declaration of corporate supremacy

  When in the course of pursuing Profits it becomes necessary to formulate the rules by which the people shall live, and to remind them for whom it is they toil, We, the assembled Capitalists and Corporations headquartered in but not paying taxes to these united states of America, ignoring of the opinions of mankind, declare that the economic well-being of our Executive Boards and Voting Members by far outweighs the people's constitutional right to safety and happiness. The original declaration of independence, that document upon which the united states was founded, those words that failed to grant mankind the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that scroll is a dead and worthless document – its declaration of unalienable rights is null and void, and its ability to define the role of government as the sole agent charged with making the American people safe and happy was long ago buried under heaping shit-piles of our Avarice and Greed.

  We enforce through police action the following Truths: that a few hundred thousand Americans shall receive the most of the profits generated by all of the other Americans working hard every day; that We have the right to speculate with and to put at risk of loss the monies entrusted to us by the people, and that We shall be safe behind our high walls when our speculations fail and millions lose their hard-won gains, our ill-begotten riches guaranteed and protected for us by the federal government; that our risky businesses shall in cases of bankruptcy and financial failure receive unlimited financial bailouts from the federal government; 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 that maim them by the millions.

  Additionally, We hold: that imprisoning individuals in for-profit prisons that We own and run for the crime of consuming drugs other than those that we sell is proper government practice; that the federal government should wage endless war against unseen foes (see the war on terror) in order for us to manufacture, develop, and sell it arms and weaponry, even though We know that the only sure way to win these wars would be to force everyone on Earth into concentration camps and to forcibly lobotomized them there; that We shall through unscrupulous and otherwise fraudulent advertising convince the people that unbridled consumerism and unchecked personal debt are the bedrock of the American dream, and that Happiness does not grow from within or that it is not a fragile state of mind that blossoms from patience and self-understanding but that it is something you cram into your wallet or pocket-book, something that you spend in our shopping plazas, something that you spend on useless items that are little more than clutter.

  Furthermore, We declare: that it was our patriotic duty to abandon the American manufacturing sector in favor of foreign shores, and that We served the motherland well by sacrificing the jobs of millions of our countrymen to boost our Profit-Margins; that We shall force children to work as slave-laborers in free-economic-zones located around the globe; that We have bestowed upon the unemployed American citizen the privilege of buying cheap goods that break soon after they are first used; that We have the Right, regardless of the complaints of tree-hugging hippies, to rape and to destroy the land for short-term gain, to poison the streams with runoff from our mines, to clear-cut the once-great forests for export, and to pump the animals We sell you as food full of steroids and antibiotics rather than to provide 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 keep the human rabble blessedly quiet and contented throughout its pitiful and mostly worthless lives; that We shall run our corporate societies not as democracies but as totalitarian fiefs while convincing our workers that through hard and dedicated labor they might reach the highest rungs of our bogus organizations, while, in reality, they shall, 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 by appropriating this nation's wealth we would violate the Constitutional directive of promoting the general Welfare, although, by funneling the collective wealth of all Americans into the pockets of our cronies and fellow oligarchs, We shall 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 the Insatiable Hag of Materialism, to those 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 comforting Shriek of Lies. We rejoice in the violation of the flimsy protections once but no longer afforded the America people by the Constitution.

  All this We pledge, and more: We have the means to lobby the Legislature for our own gain; We have the money with which to live comfortably for ten lifetimes even though millions of American children go to bed hungry each night; We have convinced the people that consumption is preferable to ingenuity, that watching TV is preferable to creative expression or the telling of stories, and that the formula for happiness starts with a dollar sign and ends in a decimal point. We, therefore, the capitalists and corporations headquartered symbolically 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 99% of all Americans shall toil ceaselessly to make us, those of the remaining One Percent, rich beyond reckoning, that government is instituted not to secure the Rights of the people but to satisfy the whims of the Few, and that the people may neither alter nor abolish the system of federal government that long ago forsook and abandoned them in order to satisfy the needs of its wealthiest few subjects, and that it is too late to change things now, because the people waited too long to act out against our blatant and flagrant transgressions.

  So suck it, you hard-working American fools, and while you are sucking it good and hard, remember that you long ago gave up those inalienable rights that your ancestors fought and died to secure for you.

  Signed, this Wednesday in 2012, by

  GFYS

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

a a a

all Americans are liars; I am an American

re: v-day

v-day stands for victory day, as in victory over Hitler in the European theater, not for Valentine's day, and anyone who confuses the two is capitalism-addled unpatriotic scum

x

o o s

to occupy all streets ride bicycle

In Allah We Trust

  the official motto of the United States of America is In God We Trust. No specific god is mentioned, and therefore our motto could mean In Ganesha We Trust, In Wednesday We Trust, In Allah We Trust, etc.

場黑麥

s c m

even seasoned cocks make rookie mistakes

read this, smokers of tobacco

  Additional cigarette-smoking permits available – act now, limited numbers available. The California Department for the Restriction of Freedom (CDRF) has printed additional permits for persons seeking to smoke tobacco in public. It is illegal to simply light up, and citizens interested in sparking that cancer-stick on the street are advised to initiate the proper paperwork necessary to start the arduous process of obtaining one of these permits.

  In a press release issued today the CDRF stated that it restricts the liberty of the tobacco-smoking population in this fashion in hopes of silencing complaints from marijuana smokers, those violent and vociferous vagrants who grovel gladly before the CDRF for permission to pursue their Happiness. To insure the domesticTranquility and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to all citizens equally, smokers of any type of tobacco must henceforth obtain permits before they shall be allowed to smoke in public their preferred substance.

  The elected leaders of the State of California and the appointed heads of the Department for the Restriction of Freedom began using the permit system when they discovered they could deliver vast profits to their prison-owning cronies by outlawing the use of addictive substances other than those sold or regulated by the State itself (prescription medication, alcohol, sugar). In addition to printing this batch of new tobacco-smoking permits, the CDRF is accepting applications from individuals seeking to drink coffee in public, from people wishing to gain or to lose body-weight, to cut their own hair, or to prepare their own food, and from citizens seeking to possess and to read books. Act now – limited numbers available.

  - reporting for The Violent & Vociferous Vagrant is HELLO MY NAME IS WHORPHAN

Spes Mea In Ratio Est | 場黑麥

n's g

nature's god is a self-ordering chaotic universe

- 場黑麥

tilla was

a peck of tilla was shunned today in the county courthouse, causing the assembled to panic

on a new preamble

  As the citizens of America already suffer daily of the effects of the corporation-oriented, profit-at-all-cost form of capitalism that currently rules their country, the preamble to the U.S. Constitution shall from now on read:

  We who control the most wealthy and powerful organizations in the history of mankind, we the all-powerful Corporate Executives, in order to silence Dissent, sidestep Justice, appropriate for ourselves the wealth of the Commons, and secure for Ourselves and Our offspring alone the Blessings of Liberty, do declare that the federal government is to us financial life-raft, attack-dog, and sniveling underling, that rules and laws do not apply to us (and if they were to, that we have the money to buy a way out of trouble), and that we shall not give up our privileges without a fight (which we would win, since we have the money to bury a motherfucker like you ten times over).

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

any tongue

America has no official tongue, no official language, and therefore any tongue is America's tongue.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on indirect representation

  When the Constitution of the U.S.A. was written, news took weeks to travel from one city to the next; it was necessary for a representative to be chosen to assuage the mood of the people around him and to decide for those people great and pressing matters at places distant and inconvenient to reach.

  In our modern time, however, news travels at the speed of light, and the citizens can speak to one another at any time and in any place, and they can be called upon, individually and instantly, for their opinion on great and pressing matters. The system of representative democracy under which America currently suffers grants political power to a small number of individuals who are in anything but name the princes of this republic. Individuals who have power will be corrupted invariably by that power. Therefore, we need to draw up a new Constitution, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to us shall seem most likely to effect our Safety and Happiness.

  The People shall be Safe and Happy when no single person holds power over a nation.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on US elections

  The president of America is selected by individuals sent to the Electoral College by the individual states. Since the American people do not elect their own president, why do they care so much about which poor bozo gets the job?

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

encylopediamericanifesto: panem et circenses

  Beyond its propensity for outright hostility against citizens loyal to the rightfully elected government of the United States, the military-industrial complex and its cohorts in the rapacious plutocracy has done injustice to the fed and to the American people alike in that instead of clever or devious tactics it prefers as the tool to craft for the ages a new order an ancient Roman method called panem et circenses.

  A ruling body exercises panem et circenses, or bread and circuses, by attempting to control the rage of an urban population using compelling, addictive entertainment and delicious, cheap food. The typical city dweller in ancient Rome resembled the modern homeless person in appearance and in morals both – by all accounts, he was as likely to be sexually promiscuous as he was to binge drink, and if he could drink and fuck while watching gladiators fight to the death, he was contented. But the modern urbanite is rich, and so he pays good money to watch the circuses on TV at his home, where he will eat from paper bags a meal of fast food suffused with fat and sugar that was prepared for him by silently desperate wage-slaves. The urbanite does these things because he is a good boy, and because good boys follow the rules – he watches the commercials and he buys all the useless and superfluous crap, and he does not mind that his conspicuous and incessant consumption (and that of his semi-affluent cohorts) makes only 0.05% of the US population wealthy beyond imagining. The richest of the rich, this group is comprised of those individuals who own television companies and fast food chains: it stacks chips like a boss while the remainder of the population, the 99.5%, descends into orca-fat obesity and chronic laziness.

  But it is not enough for the Point Oh Five to control the messages you hear and see or to dictate which foods you eat – these Rapacious Plutocrats have wrested the shaping of a new order for the ages from the federal government of the United States of America (which is the agent selected by Destiny to be the perpetrator of the whole Shaping a New Order for the Ages business). The people who own the TV stations and the fast food shacks become rich beyond reckoning upon the backs of the wretched citizens who fork over their meager wages to keep themselves sated of food and to spend their time staring at images dancing on a magic box.

  While the fed has at times acted foolishly, I place more of my trust in it than in a cadre of individuals whose minds are so twisted with the pulsing whorish thrust of money that their balance-sheets matter more than the vitality and diversity of the American people.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

unstoppable lawsuit to roll forward

  Affluent Tanzanian silk merchant Mr. Nelcott Surklin commenced with a false-advertising lawsuit against the producers and distributors of the movie Unstoppable (starring Denzel Washington & Chris Pine), claiming that in the movie the train stops before the ending without having destroyed much of anything.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on novus ordo seclorum

  Every American dollar bill bears the slogan novus ordo seclorum, Latin for New Order for the Ages. The federal government of the United States (the fed) persecutes this new order in hot and cold military conflicts, and by wagingwar on those of its own citizens who would consume drugs other than those it itself licenses or sells.

  Regardless of whether you are American or not, and if you are, whether or not you vote: if you handle US currency, and if you conduct business with it, you give your tacit consent to the aims printed on the American greenback – if you use dollar bills, you perpetuate and maintain this new order for the ages. (I have followed with interest efforts in economically struggling communities to switch to location-specific para-currencies, efforts which seem to nullify the paper money printed by the US Treasury.) In the not too distant past, the fed faced oppressive and mass-murdering dictators that it had to destroy, which required it to reorder its economy and to draft its mission statement anew. By consequence the world was also ordered anew, and the smaller players held their breath as clear battle lines emerged, and as nuclear missile silos sprouted in the Urals, and in the Midwest.

  The outline of this new order began to change in the 1970s, when the fed abandoned the gold standard, causing the US Dollar to decline. Then, it changed the rules for financial regulation, allowing for rampant and destructive speculation, so that now the two hundred and fifty thousands of Americans who speculated best (the Point Oh Five) control the corporate structures that in turn control most aspects of society. But it is the duty of the federal government to shape a new order for the ages, and no other party – not the 0.05% nor the military-industrial complex – can manifest the destiny of this nation with the sort of extreme prejudice and blind dedication needed to finish the job.

  Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

encylopediamericanifesto - phaltworthiness

  The street art vagabond has sworn to preserve for Posterity the diversity of graffiti – it is her duty to capture, isolate, and upload photographs of any urban artwork she locates by bicycling or walking or skating around a city. Looking, however, does not always slake her thirst: in order to perpetuate the phenomenon of artwork that seems to appear suddenly on previously unadorned urban surfaces, and to prove her passage through the area, she leaves her unique mark, a hand-drawn image that serves as her Glyph of Personal Identification, her own meager tribute to the maddeningly prolific beautification campaign known as street art (or, alternately, as vandalism).

  The urban artist spends resources such as time and money on his efforts to fill the urban environment's many empty spaces with colorful and bizarre pictures; for his troubles he is hounded by police and harassed by them likewise. In addition to such acts of state-mandated repression, he suffers from repeated and chronic bouts of a newly classified condition known as phaltweariness (the individual suffering from this condition will commit frequent acts of frugality and self-sacrifice; his actions will reek of virtuous behavior; he will act not out of a desire to prove himself to another person, or to claim for himself glory, but because the majesty of the human spirit has rewarded his sacrifice of time and self by filling him with a transcendent vigor not seen since the dawn of humankind).

  No grasp as fleeting as that of Big Brother might contain, however, the inexorable and all-nullifying tempest that is Virtuous Action. The street art vagabond therefore who hurls without ado the bounty of her artistic labor upon the phaltscape's expectant canvasses while showcasing freely upon w³  her fellow street artists' work (where it shall be judged and ignored until all servers crash at once), she who does these things simply because they need doing, she who refuses to claim ownership over any part of the process, that street artist is phaltworthy – she acts for the good of the world by leaving well enough alone.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

encylopediamericanifesto: phaltweariness - dehydration

  Among the many serious dangers the smog rider faces daily is the risk of dehydration. A condition easy to overlook but deadly if ignored, the body's dehydration distress call resembles closely the distress call it makes to signal hunger; additional telltale signs of dehydration are crankiness and fatigue. A few reports say that within smog rider packs it is common for the incessantly whining and inexplicably binge-eating member to be forced to hydrate by the IPM (the Instant & Perpetual Militia, i.e. the smog-packs' ubiquitous, fully meritocratic agents of enforcement), however our trust in the source for these reports is shaken.

  Multiple trustworthy sources report that when cycling in desert climates the smog rider adjusts his body to the local variances for temperature and humidity, a somewhat risky process in which he trains his body to need less water than it needs in more northern-lying areas. The first step he takes in this process is to eat of the local soil, and to pledge his fealty to the spirits of the land, and to praise the things growing in it, and to celebrate the things scampering across its face (a curious custom akin to the practices of First People tribes). Once he has ingested of the local earth, he cuts back on water gradually until he needs only a liter of it a day, and perhaps a few ounces more if he should exercise vigorously.

  An active person and avid reader alike, the smog rider learned some of the eternal lessons of the desert by reading tales about Rommel and Lawrence of Arabia, tales of Westerners surviving in the desert on minimal amounts of water using methods they learned from the Bedouin people. (In fact, he considers himself deep down an adjunct member of the hard-scrabble group of desert dwelling bad-asses know as the Fremen, from in Frank Herbert's book Dune.)

  But he is not Fremen, and he is not Bedouin – he is a smog-riding street-art vagabond, a man free of scorn and haste whose heart is pure, and in whom there is no room for death.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on phaltweariness - the automobile

  Today's city streets are pitted and rough as if mauled by large and powerful beasts, and the souls of the people who drive upon are similarly abused. Aggression and impatience descend without fail upon the poor buggers who drive upon today's maligned avenues.

  We the Smog Riders of the America Phaltscape (the asphalt landscape) look often with pity upon our neighbors of the road, they who spend long hours strapped tightly to chairs which are in turn bolted to the floors of a tiny metal boxes. After spending years in such torturous environments, they will have forgotten the satisfaction of moving their own bodies through space/time using nothing other than living muscle and some metal tubes bolted to a pair of pneumatic tires. Rather than the good sweat that stands upon the skin of the bicyclist after a healthy cross-town slog, the sweat of the car driver will be distressed and foul, an oozing sheen that tends to creep through his furrowed brow as he worries about the skyrocketing price of petroleum.

  The smog riding street-art vagabond knows as well to avoid paying for petrol as she does to remain always vigilant of the withering and debilitating affects of phaltweariness – it is her duty to preserve the chaotic super-abundance of Street Art, and to record for Posterity as much of it as she can. To fulfill this task, and to keep her feet on the pedals, she has learned the limits of her body's tolerance for dehydration, pain, and exhaustion, and she knows how to make herself well again.

  Given the phaltweariness, the stressed out drivers, and the miles spend cycling through the phaltscape, how does the vagabond capture every unique work of street art that is at risk of being torn down as soon as it goes up? She does not. But she does what she can do, photographing what pictures might cross her path with the road grit fouling her mouth and a song filling her heart.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on simplicity in cycling

  Increasing numbers of urban bicyclists are abandoning multi-gear propulsion systems in favor of less complex mechanisms with fewer moving parts. In theory, a mechanical system with few moving parts is less prone to failure than a system with many moving parts, as the more complex system contains more elements that could fail (think of the many levers, wires, and gear-wheels on a ten-speed bicycle compared to the single gear-wheel on a child's bike). Among the individuals rediscovering the fixed-gear or single-gear propulsion system are urban bicycle messengers.

  The rugged and far-ranging operator known as the bicycle messenger traverses dozens of miles of urban landscape in varying weather conditions carrying heavy and unwieldy packages on her back. In her effort to maximize her workable hours by reducing repair- and maintenance-related down time, the bike messenger put to use one of the most simple bicycle-specific propulsion systems she could find – the fixed-gear.

  While the simplicity and reliability of the fixed-gear propulsion system has gained wide popularity in recent years, I have re-discovered an even more simple system for propelling myself forward by bicycle – by pushing off with the foot from vertical surfaces or from the ground. While perusing randomly a tome-like dictionary at Central Library, I stumbled across a picture of the early bicycle, upon which the rider moves forward by pushing off from poles, hydrants, curbstones, etc.

  In this picture we can see that the device is missing standing-fins upon which the operator might rest his feet and balance (which would be included on a modern design). There is no mechanical propulsion system, and the wheels roll freely in any direction. On the one hand, this device is merely a large, steerable scooter upon which the operator can sit; the omission of a propulsion system other than the kicking leg may be too much for the velocipedist who faces hills or whose routes lack vertical surfaces. On the other hand, urban environments are filled with vertical surfaces the operator might kick from (electrical poles, parking meters, and street signs, to name a few), and most of Earth's cities are flat and covered with layers of asphalt (which makes for a smoother ride).

  People with whom I have spoken have voiced their disdain for the fixed-gear bicyclist – they claim he has retreated too far into the bicycle's past. They deride him for seeming to have abandoned needlessly the improvements made to Baron von Drais' original design. Perhaps, however, the smog-riding bike messenger he has not retreated far enough.

  Long live the vondrais!

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on Waring Ave., Los Angeles CA

if you love to cycle, with vigor, rage, and daring, then don't be a psycho - head south and mash Waring

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

encylopediamericanifesto entry - phaltweary II

   Persons suffering from phaltweariness tend to make calls, whoops, war-whoops, cat-calls, hoots, whistles, hollers, brays, and shouts loudly and often. Making loud noises with the speaking organ saves lives – absent a car's horn, uttering a piercing blast of blood-curdling gibberish is a proper way for a cyclist to signal to a nearby motor-vehicle operator that he is about to be cut off mercilessly. As to the general appearance of a peedubser (phaltweariness sufferer):

  His sun-dazzled eyes will dance with a light of their own, especially at night; his phaltburnt lips will be cracked and fissured; his dry tongue will grate across the roof of his mouth; and from his throat will issue forth a cry so foul, so loathsome, as to make the even the most wicked human among us tremble with abject loathing.

  The peedubzer will sound a signature call regardless of audience, circumstance, or location – although she war-whoops to signal lane changes and close calls alike, by yelling she loosens briefly the fetters upon her soul, her vitality radiant and pure, with every joyous breath celebrating life's fleeting tumble.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est – 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

encyclopediamericanifesto entry - phaltweariness

  Phaltweariness is a state of fatigue caused by bicycling for many kilometers on sun-baked city streets. The phaltweary person is known to go to bed easily, to sleep well through the night, and to exhibit a healthy and flexible physique. People suffering from PW (the peedubs, the phaltweariness) will experience aching muscles, 1000 yard stares, and prolonged periods of wild-eyed, fundamental indifference.

  While any avid bicyclist will occasionally encounter PW, phaltweariness affects the street art vagabond in particular, that isolated individual who prowls the Earth's cities on foot or on bicycle taking pictures of street art and uploading those pictures to the available data networks. Although the forces of homogeneity and societal control look upon him with blatant mistrust, the street art vagabond labors to perpetuate and to preserve for posterity as digital photographs the beautiful diversity of posters, stickers, paintings, and other graffiti that constitute the global Street Art movement.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est – 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on ambitions in cash

  During a recent conversation about the merits of socialism, my counterpart argued that ambition, ingenuity, and creativity would disappear in the absence of monetary remuneration for labor. In other words, he claimed that people would stop working if they stopped getting paid money to work, that ambition would vanish if the potential for gain were to also vanish. If this theory were true, fathers would stop showing up to coach their kids' little league teams, our interstate hiking trails would become overgrown for a lack of volunteers to keep them cleared of brush, and nothing would transpire within the walls of churches other than those tasks performed by paid clergy.

  Unknowable man-hours of labor are performed every year in the United States for which the laborers are not paid. This labor is performed to satisfy an ideal, to give back to the community, even to calm that deep inner need to do something positive with which the unlucky among are burdened. I believe this zeal to provide for the common good is inherent to all persons (although most of us have it stamped or beaten out of us at one point or other in our lives). I also believe that our current economic system has ensnared this zeal, and subjugated it to the fleeting, hollow satisfaction of conspicuous consumption.

  It is not as if the people are bad, or shiftless, it is that we have unlearned to cherish those things that are precious beyond their monetary value.

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 the goddess Liberty, a deity from times of old whom the American people have adopted fully. 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.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on francophobia

  A scourge has been spreading throughout these United States – the love of things French! Also known as francophilia, this adoption of French customs has infiltrated our cafeterias as french-fries and as Pasteurization; it has crept into our language as adopted words, among them respondez s'il vous plait (RSVP), a-la-carte, reason, arrest, and blonde. For the love of the flesh yet clinging to my bones, our President Alexander Hamilton even spoke this foul language while he held office.

  In order to purify our society of the remnants of this most dangerous of influences, we must do more than change our french fries to freedom fries – we must excise from the annals of history the names of Hamilton and of any other American, living or dead, who at any point was even suspected of being able to speak the tongue of those cowardly frog-eating bastards. Anything less would fall short of our stated goals, among which we count the cleansing of foreign contamination from our society. Only through vigilance might we prevail.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on LA, briefly

  I love LA. My fluids suffuse her soils, yet she always provides spoils. Too easily she drags me in, enticing me with perfect asses, teasing me with furtive glances, breaking my heart a thousand times a day, my own insecurities and fears amplified against the foul tympanum of her heaving cracked pavement. Within her envelope I walk and wander gladly, casting about clumsily for the dim remnants of tenacious glory, my eyes grating like those of a madman, my soul zigzagging between high elation and base surrender. She knows me as would my mother, yet she denies me all but that which I might truly obtain.

  Bear with me, courageous readers. I am not yet over my culture shock, and shall resume my regular posting schedule when it has abated.

  Sincerely, JP

americansFIRST

  I am hereby announcing a new nomenclature for all Americans, one that, by addressing the individual directly and his or her status as a member of this nation before addressing his or her race or skin color, will hopefully be a more equalizing and egalitarian form of address than the forms in use currently.

  Instead of saying African-Americans, or referring to people whose skin color is somewhat darker than that of the majority, as "black," let us refer to them as "Americans of African descent." Instead of saying "whites," let us refer to these people as Americans of European descent (their skin color is more pink than white, anyway). In cases where there are multiple origins of descent, let us say Americans of Mixed descent.

  Since we Americans have a hard time abandoning completely the use of "race" as a primary identifier, perhaps this new nomenclature can help smooth our transition to a more egalitarian coexistence.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est – 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

occupy, sons of liberty

  The Sons of Liberty were active starting in 1765, eleven years before the collective colonial bodies agreed to declare their independence. For eleven years they risked life and limb in order to liberate their fellow citizens from the yoke of oppression. At the time, our forefathers were fighting against an aggressive occupation by a foreign regime that had become blind to, deaf to, and destructive of, the rights and liberties of the people of this land. Now it has come to pass that the government of the USA has become blind to, deaf to, and destructive of, the rights and liberties of the people of this land.

  What would these brave people say about the state of affairs in our current time? I hazard that they would gape in shock at the level of control under which the population is held. I believe they would cry foul of the inordinate rights and privileges (near total immunity from prosecution, tax breaks, a lopsided economic system that redirects the wealth generated by the labor of all Americans into the pockets of but a few Americans) granted to private interest. I trust that our founders did not sally valiantly into the night so that we, their Posterity, could eat fast food, get fat, and drive around, lazily, in gas-burning cars because our city planners failed to plan for public transportation.

  Dig in, comrades of the Occupy movement, and know that our efforts will require time, patience, and sacrifice. It may take us eleven years, and it may take us eleven times eleven years, but we shall prevail!

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on the pagan power of capitalism

  Capitalism, with all its evil and all its ills, has had one definitely positive affect on American society: to rid our pagan holidays of religious contamination. Neither morality nor meaning matter in the eyes of capitalism – the only thing that matters is making more money. For example: capitalism has freed the ancient holiday of goddess Eostre from the clutches of biblical oppression. As a holiday that once celebrated that goddess who makes women fertile (and the land grow green again), the festival we now know as Easter was high-jacked by religious forces and co-opted for their own narrow uses. In the last half century, however, the ever-grasping paws of capitalistic greed have freed Easter from the Shackles of Scripture, so that we once again celebrate lustful procreation (symbolized by the rabbit) and the return of the teeming things (symbolized by daffodils and other such flowers).

  Similarly, the holiday of the winter solstice, an occasion that has been marked throughout the centuries with lights mounted on pine trees. This holiday was taken hostage by the forces of Christianity, forces that bastardized the logical marking of the passage of time and tied it to the fictitious birth of a fictitious god in a land far removed in time and space. The passing of the winter solstice was only recently liberated by the uncaring hand of capitalism – an emphasis on Santa Claus and the profuse giving of gifts has replaced, thankfully, the (biblically) unspecified day upon which a young lady gave birth, in a (biblically) unspecified structure, in an (biblically) unspecified place, to a male child. (The story of Jesus is a precise retelling of the story of Horus, an Egyptian god born of a virgin who died only to arise from death after three days.) Now, instead of worshiping some stagnant and foreign godhead, during the darkest days of winter we celebrate the coming-together of loved-ones, and shower them with presents as a sign of our affection. Gone are the days of the churchly mandate – capitalism has finally, and for good, removed Christ from Christmas.

  And, most importantly (to me, at least), the uncaring and voracious greed of capitalism has removed any shred of religiosity from the delightfully pagan holiday of Halloween. What started as a heathen ritual to mark the beginning of winter was commandeered by Christian forces, who turned it into All Saint's Day, on which day only the dead of that religion were praised (in effigy). After centuries of suffering under the cruel, stifling blanket of this biblical slavery, Halloween has been dragged from its prison by the ever-hungry maw of monster-capitalism. Gone are the days when Americans celebrated the Christian dead – arrived are the days when we Americans celebrate inventiveness and the ability to take a good scaring, when we shower upon the children of the land many sweet gifts, when we might, for one short night, become someone other than our boring normal selves. (The proliferation of Halloween as a national holiday was made possible by profit-hungry corporations that recognized in it a way to sell cheap, Chinese-made costumes.)

  While I generally abhor capitalism for its tendency to make only a small portion of the American people rich, I celebrate it now for freeing our shared and common history from the clutches of religious oppression. We can ill afford to live according to the rules of a lost tribe of desert people, so it is fitting that the forces of our chosen economic model are wiping our history clean of religious contamination.

  The next time you are carving up a lamb on Easter, remember horny old Eostre, and give your spouse a long, lingering kiss. When you find yourself stringing lights on a tree, remember to go outside and enjoy the longest night of the year. As you are putting the finishing touches on an elaborate and dazzling costume, remember that its job is to scare away the sickness-bringing forces of the impending long cold darkness. Thanks to the religious impartiality of our capitalistic system, you can enjoy these events without being forced to fear the wrath of some jealous, vengeful godhead.

  America is not a Christian nation, nor was it in any way founded upon the Christian faith. Neither easter nor the winter solstice were originally Christian holidays – these pagan rituals were commandeered in order to facilitate the spread of one set of religious teachings. Just how non-Christian is America? We honor the Roman god Saturn on Saturday. On Wednesday, we remember the Norse god Wotan, and on Thursday, his son-brother Thor. In the harbor of New York there stands a large statue of the Roman goddess Libertas (whom we call Lady Liberty), a goddess who holds in one hand the Torch of Progress, in the other a representation of our most treasured of documents, the Declaration of Independence.

  Everywhere in this great land we witness the chaotic jumble of different faiths and systems of belief, all tumbling together and jostling to retain the slightest shred of relevancy. May the uncaring grasp of our institutionalized greed continue to keep American society free of religious one-mindedness! Thank you, lustful and rapacious Capitalism, you old sport, for doing you part to keep America jumbled, confused, and oppression-free.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on my loss of faith

  My parents were both Lutherans. My father was a pastor, my mother a devout follower of the same religion. From birth until my fourteenth birthday (at which point I rebelled more openly) I was for most of my life either in a church, on my way to a church, or otherwise engaged in some sort of churchly activity. Among my earliest memories outside of wild animal encounters as a toddler take place in churches. I sang my first public solo, (at the age of ten years) on Christmas Eve, to a packed house, at a church in Shamokin, Pennsylvania.

  All around me were devout and loyal Lutherans who all sang the same songs in the same fashion at the same times of year, their practices unchanging from one decade to the next. While I, in general, have no problem with people engaging in religious practice, I realized recently (after deep and introspective thought) that I had abandoned my own faith at a very young age. My belief in an invisible god, as well as any respect I might have had for the doctrine of the Lutheran church, those things faltered as early as the age of six or seven; by my teens, they were long gone. It is well that I was a shy and quiet child – if I had told anyone about my doubting, they would likely have forced me into re-education classes, so as to keep me enslaved to The Church. (I have never believed that thinking “bad” thoughts, doubtful thoughts, would get me in trouble with a godhead whose main message is love, forgiveness and compassion; thankfully, I recognized at a comparatively young age my fellow Lutherans' fear of eternal damnation for what it truly is: a thinly-veiled effort by the church hierarchy to keep the people in the pews hating themselves for sinning, and begging the pastor to do something about it.)

  I was a young boy standing in a front-row pew watching my father perform the service. I can remember looking at all the people around me, their heads bowed, their lips moving in unison, and I thought they were all going to look up at some point to spring the joke and laugh. I can recall looking at those docile individuals standing in that wood-paneled church, looking at them and bouncing the backs of my legs against the dark wood of the church's benches while laughing to myself quietly. I have since that time not stopped laughing at and mocking any organized religion that happens to cross my path. The complexity and self-contradictory nature of the thousands of different teachings found in the Christian bible had become overwhelmingly foreign to me at that young age, so foreign and confusing that I knew, in my deepest of knowing-places, that they could not all be true. At that young age, for some reason, I was able to see through the smoke-screen of canon and verse, and pluck from the brambles of dogma the few tender fruits of pure and honest meaning. In time, I have been able to utilize these fruits outside of the framework of the artificial, and inherently corrupted, structure of organized religion. (I wish sometimes that I had not lost faith, that I could somehow become faithful again, and believing, that I could abandon perpetual doubt, that I could once again with impotent fury shake a fist at the sky and curse the god who made me, but I do not believe in an external god, only in the Majesty of the Human Spirit – I hold myself responsible for my place in the world; I fix my problems instead of bitching about them.)

  Of course, standing in that church and doubting quietly, I feared Yahweh, that terrible and jealous god whom I had been taught from birth to fear with abject and abiding terror. Once I had in my own mind mocked him and laughed at him and shown him my young and tender behind, however, I realized that the might of His Wrath (an emphasis on paternalism pervades the Christian bible to the point that I am shocked that any woman would practice that faith willingly) existed only in myth, or in the tales of old. I knew at the age of seven years that religious indoctrination was very much a form of mental slavery, and I was abhorred by the fear-mongery and intimidation used by most organized religions to perpetuate their existence.

  Now, many years later, I am so very happy with my young self for his brave and clandestine decision to rebel quietly against the culture within which he had been so enmeshed. That seemingly simple act of doubt, along with Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching, has helped me to find the path to inner peace, to primal simplicity, to a life without need for self-aggrandizement or self-justification; now, the action is the goal. I let the chips fall where they may, no longer constrained by the stultifying and stagnant framework of a desperate and failing religious organization. Now, my mind is free and elastic, while my heart is empty and still.

  Three cheers for doubt, and for quiet and patient rebellion.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

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 idiotic Americans (abroad)

  If someone here in America were to do what Gregory Porter, Derrik Sweeney and Luke Gates did in Egypt, which was to participate in an uprising by tossing Molotov cocktails from a rooftop (allegedly), that person would not be on the news, and no diplomats would be fighting for his release.

  That person would be in prison, charged with a slew of crimes. That person would not be on television, he would not be in the newspaper, no one would care about that person. In my humble opinion, if you are in a strange country and there is a revolution going on outside of your residence, you batten down the hatches, keep low, and mind your own business. If you leave your room besides to flee a fire, let alone if you decide to venture out onto a rooftop, you are being a fucking retard and you deserve any punishment you will get.

  We should have let Porter and Sweeney and Gates receive the punishment they deserved according to the laws of the country in which they were being politically active - instead, we wasted time and diplomatic effort to free a bunch of stupid kids who were tossing shit from rooftops (allegedly). Please, news cycle, stop lionizing these idiotic Americans whose actions are only harming America's reputation around the world.

JPR

on slavery by capitalism

  We, the people of America who are not enslaved to watching television or participating in fabricated national shopping rituals, we must somehow help the 152 million people who went out to shop on the fake ritual of "Black Friday," a non-holiday that was created to rob the People of their hard-earned greenbacks.

  How do we help these people, and free them from their self-imposed, self-bought slavery?

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

happy evacuation day

  On this 25th of November, let us celebrate the last British forces to leave new york city at the end of the American war for independence, and refrain from needlessly spending money at corporate shopping locations. jp

  場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

alternative festive greeting

  For all of us atheists, nay-sayers, and staunch anti-crowd types, I have developed the following saying, to be used in lieu of tiresome and oppressive greetings too often filled with religious overtones.

  So, instead of saying something like "Happy mother-fucking Holidays," try out "Harpy, model-trucking, wholly dazed." If confused, imagine a harpy (a woman / bird hybrid being referred to commonly in mythology) assembling a model truck while wholly blazed on sweet, sweet chronic (you or the bird, either way works).

  If you are feeling especially bro-rific, or if you cannot but help including "bro" at the ends of your favorite sentences, add the honorific "brow" to the whole concoction, thus creating the newest non-partisan, non-religious, utterly secular greeting for nearly any occasion:

HARPY MODEL-TRUCKING WHOLLY DAZED BROW

werd. JP

on illegal hair-cutting

30JUN2011
Westminster, MD

  Timothy Blastac, an unemployed auto-mechanic from this bucolic town near the Mason-Dixon line, was taken into custody today by the federal government for violating interstate commerce laws. Blastac, who since losing his job has been seen cutting his own hair, declined to comment for this story. Agent Brown, the lead FBI investigator on the case, said at the scene, "Mr. Blastac was witnessed cutting his own hair in his back yard using a hand-held mirror and a pair of cheap clippers. Since his actions violate the potential for a discount hairdresser in Pennsylvania, which lies but a few miles away, to perform these grooming services for him, we apprehended him on suspicion of violating interstate markets. Pending further investigation."

  Dalton Lambert, Mr. Blastac's neighbor, said, "I saw Tim out back trimming his mullet, and I joked about it to some of the guys down at the shop... someone must have contacted the authorities." Under the interstate commerce clause found in the Constitution, the federal government routinely punishes individuals for growing marijuana that those individuals could potentially transport across state lines, thus potentially affecting potential markets in other states, even if those markets are neither legitimized nor regulated under legislation of any type.

  Mr. Blastac, by allegedly performing grooming services on himself that could have been performed by an individual in a neighboring state, allegedly compromised the potential for an individual in a market in another state to potentially profit from potentially performing these services. "We will not tolerate violations to potential markets," chief inspector Ryan Henneman, of the ATF, said. "Just as growing vegetables in your own garden violates the potential profits to be made by for-profit vegetable growers in other states, we cannot allow individuals to perform services on themselves that could potentially be performed by individuals in other potential markets, in other states."

  The federal government has issued blanket warnings to individuals who mow their own lawns, raise livestock such as chickens or rabbits for their own consumption, or maintain and service their own vehicles, as well as any activities that smack of self-sufficiency or self-reliance, saying that individuals performing these tasks, which all violate potential markets in potentially different states, will be brought to justice.

  "We have for too long allowed these violations of potential commerce among the states to go on unpunished," Agent Brown said. "Soon the general public will understand that the potential rights of potential markets to make potential profits far exceeds the fourteenth (XIV) or the fifth (V) Amendment right of the individual to his or her liberty, or to decide for his or herself when and how to cut his or her own hair or what it is he or she should grow, smoke, or consume, on his or her private property." The ACLU declined to comment for this story.

  by James J. Jameson, reporting for Bronco 8 news

(This non-news article is satirical. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. None of the statements attributed to the various federal agencies or other groups are intended to be taken as factual statements.)

  Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on the necessity of union

  When the Declaration of Independence was written, and its sister document, the Constitution, the need for Union among the States was great. Joined in Union, the States proved better able to effect their independence, and to stand strong collectively, a dozen-odd entities working together against the many pressures that faced our young nation as it fought to make a place for itself in the world, and to prove that its shockingly progressive ideals had staying-power.

  Then, halfway through the 19^th century, divergent forces and interests among the States compelled them to split apart into two separate nations, one seeking to maintain a slave-based economy, the other seeking, officially, to maintain the Union. Whole populations that no longer felt that they should be following the same path rose up in conflict, two seemingly foreign peoples that understood that they had grown simply too far apart in thought and in method to be able to stay together. In those times of relative national weakness and persistent internal turmoil, the Union held; it has held through two world wars, scores of other police-actions (including Vietnam, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003), and rapid and widespread cultural and societal transformations both here and abroad.

  Today, however, we have witnessed the ascendancy of a federal supremacy over the states, and within that supremacy the elevation of the executive branch (in clear violation of the checks and balances built into the Constitution), as well as growing divergences between the citizens who live in roughly the same areas as those that split asunder in the 1860s. Two loose but still recognizable camps have formed in this nation, with millions of voters hovering at varying degrees around the edges of each, one camp calling for more punitive and dogmatic responses to our problems, a camp that relies on the gullibility of the masses for the propagation of its conservative views on religion and society, the other camp one that strives at least superficially for rational debate, the reinstatement of the constitutional right to liberty, and a more compassionate and socialistic view of the role that government and society must play in the elevation of the American People and in the bringing about of our Safety and Happiness. (It would be convenient to suppose that I am here referring to Republicans and Democrats respectively, but as these parties have become the necessary repositories of most anyone seeking political office, their ranks are as varied in their opinions as is the greater population, which is split roughly between liberals and conservatives, i.e. between those who seek to propagate liberty through rational debate and those who seek to maintain the status quo through Fear Of The Unknown and an inflexible mind-set. In my opinion, open debate and rational thinking are essential to the propagation of liberty, for the concept of liberty presupposes that the individual is capable of deciding for himself how best to lead his life: it demands of him that he understands the consequences of his actions while allowing him to live a virtuous life devoid of willful violations of the life, liberty, or property of his fellow persons.)

  Perhaps it would be best, then, in this time of America's military supremacy around the world (when no danger is clear and present enough to enact our total destruction), in this era of seemingly irreconcilable rhetoric and clear societal, moral, and religious divergence, to conclude with this chapter of our experiment and, as the Union of all States is no longer absolutely necessary for the basic preservation of our nation, to allow those portions that wish to pursue their own course to secede.

  Since our country's inception, we have added a good number of states, in locations sometimes far-flung from our original borders, states that by their isolation are seen even now as distant lands and foreign peoples whose primary binding characteristic is the feeble, cancer-like presence of the homogenized corporate retail location. In the interest of DomesticTranquility, it would be better to allow those who wished to establish a socially conservative nation based on a particular religion where they might better keep the ignorant in Fear, a place where the individual might not have the right to decide for herself how to affect her body (by tattoo, weight-loss, or abortion), where the benefits of the joining of individuals in marriage or civil union would be bestowed only according to the writings of a specific religious text (and not to homosexuals or to couples of different hues), where a specific language might be declared (the USA haveno official language), and where a specific system of beliefs might be recognized by all, unanimously, as the state religion.

  Perhaps the citizens of America should be asked directly if they feel that these two clearly divergent populations should become separate nations, an official poll to gauge the possibility of such a split, even an outright vote for their fragmentation and reintegration as separate nations according to the wishes of the respective majorities. (These new nations would have to be well-established, sovereign states with clearly demarcated borders, their constitutions well-written, with provisions in place for the unobstructed movement of goods and people between them, especially people who decide, within a set amount of time, that they had made a mistake and would like to switch nations.)

  The essence of liberty that flowered in America and in the world during the 1960s was stamped out in this country for a number of reasons, among them conservatism, Fear of the Unknown, war-mongering, and racism. Chief among these reasons, however, was the passage of legislation prohibiting the use, possession, and distribution of mood altering substances such as marijuana, legislation that to this day continues to violate the liberty of the American People by restricting their ability to obtain and use legally those substances that they deem would best assist them in their pursuit of Happiness.

  Until such time as the citizens of America are granted their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property; until such time as their right to abort unwanted fetuses and to use whichever substance they decide are best and to marry whomever they please; until such time as the citizens are entrusted fully with their unalienable right to choose for themselves how best to lead their lives and they regain the right to pursue their Happiness as they decide is best; until that time, liberty does not abide in these United States, and the rights enumerated in the Constitution are null and void. (If any one portion of the Constitution becomes null and void, the entire Constitution must be considered null and void.)

  Certain constitutional protections (against unwarranted searches and seizures) continue to be violated courtesy of the Patriot Act. Similarly, enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act violates the individual's fifth and fourteenth Amendment right to property, because her body is her only true property, and she can do with her property whatever she wants, so long as she is not harming anyone else's property. Since some of the most fundamental rights and protections our Constitution was supposed to have provided continue to be withheld from the American people, we must assume that our Constitution is no longer functioning as intended, that is has been so abused and mocked that it more resembles a nice thing to read on a sunny afternoon than a bedrock legal document. With this our finest document already torn, tattered, and violated, with our most basic rights and protections reduced to the theoretical, we would do well to allow those seeking liberty to break off from those seeking to cling fearfully to the mistakes of the past, that a new Union based solidly on the principles set forth by our nation's forefathers might be formed, a new nation that would not rest until the Blessings of Liberty were guaranteed to ourselves and our Posterity, equally and without undue restriction.

  Let the religious zealots thump their holy books and legislate according to their morality, in their own nation, while they funnel the wealth of their people into the pockets of the richest one percent. We rational, progressive, compassionate few, we who yearn for liberty, we who would like to affect our bodies and to pursue our Happiness as we see fit, our Safety protected by the might of the Declaration, our rights as enumerated in the Constitution immutable and unalienable now, and forever.

  Only through constant vigilance and rational foresight can we ensure Liberty and Justice for all. Stand up. Speak out. Demand your constitutional rights. While this struggle may seem nearly over, we have not yet begun to fight.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp