shelter. Should these key requirements be in place, the individual will be able to determine the breadth of his abilities, which will then allow him to determine a way to support himself through the effortless expression of those abilities, otherwise known as Productive Happiness. Our current, capitalistic approach, is one that requires the individual to labor constantly in fields not necessarily optimally balanced against his abilities, thus keeping him from determining the parameters of his Happiness, from living a life of Happiness; capitalism in America therefore violates the second promise of the Declaration.
  For many reasons, this is not a desirable state of affairs. A tiny fraction of our population does not have the right to receive the fruits of the labors of a majority of that population. We cannot allow some drugs to be tolerated and others not. We cannot afford to waste the untapped potential of our citizens by providing them with no better place to express their abilities than from behind a convenience-store cash register. We cannot allow millions of American children to suffer daily from food insecurity (see here). We can and we must provide for the Safety and Happiness of all Americans equally.
  So, next time you see politicians fighting over whatever piece of legislation is on the table, write or call their offices and ask if the legislation in question brings about the Safety and Happiness of the greatest possible majority of American citizens. Together, we can realign our country with the dual promises of the Declaration of Independence. Together, we can unleash the great untapped potential that simmers within each of us. Together, we can fulfill the promises of Safety and Happiness first to each American equally, and then equally to all mankind.

Ultima Ratio Regum

John Paul Roggenkamp

on private property

or, On the individual's right to the body, the ultimate and irrefutable private property.

  Humans have bodies. Without the body, the human dies. There is no way to separate oneself fully from one's body without killing oneself. Therefore, the body is the only truly private property that man possesses. His house can be destroyed; his land taken from him; his car can crash; his clothes will fade and turn to rags; but, throughout his whole life, his body is always his private property, which by right of irrevocable possession he may affect as he pleases.
  If an individual decides to destroy her house, to smash up her car, to tear her clothes to ribbons, i.e. if she decides to do with her external private property as she sees best fit, no government agency will prevent her from altering or destroying her property unless said destruction and alteration should pose a threat to other people.
  In the United States of America, the use of external private property does not fall under federal jurisdiction, unless of course said usage poses a threat to others. Yet, the use of the ultimate private property, the body, does. It is illegal to introduce a great number of substances into the body, substances such as marijuana, cocaine, heroin et cetera, substances that can create feelings of euphoria and that expand the capabilities of the human mind. Instead of these entheogens (see here), Americans are allowed by the federal government to introduce into their bodies a number of other substances that excite the mind to a lesser extent, substances such as sugar, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, and salt. It is not illegal to consume these substances, although over-usage of same can and very often does lead to addiction, physical disease, and death.
  Caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine together kill tens of thousands of Americans every year (see here), yet their use is unrestricted, and the federal government does not raid the homes of people using these substances. If police officers suspect that someone is smoking weed, they sometimes conduct, in appalling violation of the Constitutional protections, what are known as a "no-knock warrants" (see here), in which the smoker's property (the door to his home) is destroyed and his peace is violated by the forced entry of heavily armed officers.
  Why is this individual's home being raided? To protect him from himself? To protect those who live around him from potential harm? On average, the marijuana smoker is not a violent person; his drug of choice makes him hungry, prone to conversation, and generally happy. The alcoholic is violent, abusive, and unpredictable, and would therefore be the person who is more likely to be a threat to himself and to those around him. But I doubt a single "no-knock-warrant" has been ever issued because someone was witnessed carrying a case of beer into his house.
  Americans must be allowed to choose for themselves which substances they want to consume. We are already allowed to buy drugs like alcohol and nicotine, drugs that destroy the body and that cause inestimable harm to individuals and their families. Perhaps the greatest harm ever caused by marijuana is the removal of the smoker from society to a prison cell. Imprisonment leads to criminalization. Imprisonment breaks apart families. Imprisonment forever reduces the individual to life as a second class citizen.
  Outlaw all substances or legalize them all. Anything else is hypocritical. Anything else violates the right of the individual to do with her private property as she sees best fit. Anything else violates the essence of the Declaration of Independence, the notion that government is established: "As to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
  The incarceration of non-violent drug offenders does not effect, or create, Happiness; it destroys Happiness.
  The prohibition on substances other than those deemed acceptable by a majority of the population is un-American. We must have the right to choose how we handle our ultimate private property, our bodies. We have the freedom: to eat too much sugar, too much salt; to drink too much booze; to smoke too many cigarettes.
  The freedom to consume these substances is literally killing us. Ergo, any argument claiming that the prohibitions on substances such as marijuana, cocaine, and opium exist to protect us from harm and death are completely invalidated.
  Outlaw them all, or legalize them all.
  Let the People find Happiness where they may.

Ultima Ratio Regum.

JPR 30APR2011

common

The only thing common to the common person is the capacity, kindled through schooling and set ablaze in the Pursuit of Happiness, to achieve the extraordinary. The State of California, by establishing and promoting the community college system, has proven this to be true, by elevating millions of her people to heights unknowable but a century ago. The exuberances of politically motivated, greed-based decisions that have cast her into dire straights aside, she has proven that there is little that ordinary people cannot do if given the tools with which to unleash the potential that lurks within us all.
To our elected officials: cutting school funding and waging endless war is not the way to make good on the pledge of the Declaration of Independence, that most supreme document that obliges you effect, or to bring into being, to create, the Safety and Happiness of the American citizenry. You must change you ways. Unleashing the power of learning on the populace is dangerous to any entrenched ruling class, for it fosters critical thinking and rational analysis; but, together, hundreds of millions strong, the Yankee can achieve an ecologically sound, sustainable evolution of mankind unlike anything you could, with your hearts set on monetary riches and personal power, possibly imagine. You have probably engaged us in wars to keep us in fear. You have likely funneled untold billions of taxpayer dollars into your pockets and into the pockets of your sycophants because you thought the People too stupid, too short-sighted to cry foul, but we have not been sleeping, nor have we not been watching. Revert now, reexamine your ways, and ask yourselves this: am I doing everything in my power to make the People Safe and Happy. Be honest. Squelch your money-lust, your rapacious need for material possession. It is not too late for the People, but you may well have gone too long without a taste of the blind rod of humility. You serve us, sirs and madams. Never forget that.

Ultima Ratio Regum.
John Paul Roggenkamp