haiku 11 February 2019

Christians, do these things:
Heal the sick, hungry, and poor

With one name - Jesus. [ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 5 Jul 2018

Jesus’s short creed: be kind to one another; follow Yahweh’s law?

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

ravens & NOTW

Recently, while riding my bicycle into town, I was passed by a pickup-truck driven by a lone individual. Affixed to the back of this man's vehicle were two stickers, one reading, “Ravens – Relentless,” the other, “NOTW.” It will not shock this blog's regular readers that I am lamenting the idiocy of the loose affiliation of non-Earth-bound religious fanatics who see themselves as being Not Of This World (NOTW), but so many of them live here that I find it hard to resist.

Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary from 1961 defines relentless as, “Mercilessly harsh, stern.” If one can glean anything from the teachings of Yeshua (also known as Iesu, or Jesus, the Christians' primary god), it is that one should be – always, and without fail – compassionate, honorable, and loving toward others, and that one should treat them as one would like to be treated. This ancient wise man encouraged his followers to be merciful and generous persons whose only wish it was to serve the lowly, to assist the meek, and to give aid to the disenfranchised. In the Christians' bible, one of the only times that Yeshua acted in a truly harsh or stern fashion was when he drove the money-changers out of temple by whipping them with chains in a brazen (but unsuccessful) attempt to rid faith of the sickness of finance. The compassionate individual cares for the Earth and for Nature; he wishes to shelter and to promote the growing and the teeming things, no matter their size, shape, or color; the last thing that the true believer in the message of Yeshua would do would be to drive himself around the countryside in a two-ton vehicle at high speed (burning crude oil and mowing crushing clouds of insects against the front of his car), or to live in such as way as to be dependent on driving. The last thing he would do would be to allow himself to become so enamored of a simple game that he would go out and purchase a sticker for his car instead of using that money to support a starving neighbor or save a dying species. A true believer in Yeshua's message would not to spend his time watching, discussing, or thinking about the intricate details of such a decidedly earth-bound and petty thing as American football – the true believer would spend his time musing about how best to uplift the poor, help the needy, promote the downtrodden, and live in such a way as to cause as little negative impact as possible to the health of this our only planet.

To attempt to love Iesu, football, and pickup-trucks at the same time is akin to trying to walk while sitting and standing. Please, dear friend, remember Yeshua's lessons of humility and mercy, and cast aside the creeping doubt that hides within relentless and unbridled passion.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

front yard manger

As soon as my neighbors had taken down their cheap, little Chinese-made flag sets showing pumpkins and corn, scarecrows and bounty, mangers began to appear. Some were outlines of figures cut from plywood and painted a uniform color, mostly white; others were elaborate scenes with electric lighting, hovering angels, quality clothes on life-like figures, and real hay strewn about. As I am no longer a Christian but was raised by a pair of them, one of whom was clergy, I know that there are at least four different tellings of Jesus' birth myth, each one wholly different from the next, each one with different players, places, and progressions. I also know that some of the stories don't mention a manger at all and that others don't speak of beasts of burden, that, in general, there is in fact little uniformity and therefore much room for interpretation most everywhere one might care to look in the Christians' bible.

What I struggle to understand is why people feel the need to haul a bunch of props out of storage and hammer them into their lawns, year after year, time and time again, and why they then read the same stories over and over, boredom and mischief spreading like wildfire amongst any assembled youth, the lack of personal progress or group ingenuity glaring and obvious to anyone who might care to see it. We Americans go to market and buy fresh fruits and vegetables to eat, not old and stale ones; we overhaul and streamline our business processes constantly, allowing exhausted methods and worn-out ideas to fade into obscurity so that better ones might take their place; and yet we cling to highly stylized and professionally-commercialized versions of a religion that – due to its inherent absurdity and tendency to promote mistrust for and violence against All Things Strange or Unusual – should have been jettisoned from the annals of history during our all-too-short Age Of Enlightenment. The lessons of that age, however, appear to have been fallen before the idea that we are to search for salvation in the mouths of our preachers rather than in the stillness that comes when the animal and the human spirits are unified within.

The people who erect elaborate mangers depicting mythical scenes from the brutal past (young Mary and her husband Joseph were, after all, fleeing systematic infanticide) probably think of themselves as good Christians. In reality, however they rely heavily on the magic of modern technology for much of their comfort and success, on telephones and motor-vehicles, on paved roads and postal services, on well-pumps and central heating, on electrical lighting and printed books, on Constitutions and charters, and on no one else reminding them of the hypocrisy of their living fat and happy lives in air- and rain-tight houses with a car for each inhabitant parked in the driveway while most people on Earth shiver and starve. At least some neighbors merely staple yard upon blinking yard of seizure-inducing lights to their homes' gables and window-frames without making any sort of religious statement, wasting the output of coal-fired electrical plants on garish light-shows, pouring out our precious fossil resources merely on secular, non-partisan attempts to celebrate this, the Season of Excess. I, for one, shall refrain from celebrating an unassisted birth held in a grimy sty, and stick to bitching about those persons who do. Oh, brother, how stupid can I be. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

prayers to Baal

By the millions this year, during the days immediately following Thanksgiving, otherwise self-respecting Americans of all religious backgrounds, socio-economic strata, and ethnic heritages will dutifully bow before god Baal, the ancient deity of wasteful excess. Featured prominently in the Christian bible's old testament, Baal seduced the children of Israel while they were waiting for Moses to return from the Mount Sinai; within a short time they went from considerate and caring individuals to rapacious, lustful, and greedy cunts hellbent on grabbing, stuffing, wanting, needing, taking. Intended to be taken more as a metaphor than as an historical event, the seduction of the faithful by Baal was so great, and so extensive, that it caused Moses to ruin the first copy of the ten commandments, whereupon he slunk back up the mountain to obtain – from his jealous and spiteful god YHWH – another set.

The seduction continues this year during the celebrations of excessive and unnecessary consumption referred to in the press as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. Once again, otherwise considerate individuals will shake off the cruel yoke of frugal moderation in order to buy slightly-newer copies of things they already have, purchase gifts for distant relatives who wanted something else entirely, and generally act as if they were total fucking jerks while racking up personal debt on their credit cards and mortgaging their children's future in order to buy television sets slightly wider than the ones they already have. Once again, tens of millions of self-proclaimed Christians will spit in the face of YHWH, he who demands that all praise be given to him and him alone, he who calls for the death and banishment of those who mock his name, his power, his glory, his and his alone, now and forever. (Failing to follow the clearly-stated directives of one's god amounts to mocking that god's very existence.)

Do these poor fools realize that they're perpetuating the culture of me-first consumerism that is surely and steadily dragging America down into sad oblivion? Do they see the hypocrisy of driving to their churches in gleaming cars while dressed in fancy and expensive clothes in order to scrape perfunctorily before Jesus – a god who urges them to give as much to the poor as they can bear to give and to live their lives in simplicity, humility, and moderation – when in reality they sit in their single-family homes hoarding greenbacks and coveting baubles? Last year's retail sales numbers and this year's sales projections indicate that millions of Americans believe in Baal above Jesus and in consumption above compassion, that they allow advertising firms to dictate their lives, and that they have succumbed fully to the hollow grasp of their black and twisted egos. No amount of talking about this foul erosion of our nation's erstwhile and honorable frugality will make things better; I rail on this blog against these excesses just as my father once railed against them from his pulpit, all but begging his parishioners to choose love for one another over love for self. But, just as his words fell mostly on dead ears, so I feel do mine, woeful warnings wantonly ignored. If people wish to violate the tenets of their religion in order to save a couple dollars, that is their choice; if they would rather give in to the siren-call of conspicuous consumption than nurture in their hearts a wondrous and peaceful tranquility, who am I to say that they are wrong to do so? And besides, when the savings are this good, it doesn't matter if a few more people get trampled this year than last – it just means less competition. Save sanity, serenity, and soul – boycott black Friday!

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

on the TX board of education

Truth is under siege in this nation, dear friend, and it is being attacked by such loathsome persons as the conservative members of the Texas board of education. Just this week I was reading about the actions of these dangerous individuals, and of their attempt to keep nearly 5 millions of school-children in the dark about one of the most important figures in the history of our American republic, Thomas Jefferson. I did not attend the sittings at which these religious fanatics attempted to spread their hatred, and, thus, I did not personally witness their evil ways, but anyone who tries to keep from the eyes of our young people information about the man who wrote our most important of documents, the Declaration of Independence, should be stripped of his or her power and pilloried.

The actions of these confused, sad little people were likely taken to obscure from view some of Jefferson's other writings, such as his version of the Christian bible, one from which he removed any mention of such foolish nonsense as virgin births, talking snakes, burning and talking bushes, and people flying magically up to or down from the heavens, keeping however the core of its teaching intact, that being the Golden Rule, which states that you should do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. (Christianity is but one of many religions that teaches the Golden Rule, since nearly every other major world religion builds upon this exact same teaching, among them Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and Pastafarianism.) Things would not be nearly so bad if the Texans kept things to themselves and taught their children whatever lunacy they decided were best (such as their lionization of McCarthyism and their efforts to replace mentions of democracy and freedom with the word republic), but many other boards of education in our Union follow the Texans' lead, buying such textbooks as they design, preferring to let the Lone Star folks go through the hassle of deciding what should and should not be taught instead of doing their own fucking jobs and figuring things out for themselves. Of course, it is not the Texans' fault that other boards of education copy their efforts, but these their most recent offenses against the standards of historical preservation and common sense highlight the recent efforts by the more fanatical religious organizations in this land to hijack our founding documents and to try and justify their religious zealotry and their plans to overthrow our secular government on grounds that ours was somehow founded as a Christian nation.

In the words of George Washington and John Adams, writing as they did to those present at the signing of the Treaty of Tripoli, words ratified unanimously by the contemporary Congress: “the Government of the United States was not, in any sense, founded upon the Christian religion.” There we have it, plain as day, simple and unequivocal, that the persons who risked Life, Liberty, and sacred Honor to found this nation did not do so in order to create upon these lands some sort of shining New Jerusalem where everyone would pray at the alter of a white-skinned, straight-haired Jesus. (If he existed at all, Jesus of Nazareth, an Aramaic-speaking Jew, would have stood under five-foot six-inches tall, having a light-brown complexion and nearly black, wiry hair). How do we stop these religious fanatics and their war against everything that America stands for, and how do we protect our history from those who would seek to destroy it, from people such as the conservatives who sit on the Texas state board of education? We start, dear reader, by critically analyzing everything we see and hear, by keeping the head on a swivel, and by fighting the threat of theocracy wherever it should arise. Stay frosty, and mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

on trucks, ravens, and NOTW

Recently, while going somewhere atop my velocipede, I was passed by a pickup-truck driven by a solitary individual. Affixed to the back of this vehicle were two stickers, one reading “Ravens – Relentless,” the other, “NOTW.” While it will not shock this website's regular readers that I am once again writing about the idiocy of the loose affiliation of non-earth-bound, religiously-fanatical individuals who see themselves as being Not Of This World (NOTW), the dichotomy of the aforementioned stickers was, at the time, quite striking.

For starters, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary from 1961 defines relentless as: “Mercilessly harsh, stern.” If anything is to be gleaned from the teachings of Yeshua (also known as Iesu, or Jesus), it is that one should – always, and without fail – be compassionate toward others, and that one should honor and love others as one would honor and love oneself. The teachings of this wise man focus, perhaps more than on anything else, on becoming a merciful and generous person whose only wish is to serve the lowly, to assist the meek, and to aid the disenfranchised. According to the Christian bible, the only time that this Yeshua acted in a truly harsh or stern fashion was when he drove – by whipping them with chains – money-lenders from temple in a brazen (yet obviously unsuccessful) attempt to rid faith of finance.

Next, the compassionate individual cares for the Earth and for Nature; he wishes to shelter and to promote the growing and the teeming things, no matter their size, shape, or color; the last thing that the true believer in the message of Yeshua would do would be to burn crude oil in an unnecessarily large (and lifted, or modified to ride higher and with inferior aerodynamics) truck by driving himself around the countryside in his two-ton vehicle at high speeds, to mow through clouds of insects, crushing them against the front of his car, or to live in such as way as to make any form of driving a (supposed) necessity. The last thing he would do would be to allow himself to become so engrossed in a foreign-born game that he would go out and purchase a sticker for his car instead of using that money to support efforts aimed at environmental conservation and the preservation of the myriad species.

And, finally, the true believer in Yeshua's message would not to spend his time watching, discussing, thinking on, or musing about the intricate details of such a decidedly earth-bound and petty thing as American football – the true believer would spend his time discussing, thinking on, and musing about how best to give to the poor, to help the needy, to uplift the downtrodden, and to live in such a way as to cause as little negative impact as possible to the health of this, our only planet.

To attempt to love Yeshua, football, and pickup-trucks at the same time is akin to trying to walk while sitting and standing; please, dear friends, remember the lessons of humility and mercy, and cast aside the creeping doubt of relentless and unbridled passion.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on the pagan power of capitalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

counter-protest - libertas victor!

  The forces of counter-protest today won a major victory in the battle against the anti-choice crowd: the opponent abandoned the field! With a new sign in hand (ANTI-CHOICE IS ANTI-LIBERTY opposite NO ROSARIES IN MY OVARIES), I arrived on the Hanover square at noon sharp, in time to witness the PRAY TO END ABORTION crowd blatantly violating the borough noise statutes by hoisting colorful signs reading HONK 4 LIFE, thus creating a public nuisance. (I am not a snitch, nor a police informant, so I refrained from informing the borough peace-keepers that noise violations were occurring willfully and continuously.) Less than an hour later, by one pm, the last HONK 4 LIFER had rolled up her sign and sped away in her minivan.

  I was not shaken when they sent a priest to intimidate me; I was not shaken when they sent a local cop to issue his warning – but the pro-lifers seem to have been shaken by my persistence on the square, and by my brazen mockery of their beliefs.

  The field is ours! Our foe is in disarray, routed and scrambling for the hills. Maybe just for one more day, the inalienable, Constitutional right of women to dispose of their bodies (their only true property) as they see fit has been defended by a new Guard for the future Security of the People of America.

  Fetuses are not babies until they are born! If I wanted religion in my womb, I would have slept with Jesus! Keep your rosaries out of my ovaries!

Thanks to everyone who voiced an opinion to the action of these last few days, be it yelled from a car or scrawled on a website. Defend your rights every day – let no man bar your way.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

American theocracy - 3

  The following are quotes from the founders of the United States of America:
   "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." James Madison, 1774;
  "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson;
  "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanac;
  "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson, 1787;
  "And the day will come, when the mystical generation [birth] of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation [birth] of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." Thomas Jefferson, in an 1823 letter to John Adams.

  The above statements were made by the individuals who created this nation. Similar quotes were made by George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Abraham Lincoln. The content and general message we can take from these quotes is that we were founded by men who shared a love for reason rather than men seeking the elevation of a particular religion. Never can we allow religious teaching to highjack our institutions of government: for to incorporate religious teachings amongst the laws and constitutions of our land would be to destroy the efforts of our founding fathers to create a nation of equal, rational, free-thinking, exceptional human beings.
  During a recent discussion, my counterpart stated that, The founding fathers were informed by Christianity; they drew from a common value system that was prevalent at the time. While this theory of osmotic religious indoctrination has some merit, I propose a theory that has perhaps equal merit. In the statements by Thomas Jefferson quoted above, we find two references to ancient Greek notions, namely Reason, and Athena (Minerva).
  If Christianity informed our founding fathers, and Jefferson foremost among them, then the polytheistic teachings and value systems of the authors of Hellenistic antiquity, who wrote such works as The Republic (Plato) and Politics (Aristotle), also informed our founding fathers. The notion of Reason – the fluid process of evaluation and decision-making by which man masters adversity – can be found in the writings of both Plato and Aristotle. The notion of goddess Athena – patroness of art, craft, guile, justice, strength, civilization, and wisdom – can also be found in the writings of these two men of old.
  Thomas Jefferson, an educated and well-read individual, in his crafting of the Declaration of Independence, drew upon the writings of the ancient political philosophers, and was sure to have been exposed considerably to the polytheistic notions of ancient times. And yet, when writing the Declaration, did he make mention of Zeus, or of any other gods from the Hellenistic pantheon? He makes no more mention of them than he does of YWH, the god of the Christians. If I were to stride into the Chambers of Congress and announce to those assembled that, since Greek deities informed our founding fathers, rites must be performed regularly to placate Poseidon, or to please Zeus, I would surely be laughed out of the room by all present. Congruently, any individuals entering said Chambers and demanding the observance of Christian rites is to be drowned out with raucous jesting.
  Our Constitution, in the first Amendment, states that no laws shall be passed that restrict the practice of, or that establish officially, any religion. This amendment gives the right to all who here dwell to practice their religion without fear of government repression or coercion. In my opinion, a person should be able to decide which god he or she should worship, which religion to practice, and what beliefs, however outlandish and outmoded they may seem to me, to hold. I rejoice in that freedom; I do not wish to see it ever taken from the people of this land. Efforts currently under way, however: to interfere with a woman's right to abort things growing in her private property, her body; to delineate the right to marry according to the religious tracts of one specific group; these efforts pose great risk to the first Amendment, to our Constitution, and to the foundations of this American republic.
  I applaud those individuals fighting against these efforts to abolish our core principles.
  I applaud the judges hearing these cases, and trust that they will approach the matter resplendent in the mantle of reason, their minds broad, their logic sound, knowing well of the dangers inherent to state-mandated religious doctrine.
  America, as a country, as a nation, as a concept, can only remain viable if it is founded on reason, justice, and the notion that all persons, regardless of class, creed, or color, can here find fertile grounds on which their dreams and aspirations may grow. If we allow even one snippet of religious code to find its way into our law, we will have failed our founding fathers by abandoning reason, and we will soon find ourselves in a barren and hostile wasteland rife with intolerance, and ruled by fear.
  This must not come to pass. Let us continue to fight – with patient voices and open minds – for the salvation of our nation.
  Stay true to our founding fathers: say NO to American theocracy.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

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