We the People of the United States of America, to relieve ourselves of the burdens of virtue and the nuisance of self-government, and to secure the blessings that flow from the collective and the isolated individual, do establish this Constitution.
There shall be a Supreme Court of the United States, composed of nine lawyers. All cultural questions shall be submitted to their purview, and shall be decided according to their predilections.
For the purposes of this Constitution, “the people” shall be construed as a mass of individuals, without any other political standing but that which is granted to them by their participation in the electoral process.
The Supreme Court shall be charged with expunging all religious language, imagery, allusion, reasoning, and custom from every civic space, at the level of the nation, the state, the county, the municipality, and the school. “Freedom of religion” shall signify the national government’s permission, under conditions conducing to peace and order as construed by the government, for individuals to enter houses of worship and engage in activities that have no bearing on anything of importance in political life.
All civically expressed customs regarding the sexes individually and their relationship with one another shall be overridden, at the decision of the archons of the Supreme Court.
This Constitution decrees that men and women, as such, do not exist.
The right of “the people” to bear arms shall be absorbed by an immense standing army, for national defense and meddling in the affairs of barbaric nations, by a National Guard, for disaster relief and for the enforcement of national laws against the recalcitrance of the states, by a Federal Bureau of Investigation, by a National Security Administration, by a Central Intelligence Administration, by a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, by a Transportation Safety Administration, and by police forces in the individual states, counties, and municipalities. The permission for individuals to bear arms shall be abridged, progressively, towards the aim of complete disarmament.
Congress shall pass no laws abridging freedom of speech. For the purposes of this Constitution, “speech” shall include pornographic pictures and films and other displays of obscenity, even those which are neither spoken nor verbal. But speech which pertains to politics may be abridged, if Congress deems that the monies spent for the venues for such speech exceed an amount which a reasonable person would determine as appropriate for the losing candidate in an election. Public institutions funded by national monies may also abridge speech, if it is determined that those in power, or those groups they favor, would be made uncomfortable by it.
Truth shall be understood as no defense for any individual speaking against a favored group. Truth shall not be demanded of any individual speaking against a group attracting the contempt of the government, or of those in the press who do the government’s bidding.
The individual shall not be subject to unreasonable search and seizure, unless one of the following conditions applies:
He is a student in a public school, with a locker.
He has filed a tax return.
He uses the internet.
He makes a telephone call.
No man shall be deprived of life or liberty except by due process of law, unless one of the following conditions applies:
He is an unborn child.
He is old and forgetful, and has pneumonia.
He wishes to take his life and to suborn the assistance of a physician.
He will probably die anyway, and he possesses organs that can be harvested.
No man shall be deprived of his property, unless the municipality seizing it deems that it can garner more tax money from a new owner.
“The Press,” for the purposes of this Constitution, shall mean any and all means of expressing any thought whatsoever, so long as the thoughts are conducive to good order and progress. The actual press shall be conglomerated into a “mass media,” that the whole nation may hear only one voice, and speak with one voice, with only small varieties in accents.
The national government shall not abridge the just freedom of action of the states. This freedom, however broad, shall be duly circumscribed. The states shall be, to the national government, as a tethered dog to its master; municipalities, as the tail to the dog; individuals, as the hairs on the tail; families, and churches, and all other entities claiming moral authority apart from or over against the national government, as fleas upon the hairs on the tail, or other noxious matter.
If one state in the Union shall decree something which has been considered contrary to nature, as, for example, that small children can serve in the armed forces, or that cows shall fly, no other state need give full faith and credit to the aforementioned action, unless it shall be deemed as destructive of the Church, public morals, and the family, in which case the benefit to the national government shall outweigh all other interests.
Whereas quarrels among Christian denominations have instigated every war in the history of the United States, to wit, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Indian wars, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the first and second Iraq Wars, and the War in Afghanistan; and whereas the Founders of this country and all correctly-thinking and progressive people are at worst indifferent to religion, and at best hostile to it; and whereas religion in general, and the Christian religion in particular, has contributed nothing to the arts, to letters, to the founding of civic and educational institutions, to private and public charities, and to science; and whereas the last barriers to the all-competent State are the family and the Church, we decree that the former shall possess no prescriptive rights and duties and no legitimate zone of authority of its own, and the latter shall be allowed to continue only under sufferance.
Any person wishing to represent a state in the Senate must be a resident of that state. Residency may be established by the purchase of a property in that state, be it a house, or an apartment, or a share in a condominium, or a bed in a flophouse, or a pushcart. The candidate must prove either that he or she has resided at said property for more than one day, or has set foot on said property, or has directed a subordinate to set foot upon it, or has expressed, publicly or privately, the intention of setting foot upon it within ten years or the candidate’s decease, whichever shall come first.
There shall be a legislative body comprising two chambers. These shall be peopled by male and female lawyers, jobbers, actors, tools of business interests, tools of governmental interests, panders, prostitutes, ruffians, hypocrites, and imbeciles. They shall, each year, determine what funds are available for the national government to spend, and then they shall exceed such amount, by a degree and in a manner determined by secret dealing, bribery, extortion, and folly. Almost all genuine legislating shall be undertaken by those departments attendant upon the Executive, and by the archons of the Supreme Court.
No department of the national government may borrow money from any other department of the national government, unless there be provided on a slip of paper a firm promise to pay the money back, by an indeterminate date which shall recede into the future, as need be.
There shall be polls conducted by news organizations, campaigns, and special interest groups, to consume the excess wealth of the nation, to protract the election seasons, and to ensure that platitudes alone shall ever reach the ears of the masses. Congress shall pass no laws inhibiting the work of pollsters, lest thought return to the political system.
Congress shall pass no bill short enough to be read by its members, or clear enough to be understood by them.
The national government shall be empowered to direct all actions that have any bearing, however slight or tangential or supposititious, upon the national welfare. If a man should stand upon the border of a state, be it Iowa, and make water into another state, be it Minnesota; or if he should, while residing in Rhode Island, consider purchasing a croquet mallet in Massachusetts, and then think better of it; or if he should consult an atlas, or glance at a photograph of another state, or utter the word “New” or “North” or “Jersey,” then the full weight of the corpus of national regulations and laws may be brought to bear upon him.
For the purposes of this Constitution, “interstate commerce” shall not refer to commerce, or to any transaction among the states. It is a placeholder to be filled by the national government, according to the views prevailing among the best and wisest people, and the archons of the Supreme Court.
There shall be an Internal Revenue Service. This body shall be charged with rifling money from the people and from corporations, not to fund the operation of the national government, but to direct and manage the private and local decisions of individuals, schools, businesses, clubs, villages, towns, cities, farms, and states. It shall prosecute its work diligently and impartially, with these exceptions:
The taxpayer is very rich.
The taxpayer is frowned upon by the national government.
There shall be a National Department of Education. This body shall be charged with managing all public schools in the nation, by means of direct oversight; the offer of funds on condition; the threat of withholding funds; the threat of loss of accreditation; and friendly relations with teachers’ unions and the publishers of textbooks.
For the purposes of this Constitution, “education” shall comprise the following:
The capacity to read a short novel mass-marketed to adolescent females.
The knowledge of how to apply for funds from the national and state governments.
The possession of the proper opinions on matters deemed crucial by the mass media, the Department of Education, or the archons of the Supreme Court.
A declaration of War shall be made only by the Congress, but the Executive may prosecute a war without such declaration, if Congress shall look the other way, or if the Executive shall deem it necessary for his electoral prospects.
Congress shall have the power to levy any tax whatsoever, upon any person or persons, for any amount, by any means, and for any purpose. Congress may tax James Rowe for dancing to the piper, and Gerard Hill, for declining to dance. Congress may wring goods for the prodigal and indolent from the sweat of other men’s brows.
The Executive shall work by means of hundreds of departments, which will labor beneath or above or beyond public surveillance, but with the close cooperation of large businesses and unions and other contributors of money to political agents. The Executive and his subordinates may not profit from any such collaboration, unless the profit be political, or deferred to the years when the Executive shall have retired from office.
Congressional districts shall be drawn without regard to already existing boundaries of coherent geographical and political communities, such as wards, precincts, boroughs, towns, cities, or counties. Political parties shall be empowered to carve the electorate between them, as a turkey for Thanksgiving.
The national government and institutions of higher learning reserve the right to levy monies or to fix their fees according to the amount that is deemed possible to be squeezed from an individual or his family.
There shall be a Federal Reserve Board, with the power to tax the people by deflating the value of their money, without act of Congress.
If the Executive shall have flouted the laws passed by Congress, or reneged upon his vow to uphold this Constitution, the Congress shall be empowered to issue articles of impeachment, on condition that a quorum of Congressmen can be found who have not done exactly the same. For the purposes of impeachment, said quorum shall consist of two (2) members of the House of Representatives.
Every citizen may be allowed to vote at least once in every election. No citizen may hinder any person from voting. Citizenship shall, for the purposes of this Constitution, signify any person’s living within or stepping over the boundaries of the United States. No knowledge of any public matter may be deemed as prerequisite for voting, nor any allegiance to the United States.
Any citizen beyond the age of eighteen may cast a vote in a national election, so long as there is probable cause to believe that said citizen is still living.
There shall be only such freedom of association as is deemed conducive to national interests. The membership of all clubs and charities shall be subject to general oversight by the Supreme Court. Any person transacting business of any sort shall be forbidden to decline association with any other person, unless the grounds are those that shall have been permitted by the national government. John Nokes may not decline to do business with William Doe, because William Doe belongs to a category of persons benignantly regarded; but he may decline to do business with Robert Green, because Green belongs to a category of persons held in contempt.
The ancient Constitution which the present replaces shall not be subject to contemptuous treatment. Its pages shall be embossed upon the hygienic tissue in the washrooms of the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, that the leaders of the people may continue forever in private to give it that due honor they have ever graced it withal in their more public actions.
Inasmuch as the words “good” and “evil” are empty of meaning, except as determined by the experts denominated above, the people shall possess only such rights as the government may concede to them. All rights not expressly conceded shall be reserved to the national government, and most particularly to the archons of the Supreme Court.
If, in the course of human events, the express language of this Constitution shall be deemed as a hindrance to Progress, it shall be within the power of the Supreme Court, the Executive, and the Legislature, not to violate its sacred text, but to amend it tacitly, so that white shall be black, cold shall be hot, and free shall be bond.