if not we

The corporatocracy that America has evolved into is not the form of government designed for this land by the Founding Persons. Nowhere in any of the founding documents, from the Declaration of Independence over the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, is there any mention of this land existing in a perpetual state of war that benefits the controlling interests of a handful of massive corporate entities at the expense of civil liberties.

Thomas Jefferson saw an aristocracy of corporations as a threat to humans’ natural rights; and James Madison warned that war is the most dreaded enemy to public liberty. Regardless of these prior warnings, however, America has become exactly what our exalted forbears feared most - a quasi-republic ruled by corporations that together have enough wealth to buy elected officials and siphon real wealth (in the form of gold) out of the economy using perfectly legal methods (the Federal Reserve System, which is a private corporation).

This system will not change anytime soon. The corporations (and the few families who own them) that wield such enormous power are not about to step aside in favor of the freedoms and democratic institutions imagined for us by the Founding Persons. If the existing corporatocracy wanted to let wealth trickle down, wealth would have trickled already; if it wanted to solve unemployment and eradicate poverty, it would have solved and eradicated already. America’s monied ruling class has had centuries of time during which and vast resources with which to create in this great land an utopia of prosperity for all at the expense of none. This author proposes, therefore, that we the People set aside a few small parcels of land (similar to the reservation system) within America in which they who control the undemocratic and unconstitutional corporatocracy may do whatever unimaginably rich persons do besides breathe and eat. On the rest of the land, however, the People ought set up a form of government - one that closely follows the text of our Founding Documents, which include the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution - that to us shall seem most likely to effect our Safety and Happiness.

All power stems from the People, and the existing structures exist only because we allow them to exist. If we are not to bring about the true promise of this grand experiment, then who? And if we are not to do it now, then when?

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

a bogeyman lacking

For a good portion of the second half of the 20th century, the United States had a clearly defined bogeyman, fall-guy, and nemesis: the pinkie red commies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (CCCP). Then, in the early 1990s, the CCCP crumbled, unable to keep underwriting the avarice and greed of its ruling class, unable to keep enforcing its will upon a weary populace, and unable to keep up with the sheer might of NATO's consumption-centered capitalism and widespread industrial automation. All of a sudden, after decades of silent struggle against a highly demonized foe (see the inclusion of the phrase Under God in the pledge of allegiance that was added to show what godless heathens the commies were), America found herself without a clearly defined enemy.

Into this void came the 11 September 2001 attacks, after which the branches of the U.S. government that were charged with defense and intelligence focused their various highly-sophisticated covert surveillance, espionage, murder, and sneak-thievery apparatuses not onto external foes but onto the very individuals whose Safety and Happiness they were supposed to bring about: the American people. We, the People, are now the enemy. We, the People, are now spied upon, listened to, and watched more closely than any terrorist or friend-of-terrorist foolish enough to still be using means of electronic communication such as radio, cellphone, or Internet. Worst of all, however, we, the People, as a whole, do not seem to mind this oppression, preferring rather to walk the walk we have always walked, dutifully participating in presidential elections (over which, because of the electoral college, we have little power and less influence), dutifully watching five hours of television a day, dutifully reporting to work, and then, as if we were mindless automatons hardwired to strict obedience, spending our hard-earned cash on superfluous bullshit we were instructed to buy during exquisitely-crafted television commercials which we payed good money for the privilege to be exposed to.

There is a balance that the federal government must strike between keeping us, the People, Safe and Happy; since the Bush2 presidency and continuing into that of Obama, however, this balance tilted drastically to the side of Safety at the cost of Happiness. We, the People, must find a way to regain the balance that our nation has lost, but we choose instead to rot our minds watching TV and to rack up consumer debt because we cannot control the knee-jerk drive to impulsive and conspicuous materialism, and there is little hope that we might accomplish much of anything beyond become fatter, lazier, sadder, and less free. With Osama Bin Laden dead and the regime of the commie bastard long since withered away, our worth as a People is plummeting daily; perhaps we deserve our status as the new bogeymen, as the new whipping posts of the power-hungry plutocrats who punish and imprison us for daring to pursue Happiness.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on riding coach

Helen Keller, a famously blind and deaf woman, said: “A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.“ How happy, then, can today's rich people be? One percent (1%) of the U.S. population controls roughly sixty percent of this country's material wealth; the same one percent also wields political and economic power disastrously greater than ought be held by such a small cabal. With almost no hardship in their lives, and with few checks on their growing might, this group is helping to morally and spiritually bankrupt the nation while also condemning itself to a life devoid of joy, drained of color, and soured by the foul stink of cash. In the course of his own life, the author has closed his mind to certain ideas, including the notion that the goal of human existence is to make as much money as possible before dying; if a prosperous life is one devoid of struggle, sacrifice, and want, he will gladly stay poor, and ride coach.

A few ten thousand Americans are richer than a hundred and fifty million of their fellow countrymen, combined. With enough resources to hire good lawyers and weather long trials, they rarely receive full punishment for their crimes. Do we see Justice, here? We do not. Is this what our Founding Persons meant when they spoke of securing the Blessings of Liberty, forming a more perfect Union, or promoting the general Welfare? It is not. Instead, we see the theft of power by a small cluster of moneyed plutocrats who corrupt the halls of government and call for armed conflict while profiting financially from the wars they call for. The insatiably greedy few who caused the poor of France to storm the Bastille and the stubborn of America to toss tea into a bay are back in control; once more, we suffer the petty aristocracy.

The American republic was founded on a handful of simple principles, some of which are listed above. Today, millions of children in America regularly suffer from food insecurity, which occurs when they cannot be sure where their next meal will come from. Tens of millions more Americans wallow daily in wage slavery brought about by high levels of student debt, their hearts gripped by fear of increasingly militarized police forces. Poverty, hunger, and police brutality are hardships we could master, together, if our political leaders weren't constantly stroking the shafts of their financial backers and if deep-pocketed lobbying groups weren't incessantly plugging their own pet projects (and if a hundred million misguided Americans stopped paying to be brainwashed into abject docility by compelling television programming). Rich people experience monumental successes frequently; they have forgotten the abiding joy that comes with infrequent enjoyment of small successes. If we downtrodden masses could only convince the 1% to be happy with having completed a daily workout routine and remembering to floss before going to bed instead of standing idly by while they celebrate trillion-dollar federal bailouts of their failing banks, America might resemble her old, egalitarian self, once more. Heavy is the crown, but not heavy enough to dampen the avarice of they who wear it.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on shambles

Small were the stumbles that brought him to his knees, old the pitfalls that sent his card-house tumbling. Still chained he is to bells rung too soon, to sloppy routines that once helped but now harm. He won't explain his torment too openly, lest he appear pitiful and lacking in direction. Wise words and simple advice on deaf ears fall.

Caused less by the ever-present specter of failure, his torment is rooted instead in the potential for success, Happiness, and contentment. Part of his psyche is malicious and evil; as long as he is alive, it will never fully go away, nor will it ever stop being a part of him. (For him, this is a new and exciting revelation.) His hope for controlling and channeling the evil that lives inside him lies in showering it with love during yoga and remaining vigilant of its power for the rest of his life.

For some years now, he has scoffed at the saying, “fall down seven times, stand up eight.” He thought it a groovy way for people who had their shit together to gloat about being resilient, tough, and smart. Now, however, he realizes that this whole falling down and standing up business happens not at one particular fulcrum point but every day. By staying in the moment, taking nothing for granted, and learning to cherish those things he has for so long tried to destroy, he can find salvation as well as a way back to where he had strayed from the path. What good fortune that it always sits at at his feet, waiting.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on protocols

A person who follows daily routines chooses a certain set of protocols to regulate her life. Protocols can bring about either positive or negative change, but rarely both. To clarify, the author provides two scenarios. First, a man skips breakfast, drives to work in a motorized vehicle, sits at a desk all day without regular movement breaks, eats a large lunch, drives home, eats a large dinner, and then watches television until he checks the time and forces himself to go to sleep. Second, a woman arises before dawn, does an hour of yoga, eats a moderately-sized breakfast, bicycles to work, gets up once every couple of hours simply to walk around, eats a moderately-sized lunch, bicycles home, eats at least one fruit and one vegetable with her dinner, spends an hour being creative (writing, drawing, molding with clay, etc.), reads for an hour or two from four different books on unrelated subjects, watches half of a feature film, and collapses into her bed a few hours after sunset.

In my experience, the first scenario plays itself out too often in America, today. So many of us drive everywhere we go, eat more than we would need to satisfy our hunger, and spend our time staring mindlessly at flickering, fancy boxes. The protocols followed by the first person are likely to lead to diseases associated with overeating and lack of exercise; after a few decades, the creative parts of his mind will rebel against his refusal so do anything more productive with his life than simply working to eat, drive, and watch TV. He will suffer from a debilitating mid-life crisis, during which he will scramble to lead a healthier and happier life. His attempts, however, will become fouled up in the old protocols; he will falter, fail, and retreat into his bad old habits. In contrast, the person in the second scenario leads a life she knows will satisfy her inner need for enduring personal meaningfulness while keeping her digestive system healthy and her muscles sharp and twitching. Her protocols celebrate the majesty of the human spirit and glorify the fathomless might of both mind and body. By having studied for decades, she is bursting with knowledge but clever enough not to force it upon others; by having disciplined herself in terms of consumption, she needs little food, less gasoline, and almost no commercialized content to keep herself happy.

It may seem difficult to live a life similar to the person in the second example, but, with a few small adjustment to one's daily protocols, anything but the most absurd is possible. (Unassisted human flight, for example, is out). Via the epigenetic superstructure, both we and the environments we inhabit affect which of our genes are read and to what degree they are expressed. By changing the parameters of our daily lives and gradually adopting healthier routines, we can fortify the foundations of the deep and abiding Happiness that yearns to hover at the center of our every act, our every decision, our every breath. To examine one's daily protocols is to take the first step in making sure they are worthwhile, wholesome, and good. A saying from the business world comes to mind: They who are not evolving are dying. Plant the seeds of tomorrow's joy by turning off your television, today. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

protect economic Safety

Persons who respect and read the Declaration of Independence will recognize that the role of government is to serve one main purpose: to bring about our Safety and Happiness. Keeping this in our minds, we look at the banks in this country that continue to steal billions of dollars from the American people, banks that starting in 2008 C.E. (common era) were given hundreds of billions of tax-paper dollars so that their larcenous and short-sighted practices would not drag this country into total ruin, banks that to this day are removing the families of active-duty military personnel from their homes and evicting old and sick persons with the the full support and active participation of armed and role-crazy police officers.

These are not victim-less crimes: We the People are the victims. The very things our government is supposed to do for us – to protect our Safety and provide for our Happiness – it is not doing; the very purpose it is supposed to serve has been supplanted by the practice of protecting those persons who have rigged the system in their favor and ensnared millions of people around the globe in the swollen tendrils of their me-first capitalism. Tomorrow, friends, we go to the polls to elect a new president. Despite the media blackout being perpetrated by nearly all media outlets, including CNN, FOX, NPR, MSNBC, ABC, and their foul ilk, we have more choices that just one or the other, more candidates to select between than just Mitt and Barack: we also have Dr. Jill Stein and governor Gary Johnson to consider, two candidates who are not part of the Democrat or Republican parties, that massive duopoly that has wrapped up our liberties in a strangle-hold so tight that we might soon see freedom snuffed out forever.

In order to rein in our government and help it to actively create our Safety and Happiness; in order to stop the greed-based actions of giant banks and tax-payer funded bailouts; out of an honest belief in the idea that liberty thrives only when the adult citizen is entrusted with the enormous responsibility of being able to decide to live a life free of ill health, wage-slavery, and police oppression; for these reasons and out of abiding love for the generations yet to come, please vote for a third party candidate this Tuesday, ignoring the ill informed fear-mongers among us warning us to choose between the lesser of two evils. Perhaps one day we might all be as brave as Gary Johnson, who said he would rather die than vote for ass or pachyderm, or as fearless as Dr. Jill Stein, who was just last week arrested for trying to bring food to a group of persons using their bodies to stop environmental degradation in Texas; perhaps one day we might realize that by voting for establishment-sanctioned candidates we dishonor the covenant established by the Declaration and violate the sanctity of our most precious document, proclaiming boldly to a candid world: ”We deserve neither Safety nor Happiness because we have sacrificed the latter in hopes of getting the former.” The only path that leads to true Happiness runs along the violently-rushing brook of full and total liberty; the only candidate courageous enough to take us down this path – and who will gladly get his or her feet wet in the process – belongs to a third party. Demand Safety, create Happiness, and say no to politics as usual! Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

a Declarational pledge

In the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, that legal document that lies at the heart of this American nation, our founding persons – and, by extension, all American citizens living or dead – declare that, “[A]ll Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness[.]” (Since starting this piece, I have read that the federal government does not consider the Declaration an active legal document because it was ratified before the Constitution by merely thirteen states, not after this republic's official establishment by the number of states we have now; so long as even a single American yearns for Liberty and the right to Pursue his Happiness as he sees best fit, however, the Declaration grants him – and us all – the right to alter and abolish our government until it creates Safety and Happiness for all, equally.) Long have our political and social leaders hewn to this pledge, laboring tirelessly to ensure that we are all blessed with freedom and justice; now, however, the Republican Party plans to destroy the essence of the Declaration of Independence by amending its sister-text, the Constitution, with a sentence defining marriage according to the Christian bible, just one of hundreds of different religious texts we turn to in this country, each and every day.

To restrict a person's right to marry whomever he should please is to rob him of his ability to Pursue Happiness; it says to him that he is worth less than others, that he was created less than equal, that his Liberty is less important than the Liberty of persons with a taste for heterosexual liaisons. Anyone with even the slightest shred of intelligence will look at the quote given above and immediately join our ranks as we fight the Republican Party's plans to abolish the rule of law and to supplant it with the rule of the church. (Which church or which faith is irrelevant; organized religion, with its fear-based indoctrination tactics, brainwashing of young people, and rigid, unyielding structure, poses among the greatest of conceivable threats to the Safety and Happiness of free-thinking, Liberty-loving individuals everywhere.)

This author finds it curious that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan prefer lies and hatred to Honor and Truth, and that they care so little for the opinions of the American people that they dare to stand up and say, Fuck everyone who isn't a hardcore Christian, fuck everyone who likes to sleep with persons of the same sex, and fuck everyone poorer than our corporate cronies and slave-masters. More shocking, however, is that roughly half of the American voting population – some seventy million (70,000,000) people – seem to agree with the vile nonsense spewing from the Republican Party, its members and representatives; when tens of millions of people abandon critical thinking and stop doubting the bullshit that is being shoveled down their throats we get things such as the Nazi's Holocaust, the Soviets' gulags, and Bush's Patriot Act; when tens of millions of people sit idly by as their leaders rack up record debts and wage wars of aggression against sovereign foreign nations, we can honestly say that America has fallen from grace, that the pledge of equality once made in the Declaration of Independence is null and void, and that our attempt to create a just and peaceful society comprised of self-reliant and self-respecting individuals who mind their own business has been trampled under the jackboots of mindless, Me-First automatons blindly adhering to poorly-formed notions and vacuous party-lines.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

Commons, constitutional Right

The preamble to the U.S. Constitution states that the role of government is to provide for the general Welfare. We the people, together with local, state, and federal governments, can only accomplish this if we properly protect the Commons, something which neither our system of quasi-free-market capitalism nor today's re-election-focused politicians deem important. The average, hard-working American, however, relies daily on things that make up the Commons, including roads, bridges, radio waves, wi-fi, seams of coal, deposits of natural gas, clean and smog-free air (vital to the health of all persons), clean and potable water (vital to the health of all persons), and national and local parks. Where once, however, a person suffering cold had the right to walk into the woods and collect for herself a few armfuls of wood, now those trees belong to individuals who sell that wood for profit. When something that belongs equally to everyone is sold by one just person, for no other purpose than his or her personal gain, the beauty of the Commons is shattered, Nature's bounty serving not the interests of all persons equally but only the interests of a few, specifically.

Among the gravest dangers facing America today is our loss of appreciation for things that have intrinsic value, that have worth beyond the merely monetary; our system of Me-First capitalism has so infiltrated and poisoned our minds that we think that everything comes with a price-tag, that everything is for sale. If we just admitted to being a nation of whores, a nation focused on the accumulation of personal wealth, if we just fessed up to selling ourselves into wage-slavery in order to maintain our electricity-dependent, non-self-sufficient lifestyles, then our estimation in the opinions of mankind might not be so low; but, as things stand, we come across as childish and hypocritical assholes who complain about the poor state of our lives while sitting around all day watching TV and shoveling food processed by other downtrodden corporate wage-slaves into our ever-expanding stomachs. The notion of the Commons relies on communal sacrifice, on inter-personal sharing, and on the idea that some aspects of our lives – love, mercy, humility, equality, and generosity – cannot be pigeonholed but must remain beyond the realm of definition, classification, and exploitation. To bring about this state of affairs and to rescue our tender humanity from the ever-grasping paws of profit-hungry corporate interests and the greed of unscrupulous men, we must stand together, protecting what belongs to us all with Life, Fortune, and sacred Honor.

The Declaration of Independence defines government as that body which brings about the Safety and Happiness of the people. Furthermore, it grants us the right to alter or to abolish our government should it become destructive of our Safety and Happiness. Friends, Yankis, fellow patriots, we demand that our governments protect the Commons diligently, since clean air, pure soil, clear water, and guaranteed civil rights make us Happy and Safe and poisoned air, barren soil, polluted water, and preferential treatment for avaricious, self-interested individuals makes us Unsafe and Unhappy. The government of the United States of America does not exist to pay $400 billion to defense contractors, to cut taxes for wealthy corporations and rich individuals, to stop funding education, to stop funding programs that assist the poor and the elderly, to attack and kill persons merely suspected of committing grave crimes (such as Al-Awlaki, Osama Bin Laden), to subjugate foreign peoples in order to gain access to their mineral and fuel resources, or to restrict the ability of its own people to consume whichever drugs they decide best; the government of the U.S.A. exists to insure domestic tranquility and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, which it does best by protecting the Commons and making sure they stay free to all who may require their bounty. As long as we remain undisciplined and look the other way, however, and as long as we participate in the travesty of conspicuous consumption, we shall remain the enemies of the Commons, blind to the fragile truths which can save us from ourselves. To free the person, free her mind. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

an open letter to America's founding persons

Dear individuals who founded or influenced the founding of the United States of America: may you have a good day. I write to you across a long stretch of time – nearly two hundred and forty years – with greetings and supplications. Much is being said of late in this fine land you crafted so long ago about your intentions, your motives, and your goals. Friends, woe is befallen us, for we have taken the essence of the nation you designed in the Declaration of Independence and trampled it unceremoniously to dust. As Dr. Franklin warned after the ratification of the Constitution in 1787, we have not been able to hold on to the republic you created; rather, we have allowed the forces of blind and inexorable avarice (which we now refer to rather as corporation-based, consumption-driven capitalism) to all but ruin the seemingly boundless promise of your intended nation. No longer does government exist to serve the People – now its punishes with fines and imprisonment those of us who drink deeply of the Blessings of Liberty and who pursue our Happiness as we see best fit without infringing upon the Life, Liberty, or Property of any other person or persons; now it exists not to foster the free mind, the free life, or the free will but to punish the People for not living according to the rules it proclaims will bring the most benefit to the most people, rules, however, which are designed by and written for the benefit of a few hundred thousand of the richest citizens (and their respective corporate bodies) who enjoy privileged access to policy-makers due to their vast wealth, lack of humility, and insufficient focus on the Shared and Common Causes (making all people, equally, Safe and Happy) which should bind us, as countrymen, to one another, indelibly. Justice, friends, has been banished behind such dark and oppressive curtains as hang in our houses of deliberation; her blindfold has been removed in order to combat a poorly defined danger known as terrorism; and her sword now strikes down such persons – both native and foreign-born – as have not even been given a decent or fair trial by a jury of their peers. As mentioned previously, laws exist that promote neither the general Welfare nor that insure the domestic Tranquility but that subjugate the People to the whims of heavily-armed, fear-obsessed, oppression-minded police forces and that divert the vast wealth generated by the collective labor of this nation's citizens into the pockets of those few of us who have the best political connections and the broadest corporate reach. The noble cause of a more perfect Union has been replaced by the nation-wide homogenization of goods and services that has eroded the independent and self-respecting nature of the People, replacing it instead with a sheep-like mentality under which we slave primarily to fuel personal over-consumption of foodstuffs, electricity, and images that are piped at great expense into our homes where they move about on magical picture-boxes hanging from the walls.

Such is our suffering, and more. We move about not under our own power but atop and within auto-mobile metal boxes that are powered by the burning of a liquid pitch, an inflammable black goo that is pumped from the ground in distant places by hirsute, turbaned foreigners who use the profit from the sale of this oil to fund terrorist groups that in turn murder the People and maim our friends. Rather than raising and storing our own crops, we rely on foods that throughout their lives are sprayed regularly with an unknowable mixture of dangerous and volatile chemicals before they are moved nearly to our doorsteps via larger self-propelled metal boxes that travel upon thousands of miles of rock-and-liquid-pitch-paved roads; rather than raise our own livestock, we rely on meats that throughout their lives are injected regularly with an unknowable mixture of powerful medicines and growth-promoting chemicals before they are moved nearly to our doorsteps upon the aforementioned roads. And, due to this lack of autonomous locomotion and this over-abundance of foodstuffs, we have become lazy and fat, suffering therefore from fatness- and laziness-related diseases and dying of them by the hundreds of thousands.

Oh, dear brothers and sisters, you who stamped this nation out of the dust, who risked Life, Fortune, and Honor in order to create a nation dedicated to the Safety and Happiness of a free and independent People, please accept our apologies for destroying all that which you risked to create, and for desecrating and neglecting all that which you worked so hand to bring about. We are weak, we are spineless, and we hardly deserve even the last, dying remnants of that which you so diligently created. Please, dearest fore-fathers and fore-mothers, please forgive us, for we knew the dangers of the path we have stumbled down, choosing it however because it offered us the least resistance. America delenda est.

場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit

on luxury & comfort

This morning, while waiting for father sun to awaken, I heard on the radio an advertisement for a new motor-vehicle made by Lincoln. In this commercial, the company touted the vehicle's salient features, among them “organically tanned leather from Scotland, French stitching, and Moroccan (or Algerian) wood accents.” Beyond my abject loathing for a supposedly American company that pays non-Americans to make pretty, expensive cars for gullible Americans to buy, I find myself seething with rage at the notion in this country that we deserve things such as finery, luxury, and comfort.

If while growing up the the writers of the Declaration of Independence had been told that they deserved luxury, that comfort were their ultimate goal, that it were acceptable for them to let their guards down and to relax in a plush and reclining chair, they would not likely have had the stones to rise up and to spit in the faces of their foreign slave-masters. If the frontiersmen had grown up convinced that luxury and comfort were things they deserved, they probably would never have withstood the privations and hardships associated with crossing continents. If Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. had become accustomed to soft and easy lives, they would likely have changed neither history nor the fate of millions of otherwise down-trodden and wretched souls.

Attention, citizens of America: life is not comfortable, easy, or luxurious. There is no reason you cannot be Happy in your life, or Safe (these being the primary purposes of government, according to the Declaration), but please do not allow yourself to become addicted to the notion that it will be convenient, plush, or pillow-topped. The more one's supposed luxury, the more one has to lose when one's house burns or floods or gets crushed by falling trees; the more one relies on comfort, the greater will be the fall when hardship returns; the more one believes in the lies spewing from the twisted suck-holes of advertisers, the less likely one is to be able to make do with less; and the more one denigrates oneself by driving a car, the longer one is trapped inside a glass-walled, cash-guzzling, burning metal box.

Today, our nation faces trying times: our people lack above-poverty-level employment, our corporations maximize profits at any and all cost to the worker and to the environment, our politicians have been corrupted by Special Interest, half of our “representatives” in the legislature are millionaires, and our government is a tyrannical juggernaut that wages war upon the Liberty of its own citizens. This is not the time to seek comfort, or luxury – this is the time to batten down the hatches and to prepare for the worst (while still keeping a song in one's heart). The underlying reason for the focus on luxury and comfort of late is that these foul conditions trick the person into thinking that she can rest, that she has done her duty to herself and to humanity, that she deserves certain things that only money can buy. Money cannot buy Happiness, nor can it buy Safety, but it can be used as a tool for self-enslavement to supposedly necessary external conditions. Therefore, the patriot relies on nothing but her bright and bursting spirit; she needs nothing but the calluses growing on her strong, slender hands. Rise up, my fellow Americans: shake off the cruel yoke of luxury, and discard the rusty chains of comfort, because your nation, and Honest Abe, need you strong, sane, and self-reliant.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

American theocracy - 1

  A dangerous effort is under way in these United States of America – the effort to define the concept of marriage, and its societal and legal ramifications, according to the code of a specific religion. If allowed to progress unopposed, this effort will abolish the concept of the separation of church and state as set forth in the U.S. Constitution. This effort is an assault on the liberty of the American people, and we can ill afford to further bind our nation to the tenets of one religion among the many that here persist. Just as we would not incorporate into our most hallowed documents the parameters of Shari'a law, or the teachings of Lord Krishna, we must not shackle ourselves to the strictures of the Christian religion, even though that religion is practiced by a relatively large portion of the U.S. population.

  For if these efforts were to succeed in binding the concept of marriage to the code of one specific religion, we would be forced to abide by all of Yahweh's clearly-stated mandates, including the one regarding the murder, in front of the father's house, of new wives found deflowered (Deuteronomy 22:20-21 NAB), mandates that would result in the abolition of Justice, the loss of the domestic Tranquility, and the nullification of the Blessings of Liberty – our code of laws would become subject to the whims of a blood-thirsty and destructive god with a long and well-documented history of genocide and mass murder (see the Midianites, and the denizens of Jericho, Sodom, and Gomorrah).

  George Washington and John Adams said, and the contemporary Congress agreed unanimously, “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” (see the Treaty of Tripoli). These were more than idle words spoken in private, more than a backroom speech made to moneyed sycophants: these words were part of an official declaration made to a foreign government in hope of a future free of strife; they were written to placate the heated ire of another people by stating that we as a nation will not, under any circumstance, abandon rationality or assume to pass legislation based on the ethical code put forth by a god that demands loyalty above all, a god that ignores the balance of our needs and our desires, a god that seeks to rid us of the knowledge of a unifying and perpetual energy that lurks among the passions of our lives, a god that demands strict adherence to the myriad rules contained within the Christian bible, but one religious book among many.

  We are not a nation established on the concepts of one particular religion. We are a nation founded to establish Justice and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. We do this by guiding our country, through legislative act, executive lunge, and judicial rule, via rational and lively debate, toward the emancipation of Happiness and Security among the People, not through rule of fear or codex, but through the application of our vast collective potential in service to all peoples of this land, not simply to a diminishing minority of the fabulously rich.

  Fight this impending American theocracy. If your governor prays to Jesus for an end to the woes facing your state, vote him out of office as soon as you can. If your Congresswoman claims to be guided by voices in her head that she thinks are her god, if she boasts of blind fealty to god and husband, write to her and demand she relinquish her post. There is room for faith in the hearts of the American people, but it must remain there and not pollute the halls of government – in those halls is room only for rational and measured debate focused on securing to ourselves and our Posterity the Blessings of Liberty.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on dating & economics

  The intricate dance within a romantic relationship can be compared to the efforts of economists struggling to contain erratic market fluctuations. In either situation, the party that responds to the sweeping changes taking place in his counterpart will find himself on the losing side, forever racing to keep up, forever implementing new methods to bring to heel the unfathomable maelstrom he thinks he has the capacity to control. Whether this unfathomable maelstrom be the mind of a woman or the global crude-oil market, the economist, an outside observer inherently blind to the vast and incalculable influences that shape the mood of his counterpart, will enact measures he hopes will soothe the fury of that which he holds dear, often sacrificing long-term stability for the brief elation of short-term gain.
  I have learned one thing about relationships, one truth I have had to relearn time and again: the less you try to control your counterpart, the better off you both will be. When done with patient persistence, attempts to fathom your lover and to steer him in a direction you think best can indeed effect change; the nature of this change, however, will likely range from intensive introspection, over increased volatility, culminating in full-blown systemic meltdown. It is impossible to predict accurately how your counterpart will react to the pressures you have applied – any action will have an appropriate and equal reaction, but its full scope will forever remain known only to the reactive party.
  Imagine for a moment your closest friend, the innumerable events and countless little decisions that helped to mold him into the person you (think you) know today, the environmental and gentic forces that influence continuously the shaping of his being. Now imagine hundreds, thousands, millions of individuals of similar complexity who by going about their daily rounds become what we call markets, with every act shifting the fortunes of various businesses, with each transaction affecting the cycles of supply and demand, their every decision impacting and being impacted upon by unique and innumerable forces. It is all but impossible to know the mind of your closest friend – how could anyone claim to know the minds of thousands of strangers in thousands of different locations across the globe?
  Controlling your lover is a Sisyphean struggle full of complications that subside one day only to reappear the next, a cruel practice that will gut your lover's soul, leaving behind a mindless and docile golem content to do your bidding, within her no room for independent thought, no capacity for abiding Happiness, the dark promise of future abuse her only constant. The controlling lover exhibits deep insecurity and persistent self-loathing every time he endeavors to bend another to his will; the controlling economist exhibits appalling arrogance and damnable small-mindedness every time she endeavors to shape the course of markets influenced by forces far beyond her ability to reckon.
  Just as in dating, attempts to control the market are bound to cause unforeseen complications, new trials that slither forth from the stumps of those just severed, new issues that reduce the economist to the point of mindless docility, her energies sapped by the despair that comes with the realization that, as a single piece of an enormous, shifting puzzle, her actions are unlikely to have the desired affect. In a romantic relationship, the supposedly dominant party can achieve an approximation of control, whereas in the economic arena, a market will defy all attempts at subjugation, the sheer number of influencing factors contributing to its enduring volatility.
  Every economic theory, be it that of John Keynes or Adam Smith, Milton Friedman or Joan Robinson, has proven incapable of condensing the markets into manageable and predictable entities – invariably, each falls short of stabilizing that which cannot be stabilized, causing long term damage greater than the short term benefits with which it is credited. In the romantic as well as in the economic relationship, the method that promises the greatest liberty to the individual is that which disposes of all restrictions on thought and deed, the one that allows for the unfettered fluctuation of markets, the one preferred by humanity since we stood upright and learned to use our thumbs: anarcho-capitalism.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on free and ancient medicines

  Sickness, like death, is a condition every living body must occasionally endure. Ailments come and go, ravaging this organ or that, sometimes effecting permanent damage, sometimes only causing the nodes to swell and the skin to appear loose and bloodless. In response to states of sickness, many Americans resort to traditional Western remedies passed down through the centuries, remedies designed to treat rather than to prevent. Often, these remedies fall short, their powers too weak to reverse the affects of neglect, procrastination, or downright abuse. With a significant portion of the American public lacking proper health coverage (see here), we are now witnessing twofold: steady increases in the costs of medical care (see here); growing numbers of individuals who, for whatever reasons, have allowed their potentially preventable conditions to become full-blown disorders (see here).
  Yet the individual is not solely to blame – the political leaders of this country have too long focused on their own re-elections and on fulfilling the demands of their friends and allies, forgetting that the sole expressed purpose of government, the only justifiable reason for its existence, is to make the American people Safe and Happy. Good health is the foundation upon which all actions and aspirations are built; it is a component central to the industrial, artistic, and spiritual endeavors that nourish us in body and mind; without good health, safety is a cruel and clumsy lie, happiness but a distant memory of better and brighter days.
  We could seek assistance in these matters from our elected officials; we could demand that our government provide ceaselessly for the general Welfare; we could rise up and say, “Happiness and Safety mean little if our bodies are weak and failing.” However, we would be fools to expect measured and timely response from houses and chambers that have too long now stopped their ears to the needs of the body politic while they with golden horns trumpet the causes and interests of an affluent plutocracy that now considers itself the rightful recipient of a disproportionately large portion of this nation's wealth.
  Rather than relying on intervention or assistance from without, let us take matters into our own hands, and educate ourselves to the healing powers of common plants. What many have been told to eradicate are in reality species both hardy and ubiquitous, plants that spring readily from the soil in most any temperate zone. Among these plants are: plantago lanceolata, plantago major, woodsorrels (oxalis acetosella), salvia officinalis, and the lowly dandelion. Among the benefits gained from the proper use of these plants are: lower blood pressure, rapid external wound healing, self-dissolution of bladder and gall stones, purified kidneys, cleansed livers, a strengthened immune system, reduced arthritic swelling, cleared sinuses, and soothed bronchial tubes.

  These plants go wherever the soil has been split or abused, crushed or laid bare by the passing of many feet, and at the edges of forests and pathways. They do not require regular care or special attention, and will grow in the least likely of places. When harvested at the proper time and consumed in the correct fashion (as teas, syrups, spreads, or powders), they can provide relief from many and various common conditions, from upset stomach and diarrhea to headaches, skin rashes, gout, and ill affects stemming from menopause.

  If the healing plants are consumed regularly, they can help the human body to run smoothly and efficiently, managing the frequency and severity of ailments rather than addressing them when they have become problematic. Unlike pharmaceutical agents, the side-affects associated with the healing plants are either mild or non-existent, which all but eliminates the probability of wrecking one's liver in the pursuit of, say, lower blood pressure. Unlike newer methods of treatment relied upon today, the healing power of these plants has been known to wise-men, shamans, and philosophers in many different regions across the globe for close to a thousand years. So powerful are they that even the beasts of marsh and field use them.

  Americans, awake! No longer must you suffer from lack of medical care. No longer must you live in pain or discomfort because you cannot afford your pills. No longer must you live in fear of sickness, hoping against hope that the inevitable will not occur, cursing big pharma and wishing that your elected officials had done more to fulfill the parameters of the Constitution. With the healing plants, you can conquer disease, cure ailments, and bring your body back into the harmony that nature readily and freely provides.

  For wherever the earth's abused and ignored, there grow leaves that heal and reward.

場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

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