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

on disc golf & Taoism

  The game of disc golf (in which players, in the fewest number of tosses, throw discus-like plastic discs from a designated point to a specially-designed metal catch basket) is in certain aspects akin to the elusive tenets of Taoism. Similar to the enduringly simple (but all-encompassing) message that Lao Tzu bound up in the Tao Teh Ching, the game of disc golf is at root an easy task, one that increases in difficulty, however, in tandem with the player's internal stress levels.

  The more pressure the player puts on herself to make, say, a difficult shot into the wind around a copse of trees, the harder that shot, and her subsequent shots, will be. She will be trying to force her body to move so that the disc goes in a very specific direction, but, from her rigid posture and from her attempted dominance over her body, her shot will fly foul. As in Taoism, so in disc golf we must always remember that any attempt to subjugate the Universe to one's own will is bound to backfire, and the most coveted things (such as making that nasty headwind bank-shot) are the hardest to get. (Therefore, the Tao teaches us not to covet anything, as coveting leads invariably to ruin.) The more the player pushes to make the shot the way she thinks the shot should be made, the less she is tapping into her body's inherent ability to not only make the shot, but to do it with finesse and without pride.

  The effective disc golfer is he who can put his ego aside. The great disc golfer she who can revert to a pure animal state by incorporating her ego into herself (thus neutralizing it), a pure animal state that allows her to throw her disc far and straight, her body moving in its own curious rhythms, her mind freed from sadness and joy, her entire being focused solely on the fraction of time at which the disc leaves her calloused fingers. In my humble opinion, this is the magical, secret point that forms the center of the teachings of Taoism: rather than telling you to worship in such way to that god at this time of year, the Tao Teh Ching focuses on reducing you to your most basic and fundamental forms, forms that compel you to act with complete impartiality, intent only on breaking time from This Moment to The Next. Taoism helps you to clear your mind of all the clutter and pollution of modern society; with the Tao, you can more readily realize your deep, latent potential: you can learn to express it. The Tao focuses on deeds, not words, on completing tasks with skill and aplomb but without taking pride in them, or letting them influence your emotional state.

  So is it, at times, with the sport of disc golf. The less thought-interference there is during the throwing phase, the more fluid your body motion. The less the ego is involved, the greater the chance that you will make that daring sidewinder shot around that group of bushes. So keep on diminishing and diminishing until there is nothing left – the Tao is like a bellows that is never made empty, even though it seems hollowed out. The more you draw from it, the harder it works; the less emphasis you put on your own personal achievement, the more you operate for the good of the world, an island of calm in a sea of chaos. One of the trickiest parts, however, is learning not to covet the Tao. To covet anything is to destroy it, so toss your discs with quiet competence, without ever yearning for success, your only desire a state of primal simplicity.

  Your body knows what to do. Now all you have to do is get your mind out of the way.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 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

daisy cutter

Lady Liberty, tunic askew and breast revealed, stepping inadvertently with right foot on a snake, standing in a clear-cut forest, balances on a shoulder-beam (whose left side is cracked and banded with irons) the symbols of money and war against the symbols of peace and the Declaration of Independence. She is trying to lift the heavy symbols with her left hand, while her right hand has lost its grip. A tiny man (representing the richest 1% of the American population) is sawing through the beam on the right side, thus attempting to cut off the symbols of peace and the Declaration of Independence. Above all the words: DAISY CUTTER

on slavery as punishment

  The thirteenth amendment to the US Constitution reads, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

  By any measure, this amendment does not abolish slavery - it makes slavery into an acceptable, official form of punishment. If my memory serves me correctly, however, few if any convicted criminals have been sentenced recently to slavery or indentured servitude. The use of slavery as a punitive measure would be more useful in some situations, less in others. A petty thief is fairly likely to renounce his life of crime after a few hard seasons under the lash, while a corporate officer convicted of fraud and embezzlement, a white man accustomed to the finest treatment his ill-won gains could bring him, such a man might just emerge from his grueling months toiling in the hot summer sun a humble and reformed person. Similarly, a man-slaughtering cuckold is unlikely to find redemption in tall swaying fields of sugarcane (a modern industry in which slavery is still widespread today), while the bankers who were allowed to profit enormously from the sale of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities would truly understand the meaning of labor if put to task making self-guided V2 rockets in the caves of central Germany.

  Perhaps is is because so many Americans have enslaved themselves willingly to the whore-gods of small-scale capital gain and conspicuous materialism that slavery is not used more frequently as a punitive measure: the slave is already under the yoke, so allowing her to max out her credit cards and providing her with no better outlet at which to express her abounding creativity and endless potential – in her pursuit of food, shelter, and clothing, the Three Fundamental Components of Safety – no better outlet than some menial, repetitive job, her self-imposed and self-maintained slavery ensures that the fruits of her hard labor are not afforded to her but to the very few persons who sit atop America's pyramid-scheme of capitalism. The slave will be in debt until the day she dies, always struggling to make the minimal payment for things she did not truly need, and could not truly afford.

  I abhor slavery. I do not think any person should ever be put (or put themselves) in chains, but as long as our Constitution states that slavery can be utilized as a way to punish criminals, we should consider using it to bring the false princes of capitalism down a peg or two. The humble are not just the backbone of civil society, they are its savior.

  Until next time, I remain, your most humble and loyal servant, &c.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

guerrilla tactics - squared

(This update covers the first and second of November.)

  On Wednesday, I arrived on the square around noon, and skipped diagonally across it to my post opposite the anti-choice crowd, leaping high in the exact center to click my heels. Once entrenched, I bowed to them, low to the ground and proper-like, to initiate the day's bout. Among my counterparts were new faces, most of them boring except for the blatantly sex-deprived young man who recited his religion's slogans at high volume, continuously. There was also a curious older man who walked up carrying a cane and pushing a wheelchair (briskly), only to sit in his device and to prop his PRAY TO END ABORTION sign on his seemingly all-too-functional legs.

  My dear readers, the foes of freedom are pulling out all the stops in their battle against the right of the American adult to make a decision. While their minor offenses of blatantly and continuously obstructing foot traffic on their staked-out sidewalk and of jaywalking in full view of the world (to escape proximity to me), their major offense is their continued struggle to force the American People to live according to one set of religious rules among the thousands practiced here every day. Such actions, honored friends, constitute religious oppression by any rule and measure. Hence, my newest sign, END THIS RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION.

  Regarding the name of this article, my guerrilla tactics have proven very effective. (I would like to thank Sun Tzu, and Mao Zedong.) Instead of just waving at the people who give me thumbs up, I have begun waving at everyone who honks or waves, without exception. This has led to a general decrease in honking, and to many upset anti-choicers who try to convey with any hand signal but the middle finger that they in no way support me. This has also led drivers who happen to be watching to think that I am waving back at my supporters, which helps them to override their fears, whereupon they give me a nice broad smile or a secret nod of approval.

  As I am taking from my opponents their (open) public support, so have I taken their slogans. My signs, (DEFEND FREEDOM | END THIS RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION | WHAT'S NEXT? PRAY TO END FREE SPEECH), when used properly, in thirteen words are capable of changing the mind of the wary passer-by, whom I can watch evolve from impartial spectator to full-blown, horn-honking supporter. If I am lucky, I actually witness the beginning of long and potentially deal-breaking conversations between romantic couples who probably should have talked about the whole abortion thing before they read it on some crazy guy's signs.

  As an effort to maintain a level of self-mockery, I always come dressed in different costumes. This confuses my foes and robs them of the power to offend my pride. (Pride is a huge factor in participatory democracy: maintaining a stable emotional state is crucial, so my distinctive lack of self-respect is really coming in handy.)

  In line with the ancient tactics of long-deceased military minds, I am flexible where my foe is stagnant, my message fresh, entertaining, attention-getting, their message one-sided, fixed. I have side-stepped the false prizes my counterparts have offered (calling the cops of them, responding physically to harassment by priest or parishioner), striking instead boldly to the crux of the issue. One of the most important victories I have won is the ability to control the dialogue. By addressing my opponents directly (when they are trying so hard to ignore me, and to shut me down), and by cutting to the honest core of the issue, I have exposed the cruel, thinly-veiled heart of their message: YOU WILL BOW TO OUR GOD. To force the American People to live according to the rules of one god in particular is to rob us completely of our freedom. If we ease off, and allow religious fanatics to erode just one of our Constitutional rights (such as a woman's right to her body, which is her property), we will forsake all of our rights, we will destroy our inalienable protections, and we will make a mockery of a once free People.

  I was in the middle of my dramatic farewell bow, when, righting myself, I turned to find a quasi-homeless man (with whom I have spoken previously) smiling at me from a few feet away. “Why don't you leave those poor crazy people alone?” he said. A note to the anti-choicers: if homeless people are calling you crazy, then your message is in serious trouble. Our foes are shaken, their position increasingly untenable.

  Long live the forces of freedom!

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp