We, The People...

[digitaldiscipline]

... of the UNITED STATES, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Simple and to the point, is it not?

Then, we started to say things that might be frowned upon by the Powers That Be (if you're feeling saucy, the words you're looking for are "sedition," and "subversive.")

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 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.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Independence is not easy. Take off the training wheels, and you have the drop in the pit of your stomach, and may end up with a skinned knee.

King George (the one in England in 1776, not that asshole on the Potomac today) had been such an egregious butthead that a nation was founded to tell him to go fuck himself. How much more are we willing to take from the perversion and travesty we are subjected to daily - from the lies, to the abuses of power, to the utter contempt for criticism and rational thought - before we have had enough?

I don't think I'm up to re-writing the Constitution, but, then again, it was put brilliantly the first time.

Act like it's the law of the land, because, once upon a time, it was. And it wasn't a fairy-tale.

If you'll excuse me, I have a river to cross.