on my loss of faith

  My parents were both Lutherans. My father was a pastor, my mother a devout follower of the same religion. From birth until my fourteenth birthday (at which point I rebelled more openly) I was for most of my life either in a church, on my way to a church, or otherwise engaged in some sort of churchly activity. Among my earliest memories outside of wild animal encounters as a toddler take place in churches. I sang my first public solo, at the age of ten years, on Christmas Eve, to a packed house, at a church in Shamokin, Pennsylvania.

  All around me were devout and loyal Lutherans who all sang the same songs in the same fashion at the same times of year, their practices unchanging from one decade to the next. While I, in general, have no problem with people engaging in religious practice, I realized recently (after deep and introspective thought) that I had abandoned my own faith at a very young age. My belief in an invisible god, as well as any respect I might have had for the doctrine of the Lutheran church, these things faltered as early as the age of six or seven; by my teens, they were long gone. It is well that I was a shy and quiet child – if I had told anyone about my doubting, they would likely have forced me into re-education classes, so as to keep me enslaved to The Church. (I have never believed that thinking “bad” thoughts, doubtful thoughts, would get me in trouble with a godhead whose main message is love, forgiveness and compassion; thankfully, I recognized at a comparatively young age my fellow Lutherans' fear of eternal damnation for what it truly is: a thinly-veiled effort by the church hierarchy to keep the people in the pews hating themselves for sinning, and begging the pastor to do something about it.)

  I was a young boy standing in a front-row pew watching my father perform the service. I can remember looking at all the people around me, their heads bowed, their lips moving in unison, and I thought they were all going to look up at some point to spring the joke and laugh. I can recall looking at those docile individuals standing in that wood-paneled church, looking at them and bouncing the backs of my legs against the dark wood of the church's benches while laughing to myself quietly. I have since that time not stopped laughing at and mocking any organized religion that happens to cross my path. The complexity and self-contradictory nature of the thousands of different teachings found in the Christian bible had become overwhelmingly foreign to me at that young age, so foreign and confusing that I knew, in my deepest of knowing-places, that they could not all be true. At that young age, for some reason, I was able to see through the smoke-screen of canon and verse, and pluck from the brambles of dogma the few tender fruits of pure and honest meaning. In time, I have been able to utilize these fruits outside of the framework of the artificial, and inherently corrupted, structure of organized religion. (I wish sometimes that I had not lost faith, that I could somehow become faithful again, and believing, that I could abandon perpetual doubt, that I could once again with impotent fury shake a fist at the sky and curse the god who made me, but I do not believe in an external god, only in the Majesty of the Human Spirit – I hold myself responsible for my place in the world; I fix my problems instead of bitching about them.)

  Of course, standing in that church and doubting quietly, I feared Yahweh, that terrible and jealous god whom I had been taught from birth to fear with abject and abiding terror. Once I had in my own mind mocked him and laughed at him and shown him my young and tender behind, however, I realized that the might of His Wrath (an emphasis on paternalism pervades the Christian bible to the point that I am shocked that any woman would practice that faith willingly) existed only in myth, or in the tales of old. I knew at the age of seven years that religious indoctrination was very much a form of mental slavery, and I was abhorred by the fear-mongery and intimidation used by most organized religions to perpetuate their existence.

  Now, many years later, I am so very happy with my young self for his brave and clandestine decision to rebel quietly against the culture within which he had been so enmeshed. That seemingly simple act of doubt, along with Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching, has helped me to find the path to inner peace, to primal simplicity, to a life without need for self-aggrandizement or self-justification; now, the action is the goal. I let the chips fall where they may, no longer constrained by the stultifying and stagnant framework of a desperate and failing religious organization. Now, my mind is free and elastic, while my heart is empty and still.

  Three cheers for doubt, and for quiet and patient rebellion.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

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 idiotic Americans (abroad)

  If someone here in America were to do what Gregory Porter, Derrik Sweeney and Luke Gates did in Egypt, which was to participate in an uprising by tossing Molotov cocktails from a rooftop (allegedly), that person would not be on the news, and no diplomats would be fighting for his release.

  That person would be in prison, charged with a slew of crimes. That person would not be on television, he would not be in the newspaper, no one would care about that person. In my humble opinion, if you are in a strange country and there is a revolution going on outside of your residence, you batten down the hatches, keep low, and mind your own business. If you leave your room besides to flee a fire, let alone if you decide to venture out onto a rooftop, you are being a fucking retard and you deserve any punishment you will get.

  We should have let Porter and Sweeney and Gates receive the punishment they deserved according to the laws of the country in which they were being politically active - instead, we wasted time and diplomatic effort to free a bunch of stupid kids who were tossing shit from rooftops (allegedly). Please, news cycle, stop lionizing these idiotic Americans whose actions are only harming America's reputation around the world.

JPR

on slavery by capitalism

  We, the people of America who are not enslaved to watching television or participating in fabricated national shopping rituals, must somehow help the 152 million people who went out to shop on the fake ritual of "Black Friday," a non-holiday that was created to rob the People of their hard-earned greenbacks.

  How do we help these people, and free them from their self-imposed, self-bought slavery?

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

happy evacuation day

  On this 25th of November, let us celebrate the last British forces to leave new york city at the end of the American war for independence, and refrain from needlessly spending money at corporate shopping locations. jp

  場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on illegal hair-cutting

30JUN2011
Westminster, MD

  Timothy Blastac, an unemployed auto-mechanic from this bucolic town near the Mason-Dixon line, was taken into custody today by the federal government for violating interstate commerce laws. Blastac, who since losing his job has been seen cutting his own hair, declined to comment for this story. Agent Brown, the lead FBI investigator on the case, said at the scene, "Mr. Blastac was witnessed cutting his own hair in his back yard using a hand-held mirror and a pair of cheap clippers. Since his actions violate the potential for a discount hairdresser in Pennsylvania, which lies but a few miles away, to perform these grooming services for him, we apprehended him on suspicion of violating interstate markets. Pending further investigation."

  Dalton Lambert, Mr. Blastac's neighbor, said, "I saw Tim out back trimming his mullet, and I joked about it to some of the guys down at the shop... someone must have contacted the authorities." Under the interstate commerce clause found in the Constitution, the federal government routinely punishes individuals for growing marijuana that those individuals could potentially transport across state lines, thus potentially affecting potential markets in other states, even if those markets are neither legitimized nor regulated under legislation of any type.

  Mr. Blastac, by allegedly performing grooming services on himself that could have been performed by an individual in a neighboring state, allegedly compromised the potential for an individual in a market in another state to potentially profit from potentially performing these services. "We will not tolerate violations to potential markets," chief inspector Ryan Henneman, of the ATF, said. "Just as growing vegetables in your own garden violates the potential profits to be made by for-profit vegetable growers in other states, we cannot allow individuals to perform services on themselves that could potentially be performed by individuals in other potential markets, in other states."

  The federal government has issued blanket warnings to individuals who mow their own lawns, raise livestock such as chickens or rabbits for their own consumption, or maintain and service their own vehicles, as well as any activities that smack of self-sufficiency or self-reliance, saying that individuals performing these tasks, which all violate potential markets in potentially different states, will be brought to justice.

  "We have for too long allowed these violations of potential commerce among the states to go on unpunished," Agent Brown said. "Soon the general public will understand that the potential rights of potential markets to make potential profits far exceeds the fourteenth (XIV) or the fifth (V) Amendment right of the individual to his or her liberty, or to decide for his or herself when and how to cut his or her own hair or what it is he or she should grow, smoke, or consume, on his or her private property." The ACLU declined to comment for this story.

  by James J. Jameson, reporting for Bronco 8 news

(This non-news article is satirical. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. None of the statements attributed to the various federal agencies or other groups are intended to be taken as factual statements.)

  Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on the necessity of union

  When the Declaration of Independence was written, and its sister document, the Constitution, the need for Union among the States was great. Joined in Union, the States proved better able to effect their independence, and to stand strong collectively, a dozen-odd entities working together against the many pressures that faced our young nation as it fought to make a place for itself in the world, and to prove that its shockingly progressive ideals had staying-power.

  Then, halfway through the 19^th century, divergent forces and interests among the States compelled them to split apart into two separate nations, one seeking to maintain a slave-based economy, the other seeking, officially, to maintain the Union. Whole populations that no longer felt that they should be following the same path rose up in conflict, two seemingly foreign peoples that understood that they had grown simply too far apart in thought and in method to be able to stay together. In those times of relative national weakness and persistent internal turmoil, the Union held; it has held through two world wars, scores of other police-actions (including Vietnam, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003), and rapid and widespread cultural and societal transformations both here and abroad.

  Today, however, we have witnessed the ascendancy of a federal supremacy over the states, and within that supremacy the elevation of the executive branch (in clear violation of the checks and balances built into the Constitution), as well as growing divergences between the citizens who live in roughly the same areas as those that split asunder in the 1860s. Two loose but still recognizable camps have formed in this nation, with millions of voters hovering at varying degrees around the edges of each, one camp calling for more punitive and dogmatic responses to our problems, a camp that relies on the gullibility of the masses for the propagation of its conservative views on religion and society, the other camp one that strives at least superficially for rational debate, the reinstatement of the constitutional right to liberty, and a more compassionate and socialistic view of the role that government and society must play in the elevation of the American People and in the bringing about of our Safety and Happiness. (It would be convenient to suppose that I am here referring to Republicans and Democrats respectively, but as these parties have become the necessary repositories of most anyone seeking political office, their ranks are as varied in their opinions as is the greater population, which is split roughly between liberals and conservatives, i.e. between those who seek to propagate liberty through rational debate and those who seek to maintain the status quo through Fear Of The Unknown and an inflexible mind-set. In my opinion, open debate and rational thinking are essential to the propagation of liberty, for the concept of liberty presupposes that the individual is capable of deciding for himself how best to lead his life: it demands of him that he understands the consequences of his actions while allowing him to live a virtuous life devoid of willful violations of the life, liberty, or property of his fellow persons.)

  Perhaps it would be best, then, in this time of America's military supremacy around the world (when no danger is clear and present enough to enact our total destruction), in this era of seemingly irreconcilable rhetoric and clear societal, moral, and religious divergence, to conclude with this chapter of our experiment and, as the Union of all States is no longer absolutely necessary for the basic preservation of our nation, to allow those portions that wish to pursue their own course to secede.

  Since our country's inception, we have added a good number of states, in locations sometimes far-flung from our original borders, states that by their isolation are seen even now as distant lands and foreign peoples whose primary binding characteristic is the feeble, cancer-like presence of the homogenized corporate retail location. In the interest of DomesticTranquility, it would be better to allow those who wished to establish a socially conservative nation based on a particular religion where they might better keep the ignorant in Fear, a place where the individual might not have the right to decide for herself how to affect her body (by tattoo, weight-loss, or abortion), where the benefits of the joining of individuals in marriage or civil union would be bestowed only according to the writings of a specific religious text (and not to homosexuals or to couples of different hues), where a specific language might be declared (the USA haveno official language), and where a specific system of beliefs might be recognized by all, unanimously, as the state religion.

  Perhaps the citizens of America should be asked directly if they feel that these two clearly divergent populations should become separate nations, an official poll to gauge the possibility of such a split, even an outright vote for their fragmentation and reintegration as separate nations according to the wishes of the respective majorities. (These new nations would have to be well-established, sovereign states with clearly demarcated borders, their constitutions well-written, with provisions in place for the unobstructed movement of goods and people between them, especially people who decide, within a set amount of time, that they had made a mistake and would like to switch nations.)

  The essence of liberty that flowered in America and in the world during the 1960s was stamped out in this country for a number of reasons, among them conservatism, Fear of the Unknown, war-mongering, and racism. Chief among these reasons, however, was the passage of legislation prohibiting the use, possession, and distribution of mood altering substances such as marijuana, legislation that to this day continues to violate the liberty of the American People by restricting their ability to obtain and use legally those substances that they deem would best assist them in their pursuit of Happiness.

  Until such time as the citizens of America are granted their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property; until such time as their right to abort unwanted fetuses and to use whichever substance they decide are best and to marry whomever they please; until such time as the citizens are entrusted fully with their unalienable right to choose for themselves how best to lead their lives and they regain the right to pursue their Happiness as they decide is best; until that time, liberty does not abide in these United States, and the rights enumerated in the Constitution are null and void. (If any one portion of the Constitution becomes null and void, the entire Constitution must be considered null and void.)

  Certain constitutional protections (against unwarranted searches and seizures) continue to be violated courtesy of the Patriot Act. Similarly, enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act violates the individual's fifth and fourteenth Amendment right to property, because her body is her only true property, and she can do with her property whatever she wants, so long as she is not harming anyone else's property. Since some of the most fundamental rights and protections our Constitution was supposed to have provided continue to be withheld from the American people, we must assume that our Constitution is no longer functioning as intended, that is has been so abused and mocked that it more resembles a nice thing to read on a sunny afternoon than a bedrock legal document. With this our finest document already torn, tattered, and violated, with our most basic rights and protections reduced to the theoretical, we would do well to allow those seeking liberty to break off from those seeking to cling fearfully to the mistakes of the past, that a new Union based solidly on the principles set forth by our nation's forefathers might be formed, a new nation that would not rest until the Blessings of Liberty were guaranteed to ourselves and our Posterity, equally and without undue restriction.

  Let the religious zealots thump their holy books and legislate according to their morality, in their own nation, while they funnel the wealth of their people into the pockets of the richest one percent. We rational, progressive, compassionate few, we who yearn for liberty, we who would like to affect our bodies and to pursue our Happiness as we see fit, our Safety protected by the might of the Declaration, our rights as enumerated in the Constitution immutable and unalienable now, and forever.

  Only through constant vigilance and rational foresight can we ensure Liberty and Justice for all. Stand up. Speak out. Demand your constitutional rights. While this struggle may seem nearly over, we have not yet begun to fight.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp