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 our current dictatorship

  Michelle Bachmann, on Monday 05 September 2011 (see here), warned that the federal government would become “a dictator over our lives” if it were to make the purchasing of health insurance conditional to citizenship. In support of the point she is trying to make, and to illuminate the majestic, abiding truth behind her words, let us review some of the other conditions that state and federal governments have forced upon the American people, conditions that violate our liberty and that Design to reduce us under absolute Despotism:
  The motor vehicle operators of this nation are being forced to insure themselves and their conveyances;
  The parents of this nation are being forced to educate their children;
  The users of this nation are being forced to choose between alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine, all other drugs having been declared illegal;
  The heterosexual couples of this nation are being exposed to the threat of prosecution if found living together while not married (in Florida);
  The homosexual couples of this nation are being restricted in their right to marry;
  The women of this nation are being besieged by forces seeking to restrict their right to terminate unwanted pregnancies;
  The property-owners of this nation are being forced to pay school taxes, even if they are childless;
  The sick patients of this nation are being forced to suffer needlessly, the cures and remedies potential to stem-cell research unexplored and otherwise retarded by the staunch efforts of moralistic and religious extremists;
  The non-believers of this nation are being forced to abide by the tenets of a religion not of their choosing (Pennsylvania's blue laws, laws defining marriage according to the Christian bible), and they have little choice but to handle currency which bears the religious statement, “In God We Trust;”
  The workers of this nation are being forced to live in poverty, their jobs having been sold to the lowest foreign bidder by native corporations seeking to maximize dividends at any cost;
  The peace-loving people of this nation have been forced to accept torture as a means essential to the common defense of their homeland;
  The gullible inhabitants of this nation have been forced to live in constant fear of the specter of terrorism, their fists balling at the mere mention of Islam, their anxiety fueled by the vague warnings and hysterical rhetoric emanating from TV personalities and politicians alike;
  The minority populations of this nation have been forced to live as second-class citizens, their communities neglected, their schools under-funded, their young people incarcerated disproportionately, and their adults abandoned to the ravages of disease and addiction;
  The tranquil people of this nation are being forced to defend constantly the sanctity of their persons and other such property from unscrupulous local police officers, who, in blatant disregard of any pledge they might have made to defend and uphold the Constitution, too often resort to tricking the
people into relinquishing the protections granted them in the Bill of Rights;
  The millions of registered voters of this nation are being forced to select from candidates of but two political parties, political parties that because of their size, complexity, and ossification cannot possibly endeavor to represent the myriad opinions of a people as diverse as our own;
  The once-proud citizens of this nation have been forced to give up their inalienable rights, their elected officials passing legislation (Patriot Act) to this effect soon after 11 September 2001, legislation that has left the citizenry exposed to willful and unwarranted intrusions into its private affairs.

  Americans do not fear the threat of dictatorship: we have already engaged the existing dictatorship. I call on Michelle Bachmann to expand her efforts, and to join in the struggle to right the wrongs listed above, if not to satisfy her base, then to prove to the rest of the voters that she is prepared to battle oppression regardless of form or frequency.
  It matters little our color, conviction, or creed – we must never forget that our republic is a fragile and fleeting affair, an unusual configuration too easily corrupted by those with much to gain, too readily abandoned by those with nothing to lose. Only through vigilant and persistent action can we rekindle the Torch of Progress, and regain for ourselves and our Posterity those Blessings of Liberty that for generations have been denied us.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on paying the price

  During a recent conversation with a middle-aged woman of the conservative mind-set, she said, “The Europeans are paying the price for tolerating Islam.” When I pressed the issue, my counterpart explained that Europeans have been exposed to bombings (see here), murders (Theo van Gogh murder, see here), and extremist rhetoric (see here) emanating from the Muslim communities that have been allowed to flourish in their midst. I tried to explain to her that it was foolish to vilify an entire religion based on the actions of a few of its radical members, but she stood fast, her mind soon locked up in obvious Fear of an impending Worldwide Caliphate.
  She was reluctant to offer any kind of solution to this supposed problem, beyond the solutions I deduced by reading between the lines of her general outlook, those being either the forced emigration of any and all Muslims to places outside of Europe, or the sequestering thereof into controlled and separated communities (otherwise known as concentration camps).
  In response, I stated that America has suffered also from the decision to tolerate any and all religions, foremost among them Christianity, a religion that has spawned its fair share of murderous and extremists individuals. When pressed, I gave the examples of the 2009 abortion clinic murders perpetrated by a Christian extremist (Dr. Tiller murder, see here), the Oklahoma city bombings (see here), and the marked increase in religiously conservative and extremist rhetoric, including the widespread disillusionment that has lead many Americans (see here) to believe that this country was founded as a Christian nation (it was not – read my blog series No American Theocracy).
  I am not saying that Christianity is solely responsible for our country's woes, or that those who believe in it are necessarily bad or dangerous people, although it is true that much of the fear-based and xenophobic rhetoric heard today (see here) and a considerable number of attacks against innocent civilians (see here) emanate from the greater envelope of the Christian religion. What I am saying is that religion requires of the individual a relinquishment of his ties to clear thinking and to reason, and, with its frequent reliance on the belief that it alone is the road to the salvation of the soul and that all others are false roads that lead to eternal death and endless suffering, one can easily get carried away and do something foolish in the belief that one's actions are somehow providing pleasure or satisfaction for That Force Which Cannot Be Named.

  In these times of increasingly frequent political and economic crises, we have seen the rise of supposedly Christian politicos who loudly express their often extremist political views. When we read or hear the rantings of Islamic extremists, we are alarmed; the rational and clear-thinking American should be just as alarmed hearing some of the more radical Islamic rhetoric as he would be hearing the fundamentalist Christian views being expressed by prominent individuals such as Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin (see here). Any extremist religious opinion is a danger to society as a whole: weak-minded individuals are easily swayed by those they think are speaking to them the words of some unseen god, and the gullible will gladly participate in violence against innocents so long as they believe it might secure their place, after they die, in some fictitious realm of edible joy and eternal conga lines.
  If Europeans are paying the price for their tolerance of Islam, Americans are paying the price for our tolerance of Christianity. But to outlaw one religious practice or the other would be to destroy the fabric of our democracy and to trammel the most sacred rights granted by the Constitution, among them being freedom of religion and, more importantly, liberty of thought and deed.
  Pay the price we must, for violent acts by religious extremists will not end until religion itself has ended. To tolerate one religion is to tolerate them all; we are stuck with our extremists, Christian or Muslim, Jewish or Mormon. So if you are worried about Muslim extremists wreaking havoc over in Europe, remember that there are Christian extremists here in America who are wreaking havoc too.

  The next time some religious zealot starts screaming at you on the street corner, tell her to take a nap, and to practice her crazy beliefs at home, by herself.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp