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