on constitutional parameters

  The Constitution of the United States of America was established in Order to do just a few things: create a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. Therefore, the federal government of the United States exists for no other reason than to enact these six simple standards; the sole purpose for the continued existence of the U.S. federal government is to ensure that these parameters are met. Beyond the fulfillment of these few parameters, the federal government has no Constitutionally justifiable reason for existence.

  To public figures (such as Bachmann, Perry, Paul) demanding reductions in the scope of government (without considering the Constitutional parameters), the following services are essential to the realization of the parameters of our Constitution, and, as such, are secure in their continuing existence (until feasible replacements are developed):

  Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid promote the general Welfare;

  The state and federal judicial networks help to establish Justice;

  The state and federal police forces help to insure domestic Tranquility;

  The Constitution, as the common document that shapes the life of every inhabitant in this nation, helps to create a more perfect Union;

  The armed forces provide for the common defence.

  Excluded from this list, however, are the elusive and hard-to-quantify Blessings of Liberty. From liberty, the citizen crafts Happiness, serenity, and peace. Absent liberty, the citizen is reduced to the level of a dumb beast – she becomes a slave incapable of rational action or independent thought. She is restricted in her liberty when denied the right to abort an unwanted fetus. His liberty is destroyed when he is denied his inalienable right to his body, and to consume drugs of his choosing. She is restricted in her liberty when she is forced to abide by the tenets of a religion not of her choosing. His liberty is under siege when he is discriminated against because of the color of his skin, his religious practices, or because of the type of head-covering he wears.

  The freedom-loving inhabitants of this nation are forced to resort to the black market to obtain the substances they desire (such as cocaine, marijuana, and heroin), substances the American citizen has every right to consume (as drug-use affects his body, which is his property to dispose of as he sees fit). The good people of this land must consort regularly with shady and dangerous people who possess of quantities of drugs unobtainable in the legitimate markets. The upstanding citizens of these shores, they who would gladly buy their marijuana (and pay taxes on it) at their local drug store, must fear for their very Freedom every time they wish to pursue their Happiness by lighting up a joint.

  The individual American has, over the course of his life, proven willing and able to fulfill the parameters of the United States Constitution, regardless of the hurdles that government puts in his way. The American citizen is already living a life of liberty (by doing that which he pleases while not infringing upon the life, liberty, or property of anyone else, which is known as “minding his own business”), although he very often has to break existing laws to do so. Domestic terrorist plots foiled in their execution since September 11, 2001 were uncovered for the most part by average citizens who took upon themselves the responsibility of providing for the common defence. (Love and respect to our brave, heroic soldiers who sacrifice regularly, for the common defence, of their time and lives.) The peaceful people of this nation insure domestic Tranquility and establish Justice by going about their daily business with serene and glowing hearts, righting any wrongs they feel are theirs to right while ignoring other wrongs chronically, wrongs such as poverty and homelessness, wrongs that in their continued existence violate the right of each and every American person to be Safe and Happy.

  At its core, my argument is that every act by any type of government in America must fulfill, in some significant way, the parameters of the Constitution. Any legislation that directly violates these parameters, such as the Patriot Act, or the Controlled Substances Act, is unconstitutional. Once legislation is designed according to these parameters, and once all government action is balanced against this short list, our country will surely revert to the horrible messiness of pure and honest liberty.

場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on safety vs. liberty

  In America today, we face a simple choice: whether to fight for our freedom or to continue on our present course, and sacrifice freedom to the hollow lie of false security. (By false security I mean the efforts by our government to control the lives the American People by restricting what they do to their bodies, and by punishing them for pursuing Happiness or for exercising Liberty, efforts that mock and destroy the tender concept of freedom by trying to make it one-size-fits-all, when it is a messy, individualistic affair too easily ruined through external tampering.)

  We, the People of America, are not a free people. We have allowed our freedom to be taken from us. We have allowed, for forty (40) years, the Controlled Substances Act to destroy our freedom to choose what to do with our own bodies (thankfully, it is not yet illegal to get tattooed, or to undergo elective surgery, two activities that alter the body just as much as recreational drug use). We have allowed the Patriot Act to do violence to the Constitution, and to rob us of our once inalienable protections. We have allowed our police to focus on sidestepping our Constitutional protections (by letting them brow-beat citizens into body and property searches, and by letting the police lie, cheat, and steal in order to bust criminals engaged in non-violent “crimes”), a focus that negates police effectiveness and that forces them daily to violate their most sacred of oaths, as they have all sworn to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. (A police officer actively involved in persuading a citizen to give up his Constitutional protections is actively involved in destroying the U.S. Constitution.)

  We have allowed all these things to happen because we have allowed Fear into our hearts. When, in the early Seventies, we saw our crime rates rise, we blamed it solely on drug-use, and banned the use of certain substances (thereby robbing the American people of the right to dispose of their bodies any way they wanted), while not banning certain other substances – alcohol and cigarettes – substances that have maimed and murdered millions of America's sons and daughters. When faced with the consequences of our failed foreign policies (09SEP2011), we gave up our freedom, preferring to have our liberty violated by persons within our own government rather than to have it violated from without. For these reasons, we are no longer a free People. For these reasons, ours is no longer the land of the free (for Liberty knows few personal restrictions), nor is it the home of the brave (for the pure of heart rejoice always in their impending death: they fear only cowardice).

  In concurrence with the erosion of America's common dream, we have seen the erosion of our most basic and fundamental concepts. Our patriotism has been supplanted by conspicuous flag-waving and banner-hanging (very often in blatant violation of the code governing the treatment of the flag of the United States of America). Our secular morality has been high-jacked by the forces of religious conservatism (to become xenophobic proxy-racism). Gone are the days when we were told to fear nothing but fear itself: now we are told exactly what to fear, and that we have a whole lot more to fear that we ever thought we were capable of being afraid of. Our once-great traditions of story-telling and gung-ho, can-do enthusiasm have been tongue-lashed out of us by our corporate overlords; they have shriveled to almost nothing before the inexorable, terrible beauty of television.

  Brothers. Sisters. Fellow New Guards for our future Security. Now is the time for your voices to be heard. Now is the time to recover for our Posterity the promise of this land, and to free our constitutionally-guaranteed Liberty from the shackles of repression, religion, and fear.

  Freedom, much like democracy, is always messy: its expression will hurt someone else's feelings, every time. But as much sacrifice as freedom demands, it repays tenfold with deep, abiding confidence, with true and tender self-respect. So take a chance, and take your opinions known: it does not matter what you have to say, merely that you are saying it out loud, in full accordance with your Constitutional rights.

  It is easier, far easier, not to fight for the Blessings of Liberty that the Constitution guarantees: all we have to do is continue to do nothing, to let the enemies of freedom take from us the few liberties we have left.

  This cannot come to pass. Stand up. Speak out. Challenge everything.

p.s. congratulations to the United States Marine Corps for two hundred thirty six years of defending the liberty of the American people from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Libertatem Defendendam - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on acting like a bitch

The mentality of the average American voter bears certain resemblance to that of a skittish dog rescued from the pound. No matter her physical size or how well she is treated by her adoptive family, the canine will likely never shake the Fear put into her by her abusive former master(s). If when out walking she is spooked, she at times will shake off her leash and bound away at high speed, her face seeming to express an exuberant anxiety. Gracefully eluding all attempts at capture, one of the few options for bringing her back under control is to trick her into entering a vehicle (an action that normally means a trip to the park or some such thing). Once inside the vehicle, she forgets the potential for freedom unbound that lies but a quick tug of the head away, and allows the leash to be bound around her neck once again.
  So it is often with voters in this nation, especially with those who were so scared by the events whose ten year anniversary we will soon mark that they sat quietly by, cowed by Fear-driven propaganda into allowing the Patriot Act to pass unopposed, believing of the lies spewing forth from the suck-holes of power-hungry politicians desperate to expand their base, cheering as we joined the short-list of nations guilty of initiating a war of aggression, re-electing a president who forever tarnished America's long and honorable traditions by valuing the paltry benefits of enhanced interrogation over the unalienable and immutable Rights of the individual.
  A dog raised to fear is unlikely to shake its burden; an individual provided the opportunity to fear will settle gratefully into the welcoming cocoon that fear provides, forever ignorant of the beautiful savagery inherent to mankind, never doubting the actions or the rhetoric of persons claiming to have all the answers, forever trusting any individual who stokes the fires of that fear and who makes skin-deep promises that evaporate immediately upon re-election.
  When the conditions seem right, the voter is likely to break free and to dash about wildly, demanding changes in the status quo through the implementation of untested strategies championed as the solutions to our economic and societal woes, believing with exuberant anxiety in the clever deceptions of the heads shouting on TV, scrambling madly for the first door that promises even the faintest hint of Happiness only to succumb instantly, wild-eyed and out-of-breath, to fear's soothing grip as the shackles of ignorance and repression are calmly reapplied to the cardinal points of the soul.
  It is without question easier for the People to accept the oppressions to which they have become accustomed than for us to venture forth, without a backward glance or the slightest hesitation, in search of new Guards for our future Security. Unlike a tortured and skittish bitch, however, once we have broken free of the chains that have held us in check, we have the capacity to maintain that newfound freedom by consuming news from various unrelated sources, by being wary always of the power of propaganda, and by not forgetting for an instant that, as Frank Herbert said best in his book Dune, “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.”
  Fear in itself is a sufferable Evil, but fear employed by the highest powers as a tool for controlling the hearts and minds of the People is an Evil that has ceased to be sufferable. Freed from constriction, the mind is capable of feats far-reaching and grand, while a mind hobbled by perpetual paranoia functions similar to that of a broken, groveling beast who understands only the bite of the lash.

Speak freely. Stay vigilant. Spread liberty.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on rioting in oppressed nations

Since the fall of the autocratic government in Tunisia, there have been uprisings in other states in and bordering the African continent. Pundits and politicians point to efforts of past presidents or to wars of aggression waged in the region to explain this sudden increase in democratic expression.
I, however, will suggest different causes. I will suggest that the oppressed masses in a country ruled by a ruthless and authoritarian dictator (Egypt) who is supported by the United States of America (for purposes of the shadowy and ill-defined goal of regional stability) rose up on their own, without foreign intervention, for three reasons:
1) They are sick of living under the iron boot of a ruthless dictator who oppresses his population with America's tacit blessing
2) They do not wish to be invaded in another illegal war of aggression waged by the US when the American government decides that support of said dictator has become politically or economically unsustainable
3) They have decided that since American forces are bogged down in wars initially begun for self-serving reasons (control of Iraqi oil, punishment of terrorist in Afghanistan), and since America shows no sign of removing those regimes that truly oppress their people (most notably Saudi Arabia), any progress toward an open and democratic society must come from the downtrodden populace itself.
An old maxim reads: Something given has no value.
The Iraqis do not see the value of their democratic institutions because they did not ask for them in the first place.
The Afghanis do not see the value of democratic institutions because the system they have been running since Alexander the Great passed through over two thousand years ago worked; they saw no need to change their ways in order to accommodate an upstart political philosophy.
These uprisings are not signs of democracy's success; they are signs that, via social networking websites, individuals can change their world.
The United States is resembling more a police state, a society of rigidly enforced controls and widespread homogenization. What will happen when the people here, the millions upon millions of individuals who every year are extruded from the anus of the capitalist machine to wallow in a cold pit of washed-out excrement, what will happen when they call for change? Will our government welcome their demands with open ears and mind, or will it send in the riot cops and water cannons?
Democracy fails largely because people are not intrinsically equal. Simply put, some people are better than others. The way our system is set up here in America, those citizens with better connections or a better jumping off point will have better lives filled with more Happiness and greater Safety than those people without the skills or contacts or capital needed to excel.
Have we developed in harmony with the goals enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Is our government providing for the general Welfare and creating for all her citizens a world of Safety and Happiness? Can we honestly say that we live in a democratic society and not one run by the interests of the military-industrial complex and the massive intelligence gathering and law-enforcement communities? If there were riots in American streets, our country would eventually become more democratic. If there were masses of protesters screaming for the repeal of the Patriot Act, that foul and unconstitutional piece of legislation would be repealed. If our citizens risked their lives to speak, perhaps our senators would not fight so ferociously to maintain low taxes for the wealthiest three percent of all citizens.
We can only hope.
We can only read our founding texts and demand liberty, equality, and justice for all.
Ultima Ratio Regum.
JP

on the subtlety of fear

I am just come from the shores of the Old World, that stalwart mass whence many Americans trace their blood. I arrived still entrenched in the cold and calculating mindset in which I have spent many nights in the past seven years, a mindset of constant vigilance and persistent distrust for mister John Law. There I strode through the cobbled lanes of Amsterdam, that fine city on her Graachten, crop-dusting smoke, always changing locations, the senses trained for any sign of police, trapped in a latent and deep-seated modus operandi that had kept me (relatively) clear of the law for some time. Only slowly and via repeated conversation did I shed this fear and come to look on the cops as many Europeans do, as a bothersome but largely benevolent force tasked with assisting and serving the population.
Do we look on the police in these fine United States in the same way? Would you, as a pennyless beggar or down-on-his-luck fellow approach the cops and expect a sandwich and a warm place to sleep at night? Would you do as you pleased, pissing in the street and making a ruckus at all hours in a residential neighborhood, if you knew a police station were within the radius of a thrown stone? In the US, people do such things, but, ere long, they find themselves approached, questioned, or apprehended by the police. In Europe (at least in the larger cities), all these things are done regularly, in broadest day and darkest night, freely and without a second thought.
For lack of a less grand statement: What have we done to ourselves and to our country? Why have we acquiesced to injustices stemming from the Patriot Act and similar legislation designed to make us safer, sacrificing our liberty at the alter of a delusional sense of security? I am a sounding board in some ways, a shape-shifter who changes according to the immediate social surroundings, adjusting myself to the situation at hand, taking on the mores, hopes, and fears of those around me; and a few weeks into my stay, I realized that I had taken on the subtle fears of the greater American population, adjusted to the suspicions that pervade our land, acquiesced to the notion that the police are something to fear, that they have some sort of power over my state of mind, over my Happiness.
In this, I have erred grievously.
Again, I have erred grievously.
It is not for us to live in fear of the police, to hide our passions, to refrain from doing the things which give us joy or satisfaction, always keeping out a watchful eye for the uncouth, reporting to supposedly higher authorities that which we do not understand. My hat goes off to the brave men and women who wear their hair differently, who have tattoos, who dress in colorful thread, for those who are stared at when they walk down the street or followed through grocery stores.
We speak of freedom in this country, but I suspect that all this talking stems from the fact that we know, deep down, that our freedoms are being taken from us one by one, that we conform to the drugs society wants us to take so as not to draw attention, drugs that our states sell to us and allow to be sold, that this once free land is no longer that, but has become something altogether different.
I weep for my country, for these United States of America, for I have drunk of the nectar of a truly liberal society, and, having done and ingested and worn and said what I pleased, I have returned and seen with new eyes an increasingly militarized society, armed soldiers in train stations, police on every block, even the small towns riddled with cops, their gazes hard and menacing.
Is this the country our forefathers envisioned, a country marbled with fear of the unknown and of the unknowable (the true extent of a person's mind), a country that forces grandmothers from their wheelchairs to be frisked, a country where sickness (addiction) is treated as a crime, where the consumption of a freely-growing plant can land you behind bars?
We speak of our freedoms. We speak of the greatness of our country. And yet our prison are filled to capacity, our police officers have automatic weapons, and our new national past-time is, of all the lame and pointless things, shopping.
Recently, federal officers, agents representing the state, attempted to force me into confessing to a crime I did not commit. Although they did not use physical force (beyond detaining me for a short period of time), only methods of coercion and intimidation, I fear now that was my last straw, that point at which I had finally had enough, the point at which I am ready to leave these verdant shores in search of more liberal pastures. For when a Son of the American Revolution, a man with the shield of the American Union inked indelibly into his flesh, a 9-11 volunteer, when that man, after a brief repose to foreign lands, upon his return no longer feels at home in the country he loves and yearns for those distance places, it is at that time that his government has failed him, failed the very people for whom they are supposed to bring into existence Safety and Happiness (according to the Declaration of Independence, our society's bedraggled and ignored blueprint).
Shining Liberty has been cast out into the darkness; Restriction and Suspicion have taken her place at the nation's table.
In our modern America, we are not free in the sense of true liberty, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves to the contrary. We have allowed our government to fail us, and have made a mockery of our once fine society, preferring a torn umbrella of supposed security to the cleansing downpour of freedom.
Woe is unto the world, our nation is dying at the core.
May we find some way to save her. Hold out, fair Columbia, for all may not yet be lost.

Ultima Ratio Regum.
John Paul Roggenkamp